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Through painful experience we have become all too aware of how vital proper preparation is to the success of a shoot. Indeed, as there are so many unpredictable variables, there seems to be no such thing as being over-prepared. As a DP I have always tried to cover as much ground as I can before going in to a shoot, but no matter what, I never seem to have enough time.

There have always been many ways for a director to express their vision, long before the first roll of film is threaded into a camera. From simple stick men drawings to detailed works of art, from photo stills to full video animatics, all have been used to communicate complex visual ideas to clients, financiers and crews.

When budget allows, a director will often liaise with a storyboard artist, and their lengthy conversations will result in the drafting of cinematic sketches that will become the final polished storyboards. This process of vocalization of visual ideas is often useful for the director and it is the first time their vision has been communicated in full to another person. In fact, the storyboard artist is the very first member of an audience to witness the visual story from the director’s viewpoint. But over the last few years, huge advances in computer software have brought about big changes in the way we approach film previsualization. For those who are frustrated with their drawing skills and those who are working to budgets that rule out the luxury of an artist, programs such as Storyboard Artist and FrameForge 3D have unleashed an unprecedented amount of control to filmmakers who wish express their ideas in the digital arena.

Filmmakers have become at ease with a myriad of computer programs designed to aid in the filmmaking process. Even if we can’t pretend to be experts at Photoshop, Avid, Final Cut Pro or the various graphic and DVD authoring software, we understand enough to operate the basics.

All of these programs have one thing in common: they have been designed to manipulate footage that has already been shot. They are post-production tools. What sets FrameForge 3D and Storyboard Artist apart is the fact that they have been created specifically for the early stages of development and preproduction. Their purpose is to help us express in visual terms that which so far exists only in our imaginations.

There are essentially two key reasons for storyboarding: the first is to visually express a screenplay or concept for potential financiers or clients, and the second is to create a firm plan for a crew to follow throughout an actual shoot.

Storyboarding software is the producer’s new best friend, as it allows directors to experiment with ideas and ‘audition’ shots without it costing valuable time or money. By storyboarding beforehand directors will not only be better prepared for the inevitable changes inflicted upon them, but they will also be more confident with on-set improvisation, knowing that there is a predetermined ‘map’ that will guide them back onto path whenever they wish.

What makes digital storyboarding so exciting is that all the heads of departments can be involved in the process early on. Initial boards can be emailed to crew members, who can comment on potential challenges at a very early stage, ensure that the sets are built to the director’s requirements and guarantee that the right kit is ordered for special shots.

Even though there are many different ways of producing storyboards on a computer, I want to concentrate on two specific applications that essentially do the same job, but in very different ways. Neither is particularly better or worse than the other, but individual filmmakers may find they prefer one or other approach.

Frameforge 3D Studio v2.5

Created by Innoventive Software in 2003, FrameForge 3D Studio immediately revolutionized the way we looked at film prep. It gave filmmakers the power to explore their sets or locations in three dimensions. More recently, version 2.5 was unveiled and, with it, a whole new set of powerful tools with which to unlock your imagination.

FrameForge is a program that allows you to design your sets or replicate your locations in a virtual three-dimensional space, which you then populate with characters and props. You then place your cameras anywhere within this space and export shots as two-dimensional images. You can also go for a virtual stroll through your set, looking for ideas and angles long before the production designer has joined the payroll. Used at an early stage of development, FrameForge can be extremely useful to production designers and DPs, as the director can communicate their requirements in the language of film.

Let’s start with the environment your characters are going to populate, otherwise known as the set or location. On opening the application, you are given various options, one of which is to be taken to the room builder. Here’s where you create your sets in 2D by simply dragging your walls onto a grid, pulling on handles to alter their length and then adding windows and doors, all at the click of a button. When you hit Build Room, your set is automatically recreated in three dimensions in what’s known as the blueprint view. All you need do now is add a camera or two and the views appear in small windows at the top of the interface.

For each project you will probably want to adjust your settings and preferences, and FrameForge allows you to choose from the full set of aspect ratios for film and tape, as well as prompting you to specify which lenses you will be using on your physical shoot.

