Want to learn how to make a storyboard for video or film? Videomaker has asked a professional Hollywood storyboard artist to share the tips and techniques that an aspiring storyboard artist needs to understand in our latest free report How to make a Storyboard: Movie Storyboarding Examples.

In this special fully illustrated report, professional storyboard artist Jennifer Albright shares all the tips and techniques that an aspiring storyboard artist needs to succeed.

When you’re making a video, the more planning ahead you do, the better. Figuring out exactly what you’ll be doing during a shoot saves your crew time and labor, and saves you from cost overruns and production headaches. A good  sample will help you see how your shots fit together before you’ve shot a single foot of film or kilobit of video. This report explains how to make a storyboard that will show your crew what you have in mind, and save you from trying to convey what you want with wordy explanations and frustrated hand gestures.

Complete with illustrated examples, this 100% new report is a fast and simple way to learn how to use the storyboard format. This free report explains all the subtle tricks that communicate movement and action in a static medium. Learn how to show camera angles, lighting and camera motion in storyboard format with “How to Make a Storyboard: Movie Storyboarding Examples!”

We asked Jennifer Albright to compile this helpful guide to storyboard art, drawing on her own experiences as a freelance storyboard artist in the television and film industry. Jennifer is a UCLA film school alumnus and Los Angeles-based illustrator whose clients include Fox Sports Marketing.

Download your free report How to make a Storyboard: Movie Storyboarding Examples.

The art of the long continuous shot has always been rooted in exhaustive pre-production planning, precision timing, disciplined talent, and more than just a little bit of luck. To shoot a video in one continuous take means getting the ball rolling (sometimes literally) and then following the action, hitting one’s marks along the way, until the climactic end. Filmmakers and videographers have been pushing the boundaries of the continuous shot, aiming for longer duration and challenging themselves, and their talent, to nail these long shots in single takes.

When thinking about long continuous shots, most of us start with Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic Rope. Rope (1948) is often casually referred to as the best example of a feature length movie shot in a single continuous take. The reality is, of course, that the film was shot in 10 segments, ranging in length from 4:37 to 10:06. (The maximum shot length at the time was approximately ten minutes due to the limit of the film magazine.) But even though Rope is not actually a single continuous shot, the length of the shots, the beauty of the transitional edits, and the resulting real time narrative is still astonishing 63 years after it was made.

Hitchcock may have been a pioneer of the marathon continuous shot, but he has been joined by others since. Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) features the famous opening sequence, a continuous shot with a duration of 7:47. Orson Welles’ 1958 Touch of Evil opens with a 3:20 continuous shot. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is famous for it’s long shots, as is Martin Scorsese’s The Godfather.

Much more extreme are examples like Timecode (2000) and Russian Ark (2002), both feature length films shot in a continuous take. Timecode, in fact, consists of not one, but four continuous shots displayed simultaneously with each shot occupying a quadrant of the screen and relying on the audio to direct the audience’s focus and to drive the storyline.  Russian Ark, is a 99 minute feature film shot in one continuous take; it follows the narrator (in first-person POV, no less) as he wanders from room to room in a palace (actually The Hermitage Museum) in St. Petersburg encountering figures from 300 years of Russian history.  Pretty heady stuff and a masterful technical achievement.

And, of course, one of the most extreme examples of the continuous take is Andy Warhol’s Empire. Made in 1964 with cinematographer Jonas Mekas, Empire consists of over 6 ½ hours of film shot at 24 frames per second and designed to be projected at 16 frames per second so that when viewed the film lasts for over eight hours. This would be mind (and rear-end) numbing in and of itself, but add the fact that the film is simply an unblinking still-mounted camera shot of the Empire State Building as it transitions from sunset to full darkness on the night of July 25^th, 1964, and you have a piece of cinema that is all but unwatchable.

But you don’t have to go to that extreme the next time you set up a long duration shot. YouTube and Vimeo are both replete with examples of continuous shot videos (at least in part made famous by our favorite contemporary example, the band OK Go and their continuous-shot music videos). While perhaps doing something of an end-around on the editing side, these unbroken shooting sessions are great exercises in pre-production work, from storyboarding to set-design and from directing to complex camera work. After checking out the examples we’ve described here, give the long continuous shot a try and let us know how it turns out.

Every once in a blue moon, a technology announcement goes from the usual to the revolutionary. When recording moving pictures became possible on magnetic video tape, it revolutionized where producers could film, allowed them to view their footage right away, and most of all saved filmmakers a great deal of money. The problem was that it also changed the look and “feel” of film that many audiences and producers had grown to love. Instead, video had low resolution, bad color reproduction, recorded at 30 fps instead of 24, and worst of all, virtually no depth of field. This gave video a completely different look and unfortunately a distinct ring of low quality to most audiences when they viewed it. Since that time however, much progress has been made toward achieving that “film look” again. Over time color space improved in video, 24P shooting modes were introduced, and picture resolution increased. Even with all of these improvements, filmmakers realized that there was still one vital thing missing in the pursuit to achieve the look of film: interchangeable lenses.

With Sony’s announcement of their tiny AVCHD high-definition camcorder with an interchangeable lens system, the revolution of interchangeable lenses has begun. It finally appears that camera manufacturers are taking interchangeable lenses seriously. While some might say it’s silly to manufacture a camera that’s smaller than its lens, I think that its results speak for itself. All one has to do is look at the beautiful depth of field in the footage that a camera with interchangeable lenses can produce, and it’s hard not to be sold on the idea. With a shallow depth of field, even small camcorders can draw your viewer’s attention to the area of the screen that is in focus – eliminating distractions in the background. This is the reason why interchangeable lenses are so revolutionary. In fact, I would go so far as to say that even cell phone cameras, which can now shoot in 720P, would be better off with an option for a small interchangeable lens system. Just imagine how much money it would save, and the artistic possibilities you could have if you were able to shoot footage on a cell phone that was similar in quality to footage shot on film. It would truly be a revolution.

With that being said, I can admittedly see one thing that could spell doom for the interchangeable lens revolution: compatibility. It would be great if camera and lens manufacturers could agree on making a standard for lens mounts on all cameras. I know this is wishful thinking here as companies make a lot of money off the different mounts they sell, but quite honestly, I think these manufacturers should be competing on lens quality and not compatibility. Plus, without a standard, many people would be forced into buying lenses and cameras from just one manufacturer which could put them in a real bind when newer and better equipment comes out from an entirely different manufacturer that does not have a compatible lens mount. Even with these problems though, the ability to shoot on both consumer and prosumer cameras with interchangeable lenses will no doubt have a huge impact on both amateur and professional cinematographers alike. With the ability to shoot with interchangeable lenses, camera manufacturers will have finally won the battle of making video look like film.