When last we left ASHLEY and CODY, they’d made their way onto the fire escape outside of CODY’s apartment and discovered some of the intricacies of respecting the Axis when framing shots (as well as escaping from zombies).
Now, we’ll look at creating tension in the scene, which shouldn’t be too much trouble here, in our example, because we have zombies behind them and zombies below them, but we’ll do our best to ratchet things up a bit and try to actually refine and improve upon what’s in the script.
I’ll dispense with the shot breakdown for this tutorial, and we’ll jump right into the action. We’re still doing rough thumbnails, remember, trying to sketch out the action as loosely as we can.
Carrying over from the camera setup that we established for CODY is the last tutorial, he turns. We cut, not to his P.O.V. but from a slight angle where the camera already is, up to the zombies already piling out the window.
Now, back to the axis for a moment. When we first showed the window, when CODY originally piled out after ASHLEY, we took it from a different angle than we are now. One of the things I hinted at in the last tutorial is that the axis can shift throughout the course of a scene and that’s exactly what we did in the first part of this scene, so subtly that you probably didn’t even notice, and hopefully that goes for the audience too.
So we continue forward, back to that CODY shot and he’ll exit the frame. We won’t need this camera setup again for the whole sequence.
Wider shot, down the fire escape. Notice that we’re still respecting that new axis that we refined for the shots of ASHLEY, being, that we are going to keep her, slightly angled, to the right of the camera. So our axis is a slight angle on the building in general. We’re about to break that rule, so it’s good to make a note of it now.
We go back to the camera setup with the zombies at the window, and they start to exit the frame, so here’s another camera setup we won’t need again. This is progress.
We move in a little closer on CODY now as he rounds the corner at the first set of stairs. His general movement allows for a glimpse of ... the zombies approaching on the ground below. ASHLEY turns, to make sure CODY is still alright, from the same camera angle as before, which is now working as a pseudo-P.O.V. for ASHLEY, CODY looks up as he starts down the next set of steps. We see his P.O.V., looking up through the stairs he just came down, at the approaching zombies above.
We’ve done a couple of things here in these last few shots; first, we’ve moved the axis ever-so-slightly, so we’ll be able to cover the rest of the sequence on the fire escape a little more comfortably. The way we’ve done this is with CODY’s P.O.V. of the zombies down below. Unlike the last shot we had of this waiting threat, we don’t have either of our two main characters in the frame, so it momentarily breaks the orientation of the scene. We can get away with this because we have already established (with that previous P.O.V. shot) where they are in relation to the ground. This allows us to go to the next shot, which is now from behind ASHLEY as she looks up. Our “pivot point” for the axis is now directly between ASHLEY and CODY on the fire escape.
The second thing we’ve done with these shots is to start ramping up the tension of the scene. The first way we’ve done this is with rapid intercutting; we go from the zombies to CODY to more zombies, back to ASHLEY, to CODY again, zombies again, like that. The more we intercut their progress down the stairs with the reminded threat, the better ... but don’t over-do it.
Another thing we’ve done is to introduce a held-held camera style to the scene, with the shots of CODY, and his P.O.V. of the zombies above. In the example I’ve just written in “handheld camera”, etc., but in a later tutorial we’ll go through how to draw these frames to capture the fluidity that a handheld camera will bring to the sequence.
Let’s start adding some style to these ‘boards ...
From CODY’s handheld P.O.V. we cut to ASHLEY’s feet on the edge of the fire escape. Once again, we’ve thrown all of our axis rules out the window, accidentally on-purpose, as cutting to something completely jarring, especially within a suspense sequence, can really ramp things up for the audience and help to convey what a character is feeling. In this case, ASHLEY wasn’t really expecting the fire escape to stop at a thin ladder, so we’re using this shot to mirror that.
Graphically, I’ve drawn ASHLEY’s full body with frames and arrows indicating that the camera tilts up really fast from her feet to her frightened face. It’s really the best way to show this action, but be warned that it’s sometimes confusing for someone looking at the storyboards, as they’ll naturally start with the top frame and work their way down (rather than starting and the bottom frame, looking up, which is counter-intuitive), so really, the only way around this is to really over-kill the arrows so there’s no mistaking which way they should be reading. Sometimes I’ve even roughed-in a huge black arrow behind all of the frames. But we’ll look, in more detail, at how to direct the viewer’s eye when we actually start rendering the finished frames.
So, from this shot, we go to ASHLEY’s P.O.V. straight down, then a closer shot of her frightened face. Then we get back on axis again, looking down at her as CODY enters the frame. This will hopefully re-orient the audience as to where they are in relation to each other.
Let’s skip ahead a couple of frames (thumbnails for the whole sequence can be found at the bottom of the page).
We continue to ramp up the tension in the scene (above) with a lot of cross-cutting back and forth, here and there, all over the place (including the prerequisite low-angle zombies approaching shot: frame 20). Our basic action is ASHLEY, frightened, stalled at the ladder, with CODY realizing there’s nowhere else for him to go. We intercut the zombies above and the gathering zombies below with our main characters arguing over the situation.
Now here’s where, especially in a suspense sequence, that storyboards are extremely helpful in developing the film from words to images that will play out on a screen. As I was sketching these frames out, I realized how incredibly dull it would be for ASHLEY and CODY to argue, then ASHLEY just realizes that she has to go down the steps, and does it. I mean, it’s fine as words on a page, but as a suspense sequence, it just has no payoff.
Therefore let’s now have CODY, realizing that there’s only one thing to do, rush forward and push ASHLEY off the edge of the fire escape (yes, I’m serious). If we can pull it off, with the suspense being built throughout the course of the scene, it should get a big reaction from the audience. Besides, flawed characters are interesting ones.
So, quick cuts and close-ups indicate a sudden, surprising event (especially for ASHLEY) and a nice culmination of the tension that we’ve hopefully built up.
Here’s what we have so far ...
Next
Now that we’ve managed to put ASHLEY in even more peril, next time we’ll look at how to sketch out action and dynamic moving camera frames.
