Stop me if this sounds familiar. You've nabbed a great location for the climax of your project. You've taken reference photos, generated some terrific storyboards and are excited to shoot this beautifully-framed sequence. Then you get on set, place your actors... and there's this annoying wall about a foot in front of where you planned to put the camera. Bye-bye, lovely scene. Hello, on-set extemporizing!

Using one of the 3D packages like 3D Frame Forge and Storyboard Lite can help you avoid this kind of problem. They allow you to create your shooting space with a simple 3D package. Once finished, you place your "actors" and props on "set," then frame the shots based on where you can actually place the camera. That alone is a reason to consider your pre-visualization software package options.

More exciting is the ability to plan actual camera movement based on the beats of the script. Wonder if a slow dolly would help sell a particular moment? Do it with the pre-viz package and check it out. Worried that your planned in-car shot will look cheesy? Place your virtual camera into a "car" and see it for yourself.

All of this pre-visualization power comes at a cost. First, the more advanced packages aren't cheap. Secondly, though these packages are designed specifically for video pre-production, they are still 3D animation packages. Expect to sink some time into learning them before you start using them in a meaningful way.

That being said, once you have your head wrapped around their interfaces, your options become limitless. In fact, once you understand how to thoroughly pre-visualize a shoot, you can realistically expect the act of actually capturing the real sequence to go much, much more smoothly.

Having all of these packages available to help pre-visualize a shoot makes a director's task that much easier. Just remember that they're not meant to be used as rigid shooting guidelines. Once you're on set, the final decision is, as always, yours to make.

Tony Bruno has been making independent films for four years, is an occasional actor and makes his living as a professional technical writer.

Follow these steps to create pre-visualizations with your editing software package.

1. Storyboard Your Sequence
   Stick figures, full-blown artwork... it doesn't matter. Just lay out the entire sequence.
2. Scan In Your Storyboards
   Save them in a non-linear editor-friendly format.
3. Import the Images into Your Non-Linear Editor
   Import the files as normal.
4. Drop the Images into the Timeline
   Drop the images in, from the first shot to the last.
5. Adjust Your Timing
   Adjust the length of each image in the production timeline to reflect the timing of the final performance.
6. Polish with Sound, SFX and Music
   Add in a music track, sound effects or even temporary vocal performances to round out the sequence.
7. Render Your Sequence and Review with Cast and Crew
   Sure, it probably won't look like anything that came from Skywalker Ranch, but now you have a dynamic pre-viz sequence to share with cast and crew alike.