Professional Storyboarding

Rules of Thumb

Sergio Paez, Anson Jew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136126772
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Programación de juegos

Storyboarding is a very tough business, and a new storyboarder really needs to have their wits about them and have professional savvy to survive in this competitive field. Storyboarding: Rules of Thumb offers highly illustrative examples of basic storyboarding concepts, as well as sound, career-oriented advice for the new artist. This book also features a number of veteran storyboard artists sharing their experiences in the professional world.

THE HISTORY OF STORYBOARDS

Back in the very earliest days of film, there wasn't a whole lot of thought given to artistic expression. In 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière perfected what is generally thought of as the first projected motion picture that could be shown to large groups of people.¹ The Lumière Brothers thrilled paying audiences with simple footage of workers strolling out of the Lumière Brothers’ factory. These early audiences were impressed by the simple novelty of watching moving photographs. Ironically, the Lumière Brothers, believing that the novelty of moving pictures would wear thin on audiences, abandoned further development of motion picture photography and set their sights on trying to develop a process to create color photographs. Using moving pictures as a medium for telling stories hadn't occurred to them as a serious consideration.

By the time early filmmakers got around to telling visual stories, there wasn't much thought given to camera angles, camera movement, or editing. Most of the time early filmmakers shot their films as if watching a play, with the camera in a fixed position while the action played out in a wide shot until the scene was over. Only then would there be a cut to the next location and generally only using a wide shot and a static camera.

Over the first decade of the 20th century new techniques began to emerge. Camera movement, cross-cutting between actions, reverse angles, inserts, point-of-view shots, flashbacks, and other techniques began to take hold and develop into the beginnings of a common film language. One early film theorist and filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein wrote at length about his theories on montage, about how several shots linked together in certain ways could create specific emotional effects.² His theories were very influential on later filmmakers.

EARLY STORYBOARDS

As directors got to the point where they were more serious about stories and storytelling, many filmmakers found pre-planning with artists’ sketches to be useful. Eisenstein used them on Battleship Potemkin. Cecil B. DeMille used them for the 1923 version of The Ten Commandments. Artists would sketch out ideas for gags or design sets; however, these weren't what we would consider storyboards so much as concept sketches. It wasn't until a young upstart named Walt Disney came along with one of the first uses of what could accurately be described as a storyboard. It started with the making of a short animated film called Plane Crazy, the first of three shorts Disney produced after going independent (the other two being The Gallopin’ Gaucho and Steamboat Willie).

STORYBOARDS FROM THE DISNEY STUDIO

One of the artists to stick with Disney's studio was the prolific Ub Iwerks, who is believed to have produced Plane Crazy's first primitive storyboards.³ It was basically six panels hitting the major action points drawn on a page comic book style, with the action descriptions written on a separate sheet of paper. Walt Disney would look at the boards and approve of things, suggest revisions, or cross out something if he wanted it cut. They were now seeing the film as it appeared as more of a whole. Up to that point, in most animated productions, each animator was assigned a scene and had to come up with funny gags around a single theme without much regards to how the gags worked within the context of the rest of the film. Now with storyboards, you could get a sense of the big picture; how each series of shots as working together as a sequence—more like what Eisenstein already established.

Plane Crazy (1928)

Plane Crazy, which also happened to be the first use of Mickey Mouse in a cartoon, and the second short, The Gallopin’ Gaucho, were created as silent shorts and were rejected by MGM and sat in the film vaults collecting dust. By the time Disney did the third short, Steamboat Willie, he had decided to use synchronized sound after the success of the very first sound film, The Jazz Singer. Steamboat Willie, was such a huge success that Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho were pulled from the vault, sound was added, and the success of these shorts allowed Disney to continue making animated shorts, eventually leading to the development of a full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A later short, The Three Little Pigs from 1933, was the first short to be fully storyboarded with many shots drawn on separate pieces of paper pinned to a board the same way it's done today in animation.

Aside from the artistic benefits mentioned earlier, storyboards have a much more practical use. In films, especially animated films, production is very expensive. Many people are involved in shooting film and if things are cut or changed after it's been shot, huge amounts of money are wasted. Storyboarding allows you to edit and change things on paper, before any expensive shooting begins, resulting in a net savings. It also allows many people to look at the development of the film and be sure that the story is working for maximum emotional effect. Because of this realization, storyboard use spread to both animated and live action film and is still widely used today.

WHO HIRES STORYBOARD ARTISTS?

Aside from animation and live action film, with the advent of new media platforms such as video games, web, and mobile applications, storyboards are more widely used now than ever. Despite this fact, the number of people who create storyboards for a living is relatively small. While there are certain industries that hire staff storyboard artists, most storyboard artists are freelancers. In most cases, freelance storyboard artists don't work on storyboards exclusively. They often work in other areas as well such as print, product illustration, comics, or concept art.

Independent Contractors vs Staffers

Storyboard artists can work either on a freelance basis or as part of a staff. Some industries work exclusively with staffers, while others work exclusively with freelancers, although occasionally, companies with art staff will hire out freelancers when they need extra work done. Staff positions for storyboard artists are found largely in animated feature productions and animated TV series, as well as in the gaming industry. Live action features, live action TV and the advertising industry use freelancers almost exclusively.

