One major aspect of scriptwriting is planning - whether in outline form or bullet points or some other fashion. One way to accomplish this is through story boarding.
Ask different scriptwriters what a story board is and you'll likely get different answers. In fact, some will make it one word and others make it two. But the basic premise will be the same: present a scene-by-scene description of your movie-to-be-made with visual aids, such as drawings, clips, and written descriptions.
While working on my current documentary film project, a storyboard was requested by a potential funding entity, that is, someone with the capacity and authority to help fund our project. So I'm left with the dilemma of what he is expecting.
I mean, I have several options of what I can send him. I could send a script, a trailer, a one-page synopsis, or a series of sketches, among other choices.
All would convey the idea of the movie, but depending on his background and experience with filmmaking, some options could be as confusing to him as a foreign language. I want to send information that will be as effective as possible, easy to read, and inform the reader with appropriate detail level. What to do?
Enter a new scriptwriting software program: StoryBoard Pro, created by Bill Bierden, and available through Atomic Learning. It is an application devoted to storyboarding. (I've decided to use the one-word term.)
As an experiment, I decided to use this software to create a storyboard to send to him, just to see what it looked like. I was very pleased.
In the opening screen, the software asks for the title of the movie and all the producers (directors, or other contributors to the final project, with a maximum of six names). Then you can move to the List View screen. Here you define each scene, whether it is a video, still, music, video, or title. You input the length of the scene, a description, and film and editing tips.
As you continue adding scenes, the software calculates a running total of the length, based on what you input for the timing for each scene. You can insert new scenes, delete scenes, and reorder the scenes as you see fit.
It prints out cleanly with about seven scenes per page and even prints blanks so you can handwrite your drafts.
Definitely worth checking out.
