A storyboard is a plan of what the camera sees, drawn or written out before the day. It is the difference between a shoot where everyone knows what happens next and a shoot where four people stand in a room asking "so… what now?"
You do not need to be able to draw
Stick figures are fine. Boxes with arrows are fine. So is a written shot list with no pictures at all, which is what most people end up using. The purpose is not art, it is agreement — so that you, your camera operator and your actors all picture the same thing.
The photo storyboard
Go to your location with your phone, stand where the camera will stand, and take one photo per shot. You now have a storyboard that is more accurate than anything you could draw, and you have discovered the problems with the location while there is still time to solve them.
The shots you actually need
Almost every scene can be covered with four kinds of shot. Learn these and you can film anything.
- Wide shot. Shows the whole space and where everyone is. Usually the first shot of a scene, because it tells the audience where they are.
- Mid shot. Roughly waist up. The workhorse — most of your film will be mid shots.
- Close up. Face, or hands, or the envelope. Use it for the moment that matters. Close ups are emphasis; if everything is a close up, nothing is.
- Cutaway. Anything that is not the main action — the clock, the rain, a foot tapping. These save your edit. Always shoot more than you think you need.
Coverage: the rule that saves your edit
Coverage means filming the same moment more than one way, so that in the edit you have choices. The standard approach for a conversation:
- Film the whole scene wide, start to finish.
- Move in and film the whole scene again, on one person.
- Film the whole scene again, on the other person.
Yes, this means your actors perform the scene three times. It also means that when one take has a perfect first half and a fluffed second half, you can cut to the other angle and nobody will ever know. Without coverage, a single stumble can cost you the scene.
Cross the line and the audience gets lost
Imagine a line drawn between your two actors. Keep the camera on one side of it for the whole scene. If you jump to the other side, the two people appear to swap places on screen and the audience is briefly, uncomfortably confused without knowing why. This is the one camera rule worth memorising.
Make a shot list
Turn the storyboard into a numbered list. For each shot, write down:
- Shot number
- Where it is (which location, which part of the room)
- Shot size (wide, mid, close)
- Who is in it
- What happens
Print it, or put it on a phone. On the day, tick shots off. A ticked list is the only reliable way to avoid the drive home realisation that you never filmed the ending.
Shoot in the order that suits the location, not the story
Films are almost never shot in story order. If three scenes happen in the kitchen, film all three while you are in the kitchen, whatever order they appear in. You will save hours.
Group your shot list by location first, then by what is on screen. Make sure your actors know which part of the story each shot comes from, or their performance will not match across the cut.
Planning an accessible shoot
The shot list is where an accessible shooting day is actually designed. Once you are on set it is too late.
- Visit the location first. Check the entrance, the toilet, the lift, the parking, and whether there is anywhere to sit. Photograph problems so you can plan around them.
- Group the demanding shots. If a scene needs standing, cold, noise or repetition, do not scatter those shots across the day. Cluster them, and put a real break either side.
- Plan the breaks into the list. A break that is on the schedule gets taken. A break that depends on someone asking for it does not.
- Have a shorter version ready. Decide in advance which shots you would drop if the day runs out of energy. Deciding that calmly beforehand is much better than deciding it exhausted at 6pm.
- Camera height. If a character uses a wheelchair, put the camera at their eye level rather than looking down at them. This is a two second decision that changes how the audience reads the person.
Before you move on
- Every scene has a wide, a mid and at least one close up planned
- You have a numbered shot list you can tick off
- The list is grouped by location, not by story order
- You have visited or photographed every location
- Breaks and a cut-down version are planned, not improvised