Research: What is a storyboard- Ms Begum

The objective of this lesson was to be able to demonstrate what a storyboard is and identify the key features of a storyboard.

A story board is a graphical representation of a narrative that has been created, within the storyboard it shows each movement of each character scene by scene. Storyboards may look like square boxes on a piece of paper but they are used by every film maker in order to make filming the actual film less stressful and it also means that the actors, directors, camera operators etc. know what to do and when to do it without having to stop and talk about how they will plan out the next scene.

Storyboards need to contain information about: cinematography, iconography, lighting, actors, sound, narrative, location, duration and the Number of shots. 
Including all of these in a storyboard will make producing the scene a lot easier as the producer and the director can work with and around the information they have on the storyboard. Storyboards also ensure that you don't forget any shots/ scenes by accident they make it easy to know where you need to edit the film e.g. fade to black, straight cut etc.

Stages of Story boarding a narrative:

1. Narrative
2. Script
3. Storyboard
4. Filming
5. Editing

Advantages of using a Storyboard

• It helps to make the task at hand clear and easy to understand 
• Enables you to produce a scene without having to waste time talking about what to do next.
• The crew is able to determine how the finished product should look as they can compare their work with the narrative
• Clear list of what micro-elements will be used for the scene
• They are money-saving and time saving

Disadvantages of using a Storyboard

• Although it is time saving when it comes to the filming it takes long to draw up the whole storyboard.
• When storyboard your head becomes clouded with imaginative ideas on how to improve your scenes further which leads to wasting more time starting over again and amending.
• It is easy to misplace a storyboard which means you may have to photocopy more or create a new one.

                                                       

This music video was laid out in a storyboard style. Many micro-elements were used within this music video these were: low key lighting, fast editing non-Diegetic sound and parallel sounds. These were all effective as the audience don't always feel that they are watching an animation, they feel connected to the video as the drawings are very human- like. Throughout the video we see many changes, the drawings go from hard-sketched to very lightly sketched and then into outlined drawings as if the characters within the video had a change of heart.

Conclusion

Being able to look at different storyboards and analyse the key features of one has helped to get a better understanding of how mine should look. Also it has helped me to see that there are disadvantages to using a storyboard however they save time when filming which means we will not have such a hard time getting to grips with the filming and position and the editing of each scene. My group has decided to use a storyboard as we feel it will be much easier to understand, also it will save money and time which we can definitely benefit off.