I’m here! I’m here!
It’s the long-awaited Aidan storyboard revision follow-up. With my comments and everything.
TA DA!
Since it’s been a short lifetime since I started this series, feel free to refresh your memories with the introduction post to Aidan Casserly’s storyboard he has created for his portfolio.
Then you can check out his brainstorming and thumbnail post, his first pass storyboard and my feedback on them in part one here and part two here.
Then he took my notes and made some revisions. He didn’t do every single thing I suggested and that’s cool.
Though…he should have. Because I’m, like…*ahem*…right and all. ; )
But I digress.
So now we have my final comments about his revisions. Enjoy!
(You can click on the images to enlarge them.)
Page 1
I had suggested he add a pan on the first panel of the exterior of the jailhouse and he chose not to. Which is fine. But I can’t help but notice the total lack of camera movement in the board. I think it’s done more to keep the panels “nice and neat-like”.
And I say, if you want to storyboard for animation, you’re going to have to show some camera movement and not let the template dictate your story. I see it with students too. They make their camera movements to fit in nicely within the storyboard template.
Don’t do that. Tell the story the way you need to and you dictate what the panels should look like. So what if it ends up uneven? It’s all done for the TV screen, not the paper.
Without any indication of ‘cuts’ and transitions, it’s hard to tell when he wanted to cut and when it’s all one scene. As it looks now, they all look like cuts. And I don’t think they’re supposed to be.
For actual production boards, you have to show pans and truck-ins/outs. So if you are doing a storyboard for your portfolio…to get work…add some camera movement indications when appropriate.
Page 2.
This is an area where he could do some cutting since Aidan has indicated he wished the board was a little shorter. To trim it down, I would use the last panel on page one (guard at monitors) and combine it with the second panel on page 2 (guard still at monitors and legs walk past).
Then I’d get right to the close up of the guard and him getting whacked in the head. Four scenes (and seven panels) gone.