Storyboarding: Consider Building with a Capable Application

Storyboarding is an often overlooked component of making great video. The best directors around will tell you that whether you’re making a feature length film or aiming to create the latest YouTube video sensation, a good storyboard will both ease you through the production and shooting process and make your post-production work easier. But not every videographer is also a gifted graphic artist. And while we all say that the storyboard doesn’t need to be beautifully drawn and that simple stick figures are usually good enough to do the trick, we all have occasionally let the perfectionist in us slow us down while we try to get our storyboard sketches just right.

But while the visual perfectionist in all of us may be stymied by a lack of basic drawing skills, we don’t have to give up. There are any number of storyboarding software applications available to do the heavy artistic lifting for us. As reported by Videomaker in the past, storyboard products run the gamut from simple to robust, from free to moderately priced. With a little research, you can make your “pre-visualization” work a strength of your video project, rather than an embarrassing weakness.

Atomic Learning Storyboard Pro is free and has a few features, from entering shot titles and types to importing existing images and video clips. that might be all you need.

Celtx Plus combines tools for writing scripts, storyboarding scenes and sequences, sketching setups, breaking down and tagging elements, and preparing informative reports for cast and crew. It’s iPhone and iPad friendly.

Storyboard Quick, from PowerProduction Software, allows you to import a script from any professional scripting software, choose the type of shot per scene, select the customizable actors from a Character’s Palette library, rotate props from and expandable library, pick a location for the scene (Interiors and Exteriors or your own photos), and utilize awesome export capabilities, including HTML. If drawing isn’t your bag, Storyboard Quick is definitely worth a look.

Toon Boom’s Storyboard Pro is a robust application that allows artists to conceptualize the story and bring it to life as animated storyboards. It boasts vector-based drawing tools with pressure sensitivity when connected to your tablet and preserves your own style with ink brush, air brush or crayon texture brush. Keyframe any object and enjoy onion skinning, multi layer Photoshop imports, overlay time code, and real-time playback. Toon Boom’s Storyboard has the ability to define start and end camera positions, and zoom and rotate on-the-fly. It can integrate with your editing program making it one of the most powerful storyboarding tools on the market.

Whether you’re using one of these capable applications or simply sketching your story out on a legal pad, the key is conveying your concept to your crew. Even if the “crew” consists of you and your best friend who is standing in as actor, gaffer, and sound recorder, a good storyboard will help you get your film out of your head and onto the screen.