Story Boarding

Welcome back! I am so excited to show you guys my first ever storyboard!!! I did my storyboard based on the comedy Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.  I did the ever-so-funny scene of the cow fight, which was LOADED with humor, sarcasm, and just a silly vibe. Here is the movie clip:

Kung Pow: Enter the Fist Movie Clip

In all honesty, storyboarding was a new and interesting experience. The main thing that stood out to me was the extreme importance of storyboarding EVERY scene, no matter if the smallest of changes occur. By doing so, you are basically creating the entire movie on paper. When making a film, this allows you to easily alter, edit, or touch up different aspects of each shot before the actual shooting begins, leading to swift takes. While I did not record any of those scenes, I did get a feeling of how this process would be simplified through storyboarding. Another major thing I learned was the level of detail required in a storyboard to illustrate the scene to the maximum. For example, you don't just need to draw the basis of the subject and his surroundings, but far more. Subject movement, character movement, emotions, environmental factors, any possible changes in background/weather, and even the overall mood must be included in the storyboard in order to get the most out of it. Ultimately, I believe the most important thing about storyboarding isn't how well you draw your scenes, but the mise en scene you wish to convey and its effect on the audience. If you wish to instill an anxious mood in the viewer, make sure the contents of the storyboard reflect this feeling on paper, not only when the motion picture is put together. 

After storyboarding the fight scene above, I encountered some notable challenges that shaped my perspective on storyboarding. The most obvious obstacle was drawing shots in one frame when, in reality, the subjects and surroundings would move/interact, and the camera would move as well. Trying to grasp all these variations into one scene to express multiple seconds of a movie at each instant is not that easy. It requires me to brainstorm how I am going to implement all the changes into the frame in order to express them adequately. I would say this was the hardest and most time-consuming part of storyboarding. However, there are also some basic challenges. For one, I am not a good artist AT ALL. So, having to draw so many scenes in detail was a huge struggle. After erasing and redrawing many frames multiple times, my finished products were still nowhere near some of my peers. Luckily, a perk of storyboarding is that you can use words to describe some aspects if you just cannot grasp the information in a picture.

Well, that was my experience! I posted pictures of my storyboard for you all below! Feel free to look through them and leave any feedback you may have of what I exceeded in and what I need improvement with (besides my drawing skills!!)

Storyboard