Notes from The Art of Storyboarding
Overview
Instructor: David Chlystek
Introductory videos
Takeaway: It’s necessary to generate emotion; the audience has to feel something.
Assignment
Break down a scene from a favorite movie. (Badlands)
Composition
Negative space around characters draws attention. (TODO: insert illustration)
Eye Trace—thinking about where the eye moves from scene to scene—don’t jump around.
Public vs private compositions suggest the audience’s relationship with what is in the frame.
Frame within frame creates unease or tension by boxing in the characters within the frame.
Think of ways to convey emotion without relying on cutting from characters speaking dialog.
Negative space around a character draws attention to that character:
[insert illustration image here]
The “5 C’s” of cinematography
- Camera Angles
Upshot, downshot, wide, close, etc. “Dutch tilt,” i.e. camera tilted relative to horizon - Continuity i.e. “hook ups”
- Cutting i.e. editing
- Composition
- Close-Ups
Types of Compositions/Shots
Extreme Long (or Wide) Shot
- Can barely make out figures—they are specks in the landscape
- Establishing shot
- Very little emotion
Wide Shot
- Figures are very small; cannot make out features.
- Establishing shot with a little more focus on character.
- Little emotion
Long Shot
- Full figure with plenty of space above and below the head and feet
- Similar to watching a stage play
- Also an establishing shot
Full Shot (FS)
- Whole body with space above and below the head and knees. A full body shot that minimizes the background is a Full Shot. A full-body shot that reveals a lot of BG is a Long or Wide Shot.[1]
Knees up<— DC said this in class, but it’s wrong.- It’s possible to make out the expressions on the characters’ faces
- Neutral emotion
- Audience is not a participant in the action
- “Public” space
Medium Shot (MS)
- Some argue MS starts a little above the waist, others say MS starts above the knees.
- (DC defined a MS in class as starting above the waist.)
- Just don’t cut off characters at their joints!
- Happy medium between a Full Shot and a Close Up.
- Dialog-heavy scenes
- 2 or 3 characters
- Over-the-shoulder (OTS) shots
Close-Up
- Face of the actor / Neck-up
- One actor
- Very little background
- Magnifies emotions
Extreme Close-Up
- Just eyes or mouth
- Extremely personal & intimate
Deep Focus or Wide Angle
- Wide angle lens with everything in focus
- Foreground, middle ground, and distance
Point-of-View (POV) shots
Over-the-shoulder without the foreground character in the picture becomes a POV shot (Cohen Bros. use this a lot.)
With OTS the audience is slightly more detached.
With POV the audience assumes the place of the other character, making it more voyeuristic. Audience is placed deeper in the story.
Types of transitions
I think he covered this in class, maybe I never finished transcribing my notes to the wiki?
Anyway,
Standard
Just butting two clips up against each other without any added meaning.
Jump cut
Cut around a single shot with the intent of speeding up time. Cutting out slices of a contiguous clip. Demonstrates the passing of time.
J-Cut
The audio of the following clip overlaps the visual of the preceding clip as a way of introducing the context of the next clip.
L-Cut
The opposite of a J-cut. The audio of the preceding clip overlaps the visual of the following clip. Again, to blend the two together. Used a lot in conversational scenes.
Cutting on action
Cutting on a character making any arbitrary motion.
Cross-cutting
A series of cuts back and forth between two scenes. Used often in phone conversations, and when parents are heading home after a weekend away and the kids have to clean up their mess.
Cutaway
Cut to an insert shot that establishes the context of the action. The audio can continue over the visual uninterrupted. Typically, you cut away and then return to the original clip.
Montage
Radically compresses a long process down to a series of short clips.
Match cut
An action or composition continues from one clip into the next clip. Similar to a jump cut, but between two distinct shots.
Notes
- ↑ Shot Sizes: Telling What They See, Elements of Cinema Blog & Podcast