STORYBOARDS
I always find storyboarding for fight scenes difficult. I tend to be able to map out the slower, more cinematic openings however I struggle when it comes to the the meat of the scene. I find that storyboarding a fight sequence stunts the rhythm and flow, and hinders the energy of the scene because I've planned it in a stationary medium.
Therefore for this scene, I worked in a somewhat hybrid approach where I developed my storyboards and an early previz simultaneously.
After completing the first two pages of my storyboard, I began working on my Previz and from there experimented on where I wanted to take the film. This was a slow process as I was still coming up with many of the ideas and trying to figure out how to stitch them together, but eventually I ended up with a previz that I was happy with.
It was only after this that I went back and retroactively produced my storyboards. It may seem counter intuitive to draw the storyboards after the previz but I felt it was important to be able to visualize the film in a 2d format. The storyboards also game me a short hand when it came to shot identification, which was handy when it came to building my shot list.
Shot List
Above you can see the shot list I created to help keep production on track. It categorizes shots by number, scene, difficult and status, as well as including information about the shot and its reference footage. Each shot was given a speculative difficulty rating from A - C, A being the most difficult and this was taken into account when it came to scheduling as I knew I would have to devote more time to these shots.
I then grouped certain shots into scenes, typically based on transference of motion. My initial idea was that I would include multiple shots within the same scene file to make motion across cuts more seamless. I abandoned this idea fairly quickly though and instead opted to give each shot it's own scene, bar a couple exceptions.
Every shot was then given a thumbnail pulled from the storyboard and some basic information. This being the camera angle, focal length and camera moves, as well as any action going on within the shot. This style of shot list was heavily inspired by Brendan and Steph's shot list that we used when working on reel tale, which was vital when working as a large team, but still incredibly handy for this solo project.
I also added a section from tracking which shots I had shot reference for and updateable status boxes that I could use to track the stage of every shot. These stages included "TO DO, BLOCKING, WIP, ON HOLD, ANIMATED, RENDERED", and I kept these up to date for each shot throughout production.
Ultimately, the storyboards themselves weren't of terrible use to me, but using them as a quick visual aid when it came to referring to my shot list was incredibly helpful.