How To Storyboard (and How To Pick Your Shots)
I’ll be the first to admit I’m no artist. I also don’t think I would recommend storyboarding for every filmmaker and every film; the choice to visualize your project ahead of time in this particular manner is a personal one that every director and DP need to make for themselves. I’ve worked with directors who never storyboard, DPs who can’t shoot without one, and every variety in between.
For me, I love storyboarding. It’s one of the first things I do when I lock a script (or recieve a locked script), something I often do before having my first production meeting so I can get my mind right. It helps me recognize moments of narrative significance early, forces me to start thinking visually about the story rather than strictly emotionally/through the characters and plot, and makes it easier to communicate my vision to the rest of my team. I never write a shot list without a storyboard first.
It’s not the only way to do it, but it’s my way, and I get enough questions about the process that I thought I’d share it in more detail!
For me, a great storyboard consists of 3 things:
- A clear numerical system, annotated in both the storyboard and the script, so when I refer to a particular shot, it’s easy to find the accompanying moment in the script.
- An indication of shot type (generally): wide, medium, close up, insert
- An indication of camera placement or moves: sometimes I need to use multiple squares to showcase a single shot, if there’s a lot of movement within it, or I want to be really specific about the angle of the camera, and this is the first place I’ll start working all that out.
When I collaborate more closely with my DP, sometimes they’ll include other more technical information, like gear required for a particular camera move, lens type, etc, but for me as a director, the above three considerations are all I need.
As far as my process goes, it’s pretty simple.
- I take a hard copy of my script and a notebook which I’ve split into equal rectangles, labeling each in sequential numbers.
- I then read through the script, and whenever I want a new shot to cover a sequence, I draw a rough (see: rough) sketch of the shot I’m imagining, then make sure the number of that particular rectangle is written next to the moment in the script it’s covering.
- Rinse & repeat.
They don’t have to be pretty; they just need to communicate to your team what you want out of each shot (or allow you to more easily communicate with them, so they can do their own prep process) and to remind you about your own vision when it’s time to capture it.
Why that shot?
Picking the shot for each moment of your script can be intimidating if you’re coming from writing or acting but wanting to explore directing and cinematography. It definitely was for me at first!
Wide/Establishing shots
Use a wide or establishing shot when you want to show:
- The scale of the location. For the Brains shot (above) we had three priorities: show off that the world of that show was bigger than the dorm rooms and segments of Prospect Park we’d shown so far, show off the fact that my director and I learned how to do SFX on that building in the background (I’m still so proud of it, look how cool and destroyed it looks!!), and make sure there was enough room in frame for both characters to move around, because this was a found footage show and we had to pick our angles, which we stayed with until we moved locations, the whole time.
- Transition between scenes. Transitions can be unnatural without a clear plan for them (and we can’t all be Edgar Wright), so falling back on showing a wide or establishing shot before the next scene gets started can visually indicate to your audience we’re moving forward.
- Establish a new location/setting. Similarly, transitioning to a new location can be aided by a wide shot, especially if you’re shooting multiple interiors but need to tell us we’re in a whole new place. Think of sitcoms, and how often we see a quick establishing shot of the outside of the New Girl loft, or the Parks and Rec building, before spending the rest of the scene indoors. These are also great because oftentimes the outside and inside don’t match at all, because your interior is someone’s apartment or a sound stage. But the audience doesn’t know that!
- Emphasize a character’s relationship with others in the shot or the location itself. For the first shot of Ace and Anxious (the other shot above), I was really specific about what I wanted: I wanted Emma (the main character) to feel small. I wanted her to feel insignificant in frame, even though it was her movie. Because at the beginning of the film, that’s exactly how she feels. She’s frustrated, stressed, overwhelmed, and looking for an unexpected solution to her anxiety attacks. The framing needed to reflect how she felt, so that as we got closer, as she moved through her arc, she had (literal) room to grow. It’s more effective, I think, than simply starting on the actress’s face looking uncomfortable. Film is a visual medium, and the way you frame a talented performer is just as important as their performance many times.
