I chose this action, because I am a film student and mostly I am doing work of director of photography so storyboarding is important and very time consuming part of my job.
Nowadays there are some softwares made for this purpose, but I find them too complicated and detailed. The closest software to my ideal is Storyboard quick 6, but still I don't find it easy to work with.
First of all, I would like to explain how I and director do the storyboarding now.
Though nowadays many directors and DOPs use softwares to create storyboards, me and my team are still doing it old fashion way - by drawing shot after shot on paper. ( The example is shown above).
This activity has a lot of minuses, but there are still many reasons why I chose it over softwares.
The main problems of the drawn storyboard are the quality and ability to send it, copy it fast to other crew members.
I am not the best artist when it comes to drawing, so sometimes my storyboards are hard to understand for other crew members. They don't have clear lines, perspective etc. , the other issue is delivering it to other people. I have to scan it or copy it before giving it to other people which is time consuming.
On the other hand drawing story boards by hand is still more effective for me, because of many reasons.
One of them is the fast way of doing it. Imagine, director and director of photography sitting down to do a storyboard. Each of them have their ideas and suggestions, during storyboarding they come to agreement of how the film will look visually, so it is a lot of brainstorming, arguing, changing things, fast sketches on the paper almost don't interrupt the flow of conversation while working on the storyboard with softwares available now can distract people. Because there are too many tools, ways and drop down menus to choose from. Even if a person behind computer is professional, he can get confused and lost between too many options. The software looks more like a Sims game than real working tool.
In my opinion it would be great if there was a simple storyboarding software, with basic menu and tools, to create fast sketches on the way of brainstorming. It would make the work much more easier for everybody, because it is fast, understandable, easy to deliver to others, easy to change and people responsible for it could do it trough internet conferences ( like Skype). It would save a lot of time and nerves.
So to say, lets keep things simple. Till now there is no way for me to re-design or re-instrumentalize this action, but I hope in near future there will be technologies which will help me to make it more easy and effective.
And only afterwards when the main idea of shots is done, if it is necesary there can be a person developing story board into more complicated and detailed thing.
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