Now that we’ve secured our virtual locations and have designed the characters that will appear in the sequence, it’s time to start sketching out the shots. If you’ll remember, from the previous tutorials, this will be done with the film’s director, as the two of you sit down and they go through what they want for the scene. It may include specifics for every shot, it may include a specific first shot, then just a few ideas along the way. The director may have no idea what they want from the scene at all, and you’ll have to go through this together. It all depends on the director, and it all depends on your relationship with them and your level of experience.
For our example here, from “Resurrection City”, I’ll play the triple role of writer, director and storyboard artist. So, with my director’s hat on, here’s what I see for the first small section of the scene (which can be found, in its entirety in the previous tutorial):
- High angle, medium shot of ASHLEY as she spills out of the window onto the fire escape. In the previous scene, we’ve just seen her dive for the window, without establishing there was a fire escape there, so this is a little surprise for the audience.
- Low angle, medium shot of CODY coming out of the window.
- Low shot, on the surface of the fire escape grating as ASHLEY starts down the steps and CODY follows, his legs big in the foreground.
- Low angle as ASHLEY comes toward the camera down the steps, CODY in the background stops and looks.
- Close shot of CODY: “Ashley! Slow up!”
- Slight high angle on ASHLEY, in close-up as she turns back to CODY
- Close shot of CODY: “Look down.”
- Same close shot of ASHLEY as before, she looks down.
- Reverse over ASHLEY’s shoulder of the zombies below.
- Same close shot of CODY: “I don’t think they’re waiting there to help us.”
- Same close shot of ASHLEY: “WHAT DO WE DO?!?!?!
First thing you’ll notice, is that I’ve trimmed down the talking from the script quite a bit. I’ve taken out “Uh ... Ash” and ASHLEY’s repeated line, “What do we do?” The script is not written in stone, so don’t get into an argument with the director that they haven’t followed it verbatim. It may get you in good with the writer, but you don’t want to be enemies with the director at this point (or at all, actually).
So, like I said in the previous tutorial, we’re just doing quick thumbnails at this point. So here are the first two shots:
Like I said, thumbnail sketches, they’re a bit of a mess, I know, but they’re not for anyone else to see, they’re just for your own reference when you’re doing the actual frames. It’s at this point, in the process, that you will be most into the material, especially sitting with the director. If they’re any kind of storyteller at all, you’ll find yourself getting caught up in the material and you’ll do some of your best work here, even though it’s only in rough sketch form.
The All-Important Axis
In the sketches above, you’ll see that I’ve included a sort of “floor plan” of the action and where the camera will be situated for both these shots. I’ve done this with good reason and that reason has to be with what’s called “the axis”. the axis is defined as that area where the camera can be placed, for each shot, in relation to the other shots in the sequence.
If I had a nickel for every time shooting has actually stopped, because someone was arguing about axis problems, I’d never have to work again. It’s a difficult concept to wrap your mind around, especially if things are not sketched out. I am just filled with dread when I see two people on-set, deep in thought, their hands held in front of them like a viewfinder, pivoting back and forth, muttering under their breath. Taking axis into consideration (and sometimes actually including little “floor-plans” beside the frames, like I’ve done here) is therefore a crucial part of your job. If it’s immediately visible and explainable, no one’s gonna argue “on the day”.
Let’s look at the first two shots we’ve done. Shot 1, ASHLEY spilling out of the window is fine and good. That’s our starting point for the sequence. But moving on to shot 2, we have a couple of options as to where we can put the camera for CODY’s entrance, to his left or to his right, and both will offer drastically different results when the scene is cut together.
If you look at the upper example, for shot 1, we have the camera to the left of ASHLEY, then in shot 2 we have the camera to the left of CODY. Magically, when these two shots are cut together, it will look like CODY is leaping out of a window right above ASHLEY, or somewhere else altogether. The audience will be seriously confused, if only for a moment, but it’s enough to pull them out of the action in the scene after so much work has gone into drawing them in.
In the lower example, for shot 2, we’ve moved the camera to CODY’s right, now when those two shots are cut together, everything is right in the universe again.
Sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. All you need to do is draw an imaginary line in the scene and don’t cross it. In the upper sketch you’ll see from the “floor-plan” that we are clearly crossing the line with the camera. In the lower sketch, the camera positions for both shots remain on one side. Pretty simple, huh?
Now, knowing that we’ve established the axis, we can stick with it and never have to worry about it again, right? Well, not exactly. This is what makes it complicated and where all the arguments come into it because you can cross the axis under certain conditions and, unfortunately, those conditions change depending on whatever the camera happens to be doing in a given shot in the scene. But we will tackle these a bit more as this scene progresses.
Okay, on to the rest of the sequence:
As we can see, we’ve stuck to one side of the axis on our handy floor-plan, so even though we are swapping between back and front as the pair make their way down the fire escape, we have the right orientation.
Which brings us to shots 5 and 6, which are pretty much the same frames, repeated for the next little bit:
The way we’ve numbered the shots, from our initial brief, has been 5, 6, 7, 8 etc. But, seeing how we’re just repeating the same shot back and forth, it really should be 5, 6, 5, 6 etc.
Eventually you’re going to number your frames, so you’ll want to point out to whoever is breaking down the storyboards for the actual shoot, that these are all one camera set-up, just cut together, for ease of reading, on the storyboard page, and there are some specific ways of numbering, but we’ll cover this in a later tutorial when we’re actually preparing the finished frames. But this brings us to an important point ...
Economy Class
Economy of camera set-ups is another important point to keep in mind when you’re putting storyboards together. When I’d initially started sketching out this sequence, I “saw” the shot of ASHLEY looking down, from a slightly more dead-on angle rather than the slight high angle that we have when she turns around. But knowing just how much trouble goes into setting up one shot (usually several man hours where the money ticks away very slowly), and just to have ASHLEY turn around for that shot would be a bit of a waste, when several actions and all of her dialogue could be covered from one single angle. It’s not the perfect set-up that I had in mind, but it’s the most cost effective.
Crossing the Axis
Okay, I promised we’d break some rules, so here we go; after CODY says “Look down” and ASHLEY looks, we want a pseudo-P.O.V. shot, over her shoulder of the zombies down on the ground, approaching the fire escape.
Now, if we look at out floor-plan, we’ve got a bit of a problem, no matter what we do, we’re going to cross the axis. There’s just no way around it. So, in the words of ASHLEY, “What do we do?!?!?!”
Well, we need to refine, or redefine our axis. If we look a little more closely at the camera in relation to ASHLEY for the bulk of the scene so far, we can see that we’ve pretty much stayed behind her once she starts coming down the steps, so if we just make a rule now that we’re going to stay to that area on the fire escape and let her be away from us at all times, then we can continue respecting the axis and things will cut together smoothly.
It’s probably feeling a little rocky for you right now, as far as all this axis stuff is concerned, and, believe me, it’s pretty rocky at times for people who have been in the industry for years, but as you work through more and more examples, it will begin to become second nature to you.
As things get complicated, the best way to look at the axis is that it is a moving thing that you are establishing and then re-establishing with each consecutive shot. When you successfully break the rules — and you will truly know this by looking at two shots together, and if they feel alright, it will work — you can move on, with this new axis location (like we have done above). It is entirely possible, within the scope of a scene, to start off with the axis established on one half of a room, and end with the axis in place on the complete opposite side.
Individual shots are the words that make up the sentences of the paragraphs that go together into the chapters that make up a complete film. Just as there are specific rules that dictate which word should come after the next to avoid gibberish, there are specific rules dictating the grammar of the shots of a sequence.
It will all eventually become clear as we continue plowing through the scene. Next time you watch a film, take careful notice of where the camera is placed for each shot in the sequence and how these smoothly cut together (or not), respecting the axis rules that have been established at the beginning of the scene.
Anyway, here’s what we’ve managed to churn through so far:
Next
So we’ve learned a lot with just this first few shots of this example sequence. As we continue into the action of the scene, we will work through some more problems and work toward making the artwork itself as dynamic as the action that will eventually take place on the screen.
