Storytelling Unit - Story-boarding and Types of Shots

Today I had an interesting talk about story-boarding. Although I had a rough idea what one was I was interested to go into more detail. Its a series of basic/ detailed sketches that show the key frames of the production that is being shot. Used in TV and Film, they can be quiet basic to give a rough idea of what is going to happen and are less artistic (Diagrammatical) but they can also be very detailed to give exact scene elements of how the final product is meant to look. This is generally films or tv productions with a lot of action but not solely.

Below is a detailed action sequence from The Matrix. You can see a lot of thought has gone into what the characters are doing as well as the scenery behind them.

Storyboards can be used throughout the entire production process. In pre - production they are used for the initial planning and creating the vision of what shots you want to use. During production they are useful to have on set so that you can follow an instruction of what type of shots are used and where. In post production the editor can refer to them on the editing phases to create the exact scenes that were intended.


Adding to my knowledge of the types of shots you can use I also learnt about camera movements.


Tilt shot - up and down with the camera stationary

Crane Shot - up and down but the whole camera moving

Pan shot - Moving from left to right or right to left with the camera stationary

Tracking shot - Parallel with a character and moving with them

Dolly shot - The camera moves in or away from a subject (also known as Dollying in/ Dollying out)



There are many different angles that can be used as well.


Two shot - Two characters in the frame

Low Angle - The camera is placed below and looking up at the subject

High Angle shot - The camera is positioned higher than the subject

Over the shoulder - Where the forefront character has the camera positioned just behind his shoulder facing at the other character (generally a conversation piece)


Ensuring my shoot goes smoothly I will ensure to either storyboard or create a shot list so I can understand what I am doing and not miss anything out.