Medium Shots
The medium shot is most standard of all the shots- good for exposition and conversational sequences, letting a character fill the screen without focusing solely on their face/emotions and therefore giving them the freedom to move around.
While there are obviously a thousand ways to do a medium shot, sometimes, it doesn’t need to be complicated, it just needs to be covered. That way, the moments you want to stand out do, because you shift to a new kind of shot. Standard isn’t bad! Don’t be afraid of medium shots! Just be thoughtful and specific about them, make sure you’ve got some nice production design to fill out the rest of frame, and know when to break away from convention.
Dirty Shots
To “dirty” a frame/shot is to feature part of a performer (or, on occasion, a prop or set detail) in another actor’s primary coverage. A dirty shot can be a wide, medium, or closeup, but what makes it dirty versus a two-shot or a group shot is that it should be clearly one performer’s primary coverage being stepped into by something (or someone) else.
Why might you do this?
- Emphasize a relationship/closeness. This is what we were doing in the Better With You still above (on the right); it was a rom com series, so as these two characters fell for each other, it was important to us that you saw that. That as they had intimate conversations where we had to cut in to individual coverage for editing and clarity, you still got to watch the other performer gaze lovingly at them(relatedly, I’m officiating their wedding in a few months). This also made it a more stark visual when, during their short breakup, we stopped framing them together. The camera reflected how close or far they felt from each other in this way.
- Emphasize a power struggle/dynamic. I talk about this in more detail in my article about directing drama, but you can also see it in the above Buy In screenshot: it might be Colin’s shot, but you can still see the knife being wielded from the reverse angle. And despite this, a literal weapon pointed at his jugular, because of the framing and the actor’s presence, it’s clear who’s in power.
- Visually place the audience in the space. This is when you might want to dirty a frame with some aspects of production design; a blurry bit of foliage in the foreground as actors walk through an outdoor space, some garbage in the foreground to emphasize the grossness of the surroundings, etc.
- To add narrative depth to individual coverage by featuring subtle details in the foreground. Honestly, same as above, just more aesthetically than narratively focused.
Closeups
You’ll want to get physically closer than a medium shot in order to really emphasize a character’s emotions, underline a cathartic or important moment (breaking out of a medium-medium-medium sequence to jar your audience into paying attention), or highlight a nonverbal reaction. You may also want to use a close up to create a sense of intimacy (for the character/audience, for the characters themselves, etc).
Inserts
An “insert” is a shot used for close ups on objects or gestures abstracted from the characters themselves.
These are used to:
- Highlight a prop or prop gag. See the unnervingly shaking knife from Buy In GIF and the Sam and Pat GIF above, respectively.
- Establish a space to transition either from your wide/establishing shot or between scenes by highlighting important elements of the space/production design. You can see this in Better With You episode 5, because we were transitioning to later in the evening in the same location, so a wide/establishing shot wouldn’t have distinguished the time jump.
- Focus the audience on a particular character quirk. Every time you see Emma’s bouncing knee in Ace and Anxious, that’s an insert! This is also used for gestures like wringing hands, wiping sweaty palms on pants to establish nervousness, etc.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the kinds of shots you’ll use to make your film, nor the ways in which to tweak these standard frames for your own uses, but it’s a good starting point if you’re completely at a loss for where to start when it comes to building your first shot list.
And when you’re ready for the shot list phase… I’ve got you covered there too!
Bri Castellini is an independent filmmaker, a romance author, and, regrettably, a podcaster. She’s known for the 2017 short film Ace and Anxious (writer/director, 160k+ views on YouTube) and for her podcasts Burn, Noticed and Breaking Out of Breaking In, covering the USA television show Burn Notice and practical filmmaking advice, respectively. She can lick her elbow (not clickbait). Full work history and ways to hire her as a consultant can be found on her website BriCastellini.com
