Storyboards rendering from KOLORO company
Any successful video project, whether it’s a short training video on YouTube or a TV commercial, starts with drawing a storyboard. A storyboard is a series of 15-17 illustrations that are created to pre-visualize a future commercial, animated film or movie.
How to properly make a storyboard for advertising know the experts of branding agency KOLORO.
Why you need a storyboard for advertising
René Clair (French movie classic) once said: “My movie is ready, all that’s left is to make it.” A properly designed Storyboard helps save a lot of time and money in video production. Storyboard should give a clear idea of the future product from the atmosphere to the point of shooting. Let’s highlight a few important purposes of rendering a Storyboard.
Analyzing shooting techniques
It is much cheaper to choose a good shooting shot on paper, trying several different angles, than to spend shooting time looking for the right angle. For example, the frame should show the mom pulling out of the refrigerator delicious yogurt for the kids. There can be completely different angles of shooting (from the back, from inside the fridge or close-up of the face), and the Storyboard helps you choose the most attractive one.
Planning
Storyboard allows you to have a clear shooting plan with deadlines in advance. For example, if scenes with the same layout appear at the beginning and end of the video, you can shoot them at once. The Storyboard is also useful for estimating the amount of work to be done.
Idea evaluation
Ideas that seem good to the client, and that are carefully implemented by the art director, may turn out to be completely dysfunctional. It is much better if this is discovered after the storyboard is rendered, when a focus group evaluates the script and story presentation, than at the stage of working on a full-fledged video. When shooting feature films, all scenes are pre-drawn, sometimes they are even overlaid with music, which allows you to evaluate the spectacularity of the movie.
What makes a good storyboard different
A good storyboard is first and foremost a properly executed and informative set of drawings. Unlike an animatic or storyboard, a storyboard contains only the key scenes of a future video. A good storyboard has three qualities.
- Well-thought-out mise-en-scene: the focus group’s impression of the video depends on the successful positioning of the actors. Standing in the middle of the set, the director should not be lost in guessing how to arrange the actors while they are bored behind the scenes.
- Camera properties: it should be clear what position the camera is in, its trajectory, close-ups and how it is taken. It is not always possible to capture the dynamics of a static image, and these comments can be included in the accompanying explanations, which are a must.
- Detailed explanations also include character replicas and descriptions of their actions.
Storyboard team
A team of several professionals is working on the rendering of the storyboard:
- art-director – comes up with the main idea and ways of its realization, and he is also responsible for the fulfillment of the order in time, participates in filling out the brief and monitors the work;
- copywriters – fill the video with meaning, write the story, make up selling lines and slogans;
- illustrators – draw the storyboard according to the brief and the art director’s instructions.
In the branding agency KOLORO at least two illustrators work on one project. This allows you to keep up with the timing of the project.
Stages of work on a Storyboard
1. Writing a brief
The art director of the project together with the customer draws up a detailed brief. At this stage it is necessary to discuss all the details of the upcoming project, the customer’s vision of the video, his wishes, as well as deadlines. The detail of the brief determines the number of subsequent edits to the storyboard and, consequently, the production time.
2. Intent
The quality of the storyboard is most dependent on the illustrator not the illustrator at all. He is only responsible for the technical fulfillment of the assignment given to him by the art director. He and the copywriters are the ones who come up with what will happen in each frame and make up the plot of the video. At this stage, the art director makes sketches for the illustrator to show the desired result. Once in the hands of the artist, the story should already be coherent to eliminate the illustrator’s subjective vision of the advertisement. Whenever possible, the art director provides references, from the appearance of characters and their clothing to backgrounds and color palettes.
3. Sketches
The illustrator gets to work by schematically sketching out the main elements of each frame. The art director checks to see if the illustrator got it right and makes his edits.
4. Detailed drawing of frames
Once the sketches are approved, the illustrator proceeds to draw all the scenes in detail. Depending on the brief, a Storyboard can have varying degrees of detail, from simple drawings to photographic precision. This will vary the time frame of the job and the cost of the project. Also, the Storyboard can be full color or B&W. The color version is better perceived by the focus group, so it is easier to convey the atmosphere and mood of the scene.
5. Presentation and revisions
Once the storyboard is finalized (usually 5-10 working days), the illustrator hands the project over to the art director, who checks it and makes edits if necessary. Finally, the Storyboard is presented to the customer and a focus group who evaluate the success of the future video.
Summary
Storyboard is just the key frames of the video that describe the idea, mood and mise-en-scene. Therefore, the storyboard can differ significantly from the final product. In addition, a storyboard is a testing ground for checking an idea for mistakes. In many cases, storyboards are a great help in finding the best creative solution for a video.
CallKoloro – we’ll help you put together a detailed brief for storyboard rendering and get started creating it right away!
