PLANNING: STORYBOARD

This week we are planning our storyboard for our (film opening, crime film opening, thriller film opening, television programme opening). 

As we storyboard, we are trying to think about the shot types and how the different kinds of camera movements will fit together. 

We know that our editing has to keep the audience interested through visual variety and texture, as well as ensuring that the edit shapes the narrative in such a way that meaning is made clear.

In  class, we were inspired by / we watched / we studied / we learned from...The Guardian's Three Little Pigs advertisement (2012) which won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival. In this amazing / stunning / fast-paced / fast moving two-minute advertisement, the pace of the edit is part of its power, but so is the careful choice of camera angles and movements, as well as the clever titles and graphics. 

Here is the link to the video: http://bit.ly/1gQMFmj

Below are three aspects of the editing that impressed me  (us)  and that I (we) would like to use myself (ourselves) in my own editing, so we are planning them in at the storyboard stage. The first example is above: I love the way in which the text is typed as we watch, as if the journalist is filing his copy at the office and we see the title complete itself. I may use the technique of livetype or of conveying information through CUs of props that support my narrative.

Screenshot HERE                TEXT BOX HERE with analysis

This scene is the first in a series of hard cuts, showing the police storming the house of the little pigs, forcing their way in. In my own edit, I plan to use a section of hard cuts in order to create fast-paced action and ratchet up the tension. I would accompany this with enhanced diegetic sound (here, it is smashed glass and heavy footsteps) as well as non-diegetic sound (intense music with percussion and wind).

This is an overhead shot that shows the audience the interior of the little pigs' house. High angle shots work well in explaining to the audience the layout of a room so that we can understand where the action is taking place. Here, this functions as a master shot, that is, the shot that starts a sequence and that helps the audience relate all the different shots that follow so rapidly. I intend to plan carefully so that we include an establishing shot or master shot to ensure that our audience follows our narrative.

I admired this slick arc pan that starts a series of cross cuts. The camera takes in the effect of the reporting across the western world and then globally as the story is picked up and passed to social media via viral marketing. Cross cuts juxtapose different elements of the narrative in order to achieve the links between cause and effect, as here, or to show how a narrative develops, sometimes creating a sense of impending danger (for example, as an intruder draws nearer to a victim's house). The edit includes a sound bridge of a voice-over in which a news reporter frames the meaning of what the audience is viewing. I may use a voice-over, such as a diary or video blog entry, or my character talking to someone else, in order to lend complexity and establish the meaning of what the audience is seeing.  

STORYBOARDING OUR PRODUCTION

We looked at different ways of storyboarding, which we will do at the same time as our shot list. Using Post-It notes on a storyboard grid is a good way of planning our narrative and getting in the shots, locations and angles that we want, but building in flexibility. The sticky notes let us move around the sequence of shots until we have a smooth, coherent and visually exciting narrative. 

We looked at the way in which Steve Thorne (Long Road College) presents his method of storyboarding. The information is taken from the OCR Weebly 2014 at http://ocrmediaconference2014.weebly.com/workshops.html