Storyboarding with Locations in Mind

[jomosadler]

Hello Mr. Deakins and everyone on the forum,

I don’t know if this question would be under this category in the forum but I was curious your process of storyboarding with locations in mind.

When you and the director decide to storyboard a project, do you think about a location that is in your head and draw that out in the storyboards, OR do you location scout and draw the storyboards based off of the location?

I feel that storyboarding with the ideal location in your head restricts your creativeness later on but that’s just me. Which would you find to be a better process?

Thank you.

Topic

[Leopold]

Hi Jomo,
I do both, based on the production needs.

Production boards can be location specific.
Like when you wamt to squeeze in more sets into the same studio space and want to save space (and rent). Then it can be good to know how much of a set will actually been seen from various angles and lenses based on everyones visuall ideas and ambitions. Film Directing Shot by Shot has a demo at the end on how to draw to various lenses and to scale floor plans.

Pitch and prep boards can be looser, more blue sky ideas about what kind of compositions and rythms we are after. These can be more visionary ambitious, compositionally but I like to get as specific as possible as soon as possible.
Leopold

[Author]

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