Storyboarding?

nitejrny282 · August 3, 2004

On average, how many storyboards (i.e. individual shots) would a 133page action/thriller feature film require? I'm in the process of looking for a really good storyboard artist to do concept art and eventually storyboard the entire script with me. Does anyone know where I can find a good storyboard artist and what their rates are for a low budget feature?

Thanks

Carlos M. Icaza · August 3, 2004

It is all up to you as to what you want to cover in the story.

I just shot a 10 page short, where we had about 11 scenes, and about 3 to four different coverage per scene, so it is between 33 and 44 scenes, plus the inserts.

but in some storyboards scenes, you can be vauge as much as you want, in others you might want to be as detailed.

The last 3 shoots I dp, my storyboard consisted of stick figure drawings and line arrows pointing camera direction and or actor movement. My last shot, I used a software like Illustrator to diagram location, and sub layers to diagram actor movement and camera placement.

(see somewhat related topcic in the off topic section http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...?showtopic=1771 )

Also, search the forum, I think that the topic of using storyboards it has been covered as well.

Cheers,

C.-

Matt Pacini · August 3, 2004

I used to be embarassed about my bad drawing skills on my storyboards, until I saw Speilberg's stick figure drawings.

Of course, he then has an artist redraw them.

It's a lot of work, and I don't really have any idea what the rate is for storyboard artists, but I'm thinking it's not cheap, and you'll probably have to "stick-figure" the whole thing yourself first anyway (otherwise, how is the storyboard artist going to know what shots you want?), so as long as you can read them, that's all you need, unless you have money to burn.

There are some good books on them, that are helpful as far as the proper diagrams for camera movement, staging, etc.

Matt Pacini

David Mullen ASC · August 3, 2004

I've drawn as many as 900 panels for a feature film but an action film would need even more if you were going to draw out the entire script shot-by-shot, less if you simply storyboarded the action scenes. On "D.E.B.S.", I storyboarded just the opening act plus the action scenes, not the entire movie. On "Shadowboxer", I storyboarded 90% of the movie. On other films, only select scenes. Sometimes I only do shot lists.

Alex Lindblom · August 4, 2004

Are you just the cinematographer or are u also directing/producing/writing the film on a low budget. If that is the case I would take a close look at the script 133p action script sound like a very long movie for a low budget project.

I strongly recommend that you take another look at it. Remember that El mariachi vas shot from a 45 page long script ( even if it wasn?t written in ?standard? format ).