Staffers

Working as a staff storyboard artist means you work in the way most people think about a job: you get hired by a company as an employee where you have an assigned cubicle or office and you work 40 hours a week Monday through Friday. The standard corporate benefits would apply. Most of the tax you owe on your income is withheld for you. You have co-workers and supervisors that you get to know over the long haul. There are employee reviews and office politics. You work there as long as you can before you either quit, get fired, or get laid off. Because animation, unlike live action, requires that an entire show be storyboarded, full time staff storyboard positions mostly reside in the animation industry, TV shows, or the gaming industry. Staff storyboard artists’ salaries vary depending on experience from around $40,000 to $150,000 a year.⁴

Independent Contractors (aka Freelancers)

Working as a freelancer means you are self-employed—you are your own boss. You demand your own pay rate. You decide if you are going to work or not. If you want health insurance, you have purchase it on your own (unless you're in a Union; more on that in Chapter 12). You have to keep track of your own income taxes and expenses.

Freelancers can be hired for gigs that are only a day long or that last for months. They may work at home via the internet or they may have to commute and work on-site depending on the job. Freelancers generally make it a policy to charge by the day rather than the hour, to avoid situations where you commute for two hours on a one hour gig, and then come home to find an offer for a full day's worth of work or more in your email inbox.

Generally speaking, a freelancer's rate is often higher than what a staffer makes. A decent freelance storyboard artist might charge nearly $700 per day. This may lead you to believe that freelance storyboard artists drive foreign sports cars and live in opulent houses in the Hollywood Hills. Oh, how we all wish this were true. The reality is freelancers often find themselves going for long stretches without any work, essentially unemployed, burning through their bank accounts to pay the rent until they land that next contract. This is one reason they have to charge more than staff employees.

Being a contractor is like being unemployed all the time in that you spend a lot of your non-working time trying to find work, via the internet or through phone calls or though some kind of marketing program. You are constantly sending out your portfolio and résumé, cold calling, schmoozing, or building up your online portfolio. Unlike a staffer, freelancers don't judge their success so much by what hourly rate they can charge for a day's work, but by how much work they can cobble together in a year. Their annual income tends to fluctuate depending how much work they can drum up. Unfortunately, most artists can't put enough work together to keep completely busy for an entire year (and those who can, can probably also afford to charge more). But if you manage to keep reasonably busy throughout the whole year, a professional storyboard artist can make a comfortable living.

Most storyboard work that is related to live action productions is freelance. This is for several reasons. For one, storyboards are not as universally used in live action as they are in animation, and when they are used, it is generally only for specific sections of the production like sequences heavy in special effects or action. Also, most productions involving live action, like feature films and commercials, are done on a project to project basis. For example, when live action feature films are produced, each film is its own company that only exists for the duration of the production of that film. Once the film is completed, the production company essentially shuts down and ceases to exist. This is in contrast to animated films, in which a single production company (like DreamWorks or Pixar) has several films in production at once, and where full time staff storyboard artists can jump from production to production once their contribution to a specific project ends.

The choice between a staffer and a freelancer is often not that difficult depending on the what kind of lifestyle you want to lead. In your career you may end up going back and forth from staff to freelance positions. In our discussion we will go through the benefits of each so you can make an informed decision about which areas of storyboarding you may want to pursue.

NOTES

1  B. Chardère and G. Borgé and M. Borgé (1985), Les Lumière, Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts.

2  Sergei Eisenstein (1949), Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, New York: Harcourt, Trans. Jay Leyda.

3  Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (1981), The Illusion of Life, New York: Hyperion, p.29.

4  See Chapter 12 for more information on rates. Also see published unions rates at http://animationguild.org/contracts-wages/

Now we begin our journey into the mysterious world of visual storytelling and make our first strides to becoming a professional storyboard artist. To understand what it takes to create a storyboard image, we must first analyze what's involved in creating a visual story. Narrative stories use visual elements that are juxtaposed together in sequence and projected or displayed on a flat surface for the audience. (For the purposes of our discussion we will leave the topic of sound out for the moment.)¹ These visual elements can be anything we find in our real world or even in our imagination such as characters, deep sea vessels, or distant planets. The visual elements for these shapes are enclosed in a bounding box or picture frame that defines the edges of the composition. This frame can be the edge of the movie screen in a theater, the frame of your television set, or the edges of your computer monitor. It is important to realize that the visual elements are enclosed in a frame tha...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Author Biographies
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Overview
• 2. Visual Literacy
• 3. Drawing for Storyboards
• 4. Cinema Language
• 5. Story Structure
• 6. Emotion
• 7. Staging
• 8. Storyboard Types
• 9. Storyboarding
• 10. Advanced Storyboard Techniques
• 11. Portfolios and Promotion
• 12. Finding Work
• 13. Spotlight: The Professional Storyboard Artist
• 14. Parting Thoughts
• Resources
• Filmography
• Index