I'm having trouble storyboarding a movie because of covid restrictions.

[Paul R Johnson]

I have never used a PROGRAM to do a storyboard in my life! 3D environments!! Sounds like you want your storyboards to be a movie in themselves. I often have to provide drawings for people to work to. I'm rubbish at art, but plans I am rather good at. So I can draw 2D or 3D plans in various projections using paper, or on a computer. Computers are great, but I learned a long time ago that sometimes the time taken to do them is pointless - the question is who are they for? What will they be needed for? The number of times I have discovered what I was provided with was originally a plan with DO NOT SCALE FROM THIS DRAWING, that got copied and copied each copy distorting the sizes. I'd then redraw it and things didn't fit! a wall clearly parallel wasn't, a clearance height lower in reality so things wouldn't fit. I'd spend hours on a drawing with details that were not needed. A storyboard is able to tell the story, you can see where the camera is and you can see which way it points. You can see who is close, who is distant, how the features fit together - the door on the left, the switch on the wall right, the window with curtains closed, the church visible in the distance. Storyboards answer huge numbers of questions. Crew can set up in the right way, even actors, many of whom cannot read a plan well enough to find the location, can see if they are close to where they should be. Nobody is surprised by the fire engine in the car park - this kind of thing. Then the Director wants things moved a little or a lot. None of this requires high definition computer generated reality, because I've never seen a still that matches the storyboard exactly.

Some people are artistic and have great storyboards, others are almost stick men, but stick men with hats, or holding things, or with happy sad faces? If you have a big production budget then spending money on software might be OK, but you also have to have time to learn how to work the thing. I'm very happy with technology, but my storyboards are four or 8 rectangles on a sheet of A4 in landscape.

Have you some great purpose for really detailed rendering? Whatever you do, they will still be wrong when the camera is looking at the scene and you will need to tweak.

My experience of technology and actors is that you still need to explain. Giving them a piece of paper doesn't work. If you give it to the DoP they will still want to adjust things, the lighting people will still move their kit. Sound won't even bother to look at them, and the other people will glance and still ask questions. Look at the published story boards for well known movies - theyre often scribbles. How many of those had art quality renders?

[Josh Bass]

I'm gonna give this one to Ryan.

programs like frameforge allow you to create or recreate an entire set in perfect detail and pose characters, props etc anywhere. Basically you could recreate (if you wanted to spend the time) a house with correct scale, window placements etc etc.

There's an example on their site of how the DP/director/whataever used it to figure out if a certain sequence on Downton Abbey would work with two locations that were 600 miles apart or something by recreating them and verifying they had enough room in a hallway for a dolly to work etc.

For someone of Ryan's obsessive detail and seemingly endless free time, it might be perfect.

[Paul R Johnson]

Wow! That's pretty decent. I wonder how difficult it is to master? 800 is a fairly steep price for an amateur though? Petty cash for Downton though.

I think Ryan should buy it and show us the renders, then we'd understand better.

[Josh Bass]

Jeez, didnt know it cost that much but yes its pretty powerful...can even do some rudimentary animation so you can watch a dolly shot or something play out, not just export stills.

Im sure its as difficult as anything else...Pro Tools, an NLE, whatever. Work with it for a while each day for a few weeks and once you know where everything is in the menus and keyboard shortcuts and quickest ways to execute common tasks one could probably do things reasonably fast.

[Paul R Johnson]

Maybe you could produce Ryans movie as a animated one - he not have to worry about locations and cast and crew and you could dub the audio on? Could be an interesting concept. I've got a draughting app that lets you design rooms, add furniture and things (and people) - and it lets you animate a camera for a walkthrough. Never occurred to me but you could set up a scene like this. It also has lighting options too? Never thought about using this?

[Josh Bass]

Yes it does lighting too. I've only messed with a little bit, but seems very cool if you need that much preplanning detail (which some productions do). Honestly, for anything I'd work on, a scout and some simple diagrams for lighting plans, shot list, etc. would probably do, BUT I'm small time.

Yes, I can see Ryan's movie as an animated piece, sort of a saturday morning cartoon thing. Maybe all the characters are children. I dunno. Just thinking out the box here.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Maybe you could produce Ryans movie as a animated one - he not have to worry about locations and cast and crew and you could dub the audio on? Could be an interesting concept.

Imagining this made me laugh

[Brian Drysdale]

There are two versions of Frameforge, the Core version and the Studio version. The former would be the one for indies, it's $12.99 per month subscription, if you don't want to pay the $500 full purchase price,

[Paul R Johnson]

Joking aside, if the plan drawing element is good enough, I actually could use this to visualise stage sets. The existing stuff does the lighting very well but is limited in the textural detail so people are limited, so while you can do a guitarist, downtown abbey would be tricky! Hmm.

[Josh Bass]

Im sure there are plenty of youtube vids about it and theres a demo/trial you can play with that has limited features and assets (people, props etc)

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Maybe you could produce Ryans movie as a animated one - he not have to worry about locations and cast and crew and you could dub the audio on? Could be an interesting concept. I've got a draughting app that lets you design rooms, add furniture and things (and people) - and it lets you animate a camera for a walkthrough. Never occurred to me but you could set up a scene like this. It also has lighting options too? Never thought about using this?

Well I also thought about doing an animated movie because of covid, but it was said on here before that animation would cost more than live action shooting.

[Josh Bass]

They were joking, Ryan.

[Ryan Elder]

Yeah I thought so. But when it comes to using frame forge, I have watched tutorials, but are you suppose to print the storyboards on paper after? Or are you suppose to have a laptop on set for reference to the storyboards, instead of paper?

[Josh Bass]

Literally whatever works for you.

[Paul R Johnson]

Who is on your distribution list? Will they be able to cope with a screen, as in laptop, pad, phone etc, or does their role mean paper is better? Some folk will already have paper for other things, while others will be using a pad or similar already. For my normal crew of 6, two always want paper, the other 4 don't even have a pen!

One thing - test your preliminary versions on them to see if they can understand them. Never assume people have the skills you assume they have. People are extremely variable!