storyboarding

we decided after some initial planning to do a rough storyboard as a group, so we could build on it, and to give us a starting point. our idea is to produce a psychological thriller in which a boy wakes up passed out in the woods for a mysterious reason, and finds a locket, he opens up and see's a picture of himself and someone else in it, and as he opens is mysterious voices come out of it, similar to pandora's box, he is shocked and runs away. It is a simple narrative as from our research we found that openings are generally quite slow and simple, and the professionals dont usually pack too much into the opening, or give to much away, which is why we want the boys reason for being passed out to be unknown and there is no explanation of the locket, these are things that would be explored later in the film. we decided when watching some of the previous openings that those that tried to give too much of a narrative looked More like trailers than movie openings. when storyboarding we thought about angle, shot type, such as CU, MS, framing and positioning, but not sound or parts of mis en scene, we will plan these later.

we did a paper storyboard, where we drew each shot, but then we also took pictures of how each shot would be framed and roughly what it would look like. this will help us know exactly what we are looking for when we begin to film it.

the paper version starts with a long shot of the woods, from the boys perspective lying down on his tummy, so this would be a point of view shot. there would then be a close up of the locket, which is central, and filmed from a high angle. The boy then gets up, and is filmed from the side at a long shot distance, he is offcentre to the left. there is then a point of view shot CU of the locket, and then a reverse shot, from the lockets point of view, of the boys reaction, there is then a long shot of the boy falling down, from a low angle, and a zoom back to the locket lying on the floor, which is central CU. we have written notes on the bottom of the stroyboard to explain what is happening and guide us.

this is the real life version of our storyboard, taken with an SLR camera. the idea for the first shots is that the boy will be blinking awake so the first frames will be out of focus, then slwoly come into focus as he blinks.

these shots show a zoom from a mid shot of the boy looking at the locket, to a CU of his face, to highlight his reaction.

this shot is an alternative ending to the previous one, we are uncertain whether we want to end it with a close up of the locket, or a few long shots of the character running through the tree's.