Storyboard

     During this week and half of last week we completed a storyboard for our film/magazine, and we read two articles about the importance of storyboarding. When making my storyboard, I had a fun experience. There were minor problems and conflicts in my planning, but using a storyboard helped me solve most of them. After completing my storyboard, I read the two articles for the week. The articles gave multiple tips that I found very useful to keep in mind. The last activity I did this week was to look back at my storyboard and making sure I was completely happy with it. 

    In the middle of last week, I was given the assignment to complete a storyboard for the first two minutes of my film. The first thing I did when receiving this activity was write down several sentences about what my shots should look like. I wanted to get all my ideas out before I began writing on the storyboard. Then I wrote the description, camera shots, action, dialogue, and sound for each of my twelve scenes. Over the weekend, I completed the drawings and mise-en-scene. Overall, my experience with creating a storyboard was quite fun. There were some challenging moments in relation to time. I was very scared that my twelve scenes would only last a minute and not two. Although, I decided that I should keep the storyboard as it was. And that I would keep more scenes in my mind just in case. Luckily, time was the only main problem I was concerned with. Besides worrying about time, there were only good elements during this process. I would say that my favorite element was creating the drawings because it was exciting to see your thoughts on paper looking exactly how you wanted it to. After creating, drawing, and coloring my scenes, I learned that I am going to have conflicting ideas but drawing out both scenarios helped me chose the best one. In the end, this activity did help with enhancing my concept because I was able to put all my ideas onto paper where I can see them more fully and clearly.  

    This week, my activity was to read two articles called Filmmaking across the curriculum: a beginner’s guide and Storyboard your way to success. In these two articles, multiple tips and explanations were given. Both articles explained the process of storyboarding and how to make one. To be honest, I didn’t pay as much attention to the process explanation as I did with the tips. I found the tips very important because I could use them to improve the storyboard that I already created. One of the tips that caught my eye was “Aim to produce short, good quality video stories that are one to three minutes maximum in length. Too long and the film is lost.” So, now I plan to make each scene shorter so that the audience’s attention won’t get lost. A minor problem I had in my storyboard were conflicting ideas. For example,  there was a scene that I had two different ideas on how to execute it. I was debating between having the seating arranged so that everyone is facing towards each other or facing towards the camera. When I read these two articles, both stated that idea conflicts do occur. In the article Storyboard your way to success, the author states, “You can use it [storyboarding] in all stages of the problem-solving process, but it's especially helpful for generating alternatives and choosing among them.” And, in the detail article Filmmaking across the curriculum: a beginner’s guide, the author states, “The drawings have no detail and are changed continually until the planned sequence is right.” These two quotes made the problem seem much smaller than I thought because part of storyboarding is finding idea conflicts and then using the one that best works in the film. 

    After completing my storyboard and making final edits, I looked back at my concept refinement chart to see if there were any noticeable changes. When I created my concept refinement chart, I had the same ideas in my head as I did when working on my storyboard. I will say that the main change was that my storyboard is much more specific than my concept refinement chart, but besides that, I would say there were no major changes. 

    In conclusion, the past two weeks have been the most important stage in creating my portfolio project. During this time, I planned out what I want my film to look like and solved all the problems that came up. I also learned the importance of planning and how useful a storyboard is in the media business.