One of the ways that's helped me the most when it comes to learning how to storyboard a scene is through the following exercise. The idea for this came to mind through my figure drawing training, which is to draw from imagination first and then study from life. By drawing from your head first, we put down what we know so far, and we get tested on what we don't know. Then, when we study from life, it immediately "clicks" what you did wrong or what was just a bit off.
In the same way, I developed an exercise for myself where I would think of a movie I've seen before, but it's been so long that I don't remember exactly how each scene was depicted. I would then find the script of that movie, pick a scene I want to board, and board it out myself. Then, after I feel I did my best job, I would watch that scene from the movie and study how the directors did it. This has helped me learn quite a lot, especially when it comes to conveying an idea or emotion to the audience so effectively.
Below is an example of one of these workouts. I did this back on June 28, 2021. I picked this one because my notes are usually illegible, but this one is cleaner. I boarded a scene from Avengers 1 (director: Joss Whedon) where Loki meets with his "managers" for an update on the world takeover plan. Here's mine:
Then, here's how the movie was blocked out:
From here, I would analyze the movie version in different ways, starting with how the emotion of the scene was portrayed:
Next, composition:
Perspective:
Finally, Focal Point, which was something I was curious about back then:
There are, of course, plenty of different aspects of film that can be studied this way. For each one of these topics above, I would go back to my version and see what opportunities I missed and how I need to think about my scenes next time.
Thanks for reading!
