I finished the storyboard for my first narrative short film which I will be shooting at the end of this month. I already made a shot list and I took that as a starting point for drawing the storyboard.
I had a quick look at a couple of software tools for storyboarding and although some of them looked really cool I decided that it would take some time to learn to use these applications and that I would be able to draw them by hand using less time than it would take me to learn a new application.
Some people might tell you you don’t need to storyboard a short film but I found it a very useful exercise. Although I already made the shot list, drawing each shot forced me to think about what each shot should look like and how the consecutive shots fitted together. I found that a very useful thing to do as I even found a couple of scenes that I could improve that way. It also gave me a lot of info for production design as I now have a much clearer view of what will be in the frame of each shot.
When finished, I added the accompanying script text to the storyboard drawings so I had a nice visualization for my crew. I think it will make things go a lot smoother when shooting as I don’t have to decide on those things during shooting. Sure, there will probably some things which will be changed but we have a clear starting point which will make the process easier.