Now that you have your set, you can browse the prop and character library, then simply drag and drop them into your environment. There are a multitude of options for your main characters, giving you a good choice of ages and ethnicity. Double-clicking a character takes you into the Green Room, where you can make an infinite amount of adjustments, including setting a pose. You are immediately faced with a horribly complicated set-up for bending and twisting limbs into position. After several minutes of tearing out your hair trying to make sense of the 3D axes sticking out of your character like voodoo pins, the mist suddenly evaporates and you realize the complex-looking method of setting poses for your characters isn’t actually difficult at all. Once you get the hang of putting your characters into position, it all seems so easy.

Should you wish to go into further detail, you can make your characters heavier or thinner, younger or older, chinless or hollow jawed. You can even go so far as to raise their eyebrows and drop their jaws in surprise, or any other facial expression to suit the mood of the scene. The options appear to be endless as you scroll through long lists of clothing, hairstyles, skin tones, scars and wounds.

To ensure everything fits nicely together within your virtual environment, there is a whole host of relationships built into the program that make sure your characters behave properly with props and with each other. For instance, you don’t need to manhandle your leading lady’s legs to make her sit in a chair. You simply drag her towards it and she will obediently take her seat. One of the features new to this version is the easy way you can get your characters to look in a specific direction. Whereas before you had to painstakingly twist their heads and roll each of their eyeballs, all you need to do now is click on your character then click on the object or person you want them to look at.

Now that you have your players on set, you can turn your attention to the really fun part: camera placement. Beneath the main window, there are controls for panning, tilting, dollying, craning and rotating the camera, all of which are very easy to use. If you want to sit back with your feet up, Innoventive Software has even given you the option of using a USB game pad. I haven’t had chance to try it myself, but apparently, after a certain amount of getting used to it, it’s a lot of fun.

If you haven’t already specified a particular set of prime lenses (choose from Cooke, Panavision and Zeiss), then the default is a zoom lens. You can limit the zoom’s focal length to match the lens you will use on the shoot so that you can be confident you’ll be able to achieve on set what you designed in your storyboard.

And this is where the program is particularly useful for a DP. If you have designed your rooms to exactly replicate your set or location and you have chosen the correct lenses, what you see on your storyboard will be what you get on your shoot. And what’s more, all the technical data can be printed out alongside your finished board: actual camera position within the set, lens height, pan and tilt angles and the focal length of your lens. This is indispensable when you’re going to be shooting on location and you need to know where you can and, more importantly, can’t place the camera. It’s not often you’ll get permission to raise a ceiling a few feet or knock a hole in a supporting wall to accommodate the rear wheels of a dolly. In this respect, FrameForge 3D is like going into a simulator and testing out your options before taking the controls for real.

DPs get all a-quiver when they discover the most innovative feature new to v2.5: the depth of field rendering. Select your lens and your T stop and FrameForge will render the frame exactly how it will appear on the ground glass or video monitor. Not only does this give your boards a more cinematic look, it also provides extremely useful data for the focus puller, who will be able to plan for any difficult focus splits way in advance. It also gives the DP an early indication of what lighting levels may be necessary to achieve certain shots.

When you finally tear yourself away from playing God with your cast, you need to save each individual shot into what is known as the Storyboard Manager. This is the place where you can rearrange your boards, add 3D arrows to indicate camera movement and eventually prepare them for export. Before printing, you can take your boards into a graphics program such as Photoshop for some extra polishing or effects, otherwise you can customize your page set-up and print off your boards, with the option of including the blueprint view, camera/lens data and shot descriptions. Another useful option is to export them as a Quicktime animatic, which you can encode in html for others to view on the web.

One extra interesting feature to mention is the action they call Tweening. This is a concept taken from traditional animation production where a key animator will produce key frames and a team of inbetweeners will draw the frames that go in between them. Essentially what this means is that you can create animations from your boards. It can be time-consuming and memory-hungry, but if you’re creating QuickTimes, then this might be an interesting way to go.

Storyboard Artist

Even though both FrameForge and Storyboard Artist aim to give you the same end result (a set of storyboards), they each go about it in very different ways. Whereas FrameForge operates in a virtual 3D world and finishes in 2D, Storyboard Artist remains firmly rooted in the world of horizontals and verticals throughout.

