Storyboard

• 1. Origins And Early Development

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  In the early 1930s, Walt Disney Productions developed the storyboard process as it is known today. Before this moment, most filmmakers shot their films like a play with fixed cameras in wide shots. Artists would sketch out ideas for gags or design sets, but these were largely conceptual. Special effects pioneer Georges Méliès used storyboards and pre-production art to visualize planned effects. Diane Disney Miller wrote in The Story of Walt Disney that the first complete storyboards were created for the 1933 Disney short Three Little Pigs. John Canemaker noted in Paper Dreams that Disney's storyboards evolved from comic book-like story sketches created in the 1920s. Christopher Finch stated in The Art of Walt Disney that animator Webb Smith drew scenes on separate sheets of paper and pinned them up on a bulletin board. Dick Huemer credited Ted Sears with inventing the storyboard while working at Fleischer Studios. Sears then switched to working for Walt Disney Productions and introduced the concept to Walt Disney. By 1937 or 1938, all American animation studios were using storyboards.

• 2. Film Production Applications

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  Gone with the Wind released in 1939 was one of the first live-action films to be completely storyboarded. William Cameron Menzies served as the film's production designer hired by producer David O. Selznick to design every shot. Annette Micheloson considered the period from the 1940s to the 1990s to be when production design was largely characterized by the adoption of the storyboard. Film directors use storyboards to visualize scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Storyboards help estimate the cost of overall production and save time during principal photography. Scenes are rarely shot in the sequence in which they occur in the script. Directors can use storyboards on set to quickly refresh their memory regarding desired effects when shots are edited together later. This is more efficient than having to reread the script for each shot while cast and crew wait. Storyboard frames are traditionally drawn on rectangles with the same aspect ratio as the video format in which the film will be shot. Technical details involved in crafting a film can be efficiently presented either in pictorial form or as notes in the margins of specific frames.

• 3. Animation And Animatics

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  In animation work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called animatics. An animatic is a sequence of still images displayed in sync with rough dialogue or rough soundtrack. This provides a simplified overview of how various visual and auditory elements will work in conjunction. Animators and directors use this process to work out screenplay, camera positioning, shot list, and timing issues. Editing at the animatic stage helps a production avoid wasting time and resources on animation that would otherwise be cut from the final film. A few minutes of screen time in traditional animation usually equates to months of work for a team of traditional animators. In computer animation, storyboarding helps minimize the construction of unnecessary scene components and models. Often storyboards are animated with simple zooms and pans to simulate camera movement using non-linear editing software. These animations can be combined with available sound effects and dialog to create a presentation of how a film could be shot and cut together. Advertising agencies also use animatics to create inexpensive test commercials before committing to full production.

• 4. Business And Advertising Uses

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  Storyboards used for planning advertising campaigns such as corporate video production are known as presentation boards. Modern ad agencies and marketing professionals create presentation boards either by hiring storyboard artists to create hand-drawn illustrated frames or often use sourced photographs. Storyboards help visually understand the consumer experience by mapping out the customer's journey brands can better identify potential pain points. Some consulting firms teach the technique to their staff during the development of client presentations. They frequently employ the brown paper technique of taping presentation slides to a large piece of kraft paper which can be rolled up for easy transport. The initial storyboard may be as simple as slide titles on Post-It notes which are then replaced with draft presentation slides as they are created. Design comics were popularized by Kevin Cheng and Jane Jao in 2006 at the Information Architecture Summit wrapup. These design comics include a customer or other characters into a narrative to illustrate product-use scenarios during design. Accounting firms also use storyboards in the ABC System activity-based costing to develop detailed process flowcharts that visually show all activities and relationships among them.

• 5. Software And Web Design

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  More recently the term storyboard has been used in web development, software development, and instructional design fields. During the specification phase, screens that the software will display are drawn either on paper or using specialized software. This illustrates the important steps of the user experience before coding begins. Engineers and clients modify the storyboard while deciding on specific needs. It is cheaper to make changes to a storyboard than an implemented piece of software. An example is the Storyboards system for designing GUI apps for iOS and macOS. Software developers utilize storyboard templates to map user interfaces and specifications before coding begins. Digital photography and non-linear editing programs have had a marked impact on how these visual plans are created today. Teams can collaborate remotely using modern digital tools to automatically organize panels and generate visuals. The process helps users understand exactly how the software will work much better than abstract descriptions alone.

• 6. Scientific Research Methods

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  Storyboards are used in linguistic fieldwork to elicit spoken language from informants. Strang Burton and Lisa Matthewson published Targeted construction storyboards in semantic fieldwork in 2015 through Oxford University Press. An informant is usually presented with a simplified graphical depiction of a situation or story. They are asked to describe the depicted situation or to re-tell the depicted story. The speech is recorded for linguistic analysis. This method allows researchers to gather data about how people construct narratives visually. The approach provides a structured way to explore semantic relationships between words and concepts. Researchers use these graphical depictions to ensure consistent understanding across different speakers. The technique has become valuable for documenting endangered languages and studying cognitive processes involved in storytelling.