Storyboards
Apr. 1st, 2010 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thuviaptarth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
viddingI am going to be talkative this week, and today I am going to talk about storyboards.
I love seeing other people's storyboards; in fact, I am tremendously curious about other people's processes in general.
Examples
I'll show you mine if you show me yours. I've posted examples of mine with explanations below.
All about me (warning for large images)
I keep hoping to find someone whose vid storyboards contain pictures, like traditional storyboards; like everyone else's I've seen, mine are more of an outline. I stole the format fromastolat when we were working on "Black Black Heart" and then modified it to suit my needs.
I keep my storyboards in a word processor -- Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Open Office Word, anything that lets me create tables. (I use text documents instead of spreadsheets because that way I can keep other notes in the same file: general themes I want to hit, lists of striking images I may want to use, lists of the episodes most relevant to the vid, descriptions of effects I want to try, etc.) Each table has four columns, one for the timestamp, one for the music and lyrics, one for theme/mood/general imagery, and one for specific clip references. The number of rows depends on the structure of the song and my extremely limited understanding of music. But basically, if I feel like a movement in the music has ended or the qualities of the music have changed in some dramatic way, I make a new row. It's very easy to break out verses and choruses, of course, but sometimes I also break out distinctive instrumental sections. In the storyboard above, you can see that the Music/Lyrics column makes note of striking instrumental sounds as well as the lyrics. (You can also see that I hadn't yet found a transliteration or translation of the lyrics, beyond the bits a friend could translate for me, and guessed wrong on some of the sounds.)
For me, the storyboard is a living document. I use it to start off my brainstorming or record my initial impressions of where the vid is going, but I continue to update it throughout the making of the vid. I use color to tell me status: black text means the clip is on the timeline, blue text means I have to find the clip or make a change, red text means I will have to do some effect in AE rather than Premiere. In the storyboard below, which is from later in the process, the rows are pink because I colored in each one as I completed a section, to encourage myself with the knowledge of how much I'd already done.
But the things that I change most about the storyboards are the Theme and Clips columns. Sometimes I put down new notes when I'm brainstorming, but a lot of the time I am going back and recording changed clips I've already put on the timeline. This is a practice I transposed from writing, where it's sometimes useful to make a backwards outline -- that is, to outline what you've already written, to see what's redundant and what's missing from a draft. (Also, I like being able to look at the outlines and brainstorm in the office. It still looks like I am working, which is not something I could pull off if I were watching drafts of the vid.)
Pink rows are done! The text does not match the vid because I was confident enough of what I had down that I didn't see any point in updating the storyboard. I've also started adding episode numbers after the clip descriptions to see the pattern of episode use in the vid. This helps me out when I'm stuck; sometimes I'll go back to a commonly used episode to emphasize the importance of its key moments, or sometimes I'll go look at an episode I haven't used yet to get fresh ideas.
Your turn
Do you use storyboards or outlines? If so, what do they look like? How do they fit into your vidding process? If you don't use them, do you use some other method to organize your thoughts before you start or do you just jump right in?
I love seeing other people's storyboards; in fact, I am tremendously curious about other people's processes in general.
Examples
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
secretlytodream recently put up a scan of one of her storyboards in her "Introduction to Vidding" post at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spnroundtable.- thingswithwings has several pictures of the brainstorming/outlining/storyboarding from the Yuletide vid she made with eruthros.
- obsessive24 also put up scans of her storyboards at spnroundtable, which is clearly a Secret Hang-Out for Vidding Discussion, if by "secret" you mean "completely public."
All about me (warning for large images)
I keep hoping to find someone whose vid storyboards contain pictures, like traditional storyboards; like everyone else's I've seen, mine are more of an outline. I stole the format from
astolat when we were working on "Black Black Heart" and then modified it to suit my needs.I keep my storyboards in a word processor -- Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Open Office Word, anything that lets me create tables. (I use text documents instead of spreadsheets because that way I can keep other notes in the same file: general themes I want to hit, lists of striking images I may want to use, lists of the episodes most relevant to the vid, descriptions of effects I want to try, etc.) Each table has four columns, one for the timestamp, one for the music and lyrics, one for theme/mood/general imagery, and one for specific clip references. The number of rows depends on the structure of the song and my extremely limited understanding of music. But basically, if I feel like a movement in the music has ended or the qualities of the music have changed in some dramatic way, I make a new row. It's very easy to break out verses and choruses, of course, but sometimes I also break out distinctive instrumental sections. In the storyboard above, you can see that the Music/Lyrics column makes note of striking instrumental sounds as well as the lyrics. (You can also see that I hadn't yet found a transliteration or translation of the lyrics, beyond the bits a friend could translate for me, and guessed wrong on some of the sounds.)
For me, the storyboard is a living document. I use it to start off my brainstorming or record my initial impressions of where the vid is going, but I continue to update it throughout the making of the vid. I use color to tell me status: black text means the clip is on the timeline, blue text means I have to find the clip or make a change, red text means I will have to do some effect in AE rather than Premiere. In the storyboard below, which is from later in the process, the rows are pink because I colored in each one as I completed a section, to encourage myself with the knowledge of how much I'd already done.
But the things that I change most about the storyboards are the Theme and Clips columns. Sometimes I put down new notes when I'm brainstorming, but a lot of the time I am going back and recording changed clips I've already put on the timeline. This is a practice I transposed from writing, where it's sometimes useful to make a backwards outline -- that is, to outline what you've already written, to see what's redundant and what's missing from a draft. (Also, I like being able to look at the outlines and brainstorm in the office. It still looks like I am working, which is not something I could pull off if I were watching drafts of the vid.)
Pink rows are done! The text does not match the vid because I was confident enough of what I had down that I didn't see any point in updating the storyboard. I've also started adding episode numbers after the clip descriptions to see the pattern of episode use in the vid. This helps me out when I'm stuck; sometimes I'll go back to a commonly used episode to emphasize the importance of its key moments, or sometimes I'll go look at an episode I haven't used yet to get fresh ideas.
Your turn
Do you use storyboards or outlines? If so, what do they look like? How do they fit into your vidding process? If you don't use them, do you use some other method to organize your thoughts before you start or do you just jump right in?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 04:16 pm (UTC)No no no! Whatever works for you works for you. I am just fascinated by ways other people do it because I wonder if there's a better or more efficient way to do things than I do. (Sadly, I suspect efficiency and creativity are orthogonal if not mutually exclusive. I need some order to do things but I also need some mess.)