Storyboard Artist is all about layering. You begin with an empty frame and you start building or compositing layers. These will include backgrounds, objects and characters. There is a library of objects and locations that comes with the application, but it is somewhat limited. You can purchase add-ons, but they are pretty pricey, and you may not feel the urge to increase your mortgage after you’ve already forked out the $800 asking price, which is double that of FrameForge.

At first, I found the characters that came with the program very basic and rather disappointing. I was reminded of those transfers you used to get in cereal boxes, and the unnatural way the glossy characters used to stand out from the backgrounds. But with a certain amount of time and effort, you can reach a decent enough image. While the creators of FrameForge have set themselves high ambitions with recreating reality as far as they can, Storyboard Artist seem to have no such pretensions. But this is one of its strengths. By staying in 2D there is no rendering time and the whole process is extremely quick and spontaneous. You have an idea in your head and you want to get it down quickly. The last thing you want to do is to fiddle about with your lead actor’s fingers and toes.

The power behind this program is it’s import/export capabilities. It has been designed to bring in just about any sort of 2D media and mix it all up to create your storyboards. It’s almost like a digital collage machine and your storyboards can be as rudimentary or artful as you wish. If you’re shooting on location, you can visit your location and take a number of stills, which you can then import into Storyboard Artist. These will now serve as your backgrounds. On top of these you can add objects from the library or others that you have gathered from the web or that you have created in other graphics programs. Or you can bring in hand-drawn elements or draw directly on top of your backgrounds.

Once you’ve got the hang of how things work, compositing your layers into a storyboard is remarkably quick. But that’s probably because there’s not an awful lot you can do with your characters. You select your character then scroll down to choose one of five poses (standing still, walking, running, jumping and sitting) and the perspective or angle you wish it to take (from below, straight on, above, etc). Then you drag your character into your storyboard and resize it so that it fits the perspective of your shot. Simple.

Storyboard Artist really comes into its own when it comes to exporting and viewing your finished boards. If you intend to print your boards then there are a myriad of page layout pre-sets for you to choose from, or you can customize your own set-up. However, if you want to really impress your clients or crew, then Storyboard Artist allows you to put together an all-singing and all-dancing animatic.

Anyone familiar with a non-linear editing timeline will find the set-up here very easy to use. Your finished storyboards appear along the timeline. You drag the sides to lengthen or shorten the duration of each ‘shot’, and then you can add transitions such as dissolves and wipes between them. You also have four tracks of audio that you can fill with music, narration, dialog and effects to give your animatic a real breath of life. Finally, you can export your timeline as a QuickTime movie or MetaSync file for your clients, producers or crew to view.

One feature that particularly appealed to me was the Pan and Zoom capability. This is a very simple yet ingenious option that allows you to move within one of your shots. For instance, you can move from a wide shot of a car to a close-up of the person sitting in the driving seat. You simply draw a box around your end point and specify how long you want the move to take and off it goes. Admittedly, it sounds a little crude, but it does actually look very much at home in an animatic.

If you are just going to print your boards, both FrameForge and Storyboard Artist allow you to render them as cartoon-like images, sketches or outline drawings. These options lend a certain style to your boards, but you may find you don’t need to go down this route.

In summary

Storyboard Artist seems to appeal more to a director than a DP, as it is more about the initial illustration of ideas than actual on-set practicalities. During early stages of development one probably wouldn’t want to get bogged down in depth of field issues and precise character positioning. The initial desire is to express those ideas that are locked inside your head in a two-dimensional way and, as such, Storyboard Artist is an excellent tool.

FrameForge, on the other hand, best suits filmmakers involved in preproduction who would benefit from the precise levels of control and detailed technical information offered by the application. A lot of the guesswork is removed from the filmmaking process, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you lose the magic. By knowing your options beforehand, you are given more freedom to roam while on set.

Applications of this kind can save productions time and money, especially in the early stages of preproduction, when costly crew meetings can instead be conducted online, using web-based storyboards and animatics at the center of discussions. It adds another letter to a concept we’re increasingly becoming very used to: wysiVwyg. What you see is VIRTUALLY what you get.

Look before you shoot

Alex Wakeford