STORYBOARDING

STORYBOARDING IS A VISUAL PLAN

Think of a storyboard as a map for your project, turning your finished script into a visual plan. Each image or video clip should be arranged as closely as possible to help navigate your audience to a particular idea or narrative. The storyboard should look something like a comic book sequence outlining key actions and moments. There will always be room for change, but getting images on paper is a vital part of preparing a video for production.

Use stick figures, if necessary. What's important is that the final video is being designed in its entirety, every shot being pre-visualized, all the thinking and strategizing being done now so that the technical effort of recording and editing can be focused on later.

GETTING STARTED

Probably the closest thing to a formal storyboard for the average student is a PowerPoint / Google Slides presentation, which allows a series of slides to create a visual outline of the sequential flow of events in a presentation. When you deliver a presentation that is accompanied by a PowerPoint / Google Slides slide show, you use each slide as a cue card to help stay on track and keep your story flowing. When you want to see a visual outline of your entire presentation to get an overall sense of flow and continuity, it becomes easy to look at all of your slides at once by simply selecting an option like PowerPoint's slide sorter tool or within Google Slides selecting the Print Preview and choosing the Handout view followed by selecting a number between 3-6 slides in landscape view.

ONLINE TOOLS & TEMPLATES

FORMATTING

When creating a storyboard, label the shots or images by type: long, medium, close-up, etc. Use abbreviations for this like the Common Short Codes code bank provided as a sample of codes you can use.

The end result should be that anyone viewing the storyboard, and/or reading the brief descriptions, should be able to visualize the action of the story. Storyboards are important planning tools in media-based projects because the inclusion of media in the storytelling process greatly increases the complexity of the project.

The larger a media project is, the more important the storyboard becomes.

  • V.O. - Voice Over

  • INT. - Interior

  • EXT. - Exterior

  • CUT TO: / DISSOLVE TO:

  • C.U. - Close Up

  • XLS. - Extreme Long Shot (Wide shot / Panorama)

See more

WHAT TO INCLUDE

STORYBOARD COMPONENTS

Within your storyboard you should include at minimum the following:

  • A visual

  • Scene or shot numbers

  • Citation of a borrowed image, or a brief description of the action/ line of dialogue, or short summary of scene context

  • [Optional] People or props involved.

  • [Optional] Scene or shot directions

ONLINE DATABASES

When creating your storyboard you are welcomed to draw your own images, create stills or video of similar or relational footage, or find stock media or online content from online sources. The Online Databases page includes a searchable table to find photos, videos, music and more for your projects. Additionally, if your project is intended for a course assignment and restricted to educational distribution, you may use screenshots and screen-recordings of content from copyrighted sources under permission of Fair Use.