Transcript The Simpsons

“STORYBOARDING”
The term “storyboard” seems to have come from cinema; specifically, the practice of
storyboarding is said to have originated in the Disney animation studios, around 1933.
However, the practice of telling a story in pictures, often in tandem with some text, goes
back literally thousands of years: think hieroglyphics, for instance.
Storyboarding is a practice that has been used by dramatists and theatrical directors, as
well as by filmmakers. Graphic novelists often storyboard their works.
There are many forms of storyboarding. In classic film storyboarding, a series of more or
less detailed drawings lays out a sequence of shots; these images indicate camera angle,
the facial expressions of the characters, blocking (relative positioning of the actors),
lighting, and possibly other aspects that comprise the visual storytelling. Some
storyboards for films keep the imagery on the simple side, and augment the visuals with a
fair amount of text. See the example in the next couple of slides:
Some filmmakers, such as Akira Kurosawa and Alfred Hitchcock, were known for developing
storyboards that were often highly sophisticated. Both Kurosawa and Hitchcock relied very
heavily on the visual aspects of their films both to tell the story and to create suspense and
convey or create a range of other emotional states, as well. In the next three slides, see
examples of storyboards from three films by Hitchcock. The slide after that presents a series
of stills from Hitchcock’s film Notorious: this comprises, in effect, an after-the-fact
storyboard. This last example should be read one row at a time (left to right) and top to
bottom. Note how cross-cutting is indicated: the film cuts from a face to an object/event
and back to a face that reacts to that object/event. (In this case, the character played by
Cary Grant drops a wine bottle, and is surprise to discover, as it crashes to the floor of the
wine cellar, that a sandy substance, rather than liquid, comes out of the broken bottle. If
you have a really vivid imagination, perhaps you’ll be able almost to hear the sound of the
breaking bottle.
Even though the preceding slides have presented a bit of variety in terms of the
sophistication and style of storyboards, the range shown is almost certainly not adequate to
the range of your intended projects. That is, while creating a storyboard something like
what is presented above will perhaps work for some of you, others will need to interpret
and apply the “storyboard” concept much more loosely and flexibly.
For anyone who is planning to create one or more artworks, in mediums such as paint or
clay (2D or 3D works), sketches, perhaps with some accompanying text, may be the most
logical way to go. In the case of planning sculptural works, a series of two or more sketches
from multiple angles could be extremely helpful in developing and communicating your
conception. Often, artists make a mock-up, sometimes called a maquette, for a proposed
sculptural or architectural work: an equivalent but more familiar term would be model (or
perhaps prototype). It should prove relatively practical and easy to take digital photos of a
maquette made in easy-to-work materials, such as plasticene, for purposes of documenting
your thought/planning process and submitting it to your Humanities teachers.
One can also convey a sense of one’s plans by including references to works whose style
one intends to emulate. While this may sound rather hokey, think of someone pitching a
film idea and saying to the “money people” something like this: “It’ll be Genesis meets The
Simpsons.” You’d probably have to be quite a bit more specific, and have a much better
idea (!), for this approach to be truly useful and meaningful, but there’s some merit in the
basic idea of making comparisons to works, and/or styles, your audience is already familiar
with. In a sense, this is a suggestion to use various kinds of cultural “shorthand.”
Those of you whose projects may involve diverse elements such as stories, dance, and
other kinds of performance, such as choreography, could combine elements such as a
simple overview of the intended script (a scenario: an outline of the story) and a timeline of
the other elements, such as music or dance. A variety of notation systems and methods
have been developed over the years for different kinds of dance and music, and it’s
probably fair to say that there is no one “right” or “best” way to “sketch” ideas for works in
these media. Here’s a quickly thought-through possibility for a project that combines dance
and music to illustrate a fable or a creation myth or other simple story:
-a combination timeline/scenario indicating projected durations of various sections of the
dance: breaking the story into its most logical constituent units (the episodes or events of
the piece), this timeline/scenario would place a timing next to each of the units
-in another column, imagine very simple sketches indicating body positions and blocking
(relative positions of the dancers); alternatively, one could “borrow” photographs of
dancers performing in a style similar to the one projected for the dance: this would convey
some important information about the nature of the intended piece, and the concept of
creative “borrowing” could be applied to other art forms as well, for the purposes of
storyboarding; one could also include photos of the actual dancers one is working with,
indicating positions and other aspects of the dance in a very rough and approximate way,
considering that the piece is still in its early stages
The following slides present some diverse “storyboards” for dance.
It may be worth considering the creation and use of parallel timelines. This may sound like an
obscure and sophisticated concept, but most of you are probably quite familiar with many
examples: think, for example, of how songs are often printed with the text below the musical
notation. In an important sense, what such published music-with-words are precisely parallel
timelines: the format conveys information about both purely musical aspects, such as pitch,
rhythm, and dynamics, and lyrics, and one can readily see the relationship, in time, of the lyrics
to the music. Take this familiar format/concept and consider adapting it creatively to the
particular needs of your own project.
Your storyboard should incorporate, or include, a more straightforward sort of timeline: a
proposed timeline or schedule of your work. Break the tasks you expect your project will
demand of you down into manageable and logical chunks, look at the calendar, and
project a schedule of work that is reasonably, but not overly, detailed. Depending upon
the nature of your project, you may be dealing with a project that is very linear in nature,
where you must work your way from the beginning to the end of one piece of work, or
one that is somewhat more complex, where you may find it expedient, efficient, and/or
creatively or technically necessary to switch back and forth between different sorts of
tasks. If nothing else, working on your project/process timeline/schedule should help you
to better understand the nature of the work you’re undertaking.