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In terms of the storyboards for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan was very specific that he wanted it to be dealt with in a very serious way. So when I went up for Batman Begins, I had to convince him was that I would treat it seriously and not as a comic book. And that shows in the final film. You can see that both films, Dark Knight in particular, are almost gangster movies rather than comic books.

Being part of the generation that can remember, at the age of 10, going to see Star Wars for the first time, I remember seeing The Art of Star Wars book in the shops and thinking, “Actually, I’d quite like to do that. How do I do that?”

So I did a degree in graphic design and illustration, and then when I was in the final year, I got involved with an animation studio and used to come down to the National Film and Television School to shoot cell animation on their flatbed camera. That’s when I found out that places like that existed. So I applied to those places. I got in at Kingston, did a year’s post-grad degree in film, television and design and the marrying together of illustration and graphic design with film was storyboarding.

My first commercial work was with an effects model maker on a show called Space Precinct. Obviously you need storyboards when you’re shooting models. I did a little bit on Lost in Space, and then did Event Horizon. There aren’t that many big-budget films: the Harry Potters and the Batmans. They’re manna from heaven, but they don’t come along very often.

You invariably have at least a first draft, or maybe a second draft of the script, so it’s not locked down. But what you’re involved with, as much as anything, is the budgeting process, because you’ll work with the director on what he sees and what he perceives from the script. And then those storyboards will be used to help everybody budget particular sequences and then smeone will say, “Blimey! We’re 15 million over because of X, Y, Z. We need to pare it back.” And then you’ll say, “What do we need to keep – the climax of the film, the opening of the film, and something in the middle. Then how do we pare back other bits to get us within our budgets?”

The advantages of storyboarding are absolutely massive, because it helps you to lock down your script; it helps you to lock down your budget; it helps you to lock down your locations – what you might need, and what you won’t need. It helps you lock down your sets – what you need to build and what you need to find – and all those things together can save you hundreds of thousands of pounds in terms of shooting. If you can make shooting quicker by a week or save you having to go back and do reshoots on location, then it is worth the small amount of money of getting somebody in to storyboard, even if it’s just key sequences, action sequences, stunts and effects.

When you’re going through the process of shot listing, where you start at A, you’ve got to get to Z and in between you’ve got to hit E and Y, you subconsciously start to put in things of your own, because you know what things work and how to counter one thing with another to build up atmosphere or to release tension.

It’s just experience. It’s just doing lots of films, lots of frames, and then it becomes second nature, so you’re not necessarily conscious that you’re doing it all the time. I try not to have any kind of signature shot. I don’t think it would be necessarily doing my job correctly if I did.

You might have frames that have a lot of really complex moves with a lot of characters in them, and you need to get quite involved with each frame so you can actually see the way that the people move and the way the camera moves within the environment. Other times, you can have a relatively simple piece of action, so you can bash through it, because you know that they go from there to there to there. It depends on the kind of film that you’re working on as well, in terms of how many things are stunt driven, visual effects driven and things like that.

I’ve worked with people such as the late Denis Rich (Harry Potter, Finding Neverland), Mike Ploog (X-Men, Unbearable Lightness of Being), Martin Asbury (Alien 3, Casino Royale) – gents who are older than I am, and you can’t fail to learn something from them in terms of techniques and dealing with people in other departments. Just to spend time working on films with those three guys in particular was fantastic, because you pick up little gems. And then they look over your shoulder and go, “I quite like the way you do that. I’ll do that next time.” It’s kind of a cross-pollination of ideas and techniques.

Denis Rich used to draw in charcoal and I thought that was the most difficult thing to do, because charcoal as a medium is very smudgy. You can get great light and dark tones with it, but it’s a hell of a thing to work with, and I always used to look at the work he’d do and wonder quite how he had achieved it. But you find something that you’re comfortable with, that will give you a certain effect. If you want to do smoket, it’s a little bit of charcoal, a bit of smudging, a little bit of white crayon just to pick things out and highlight things.

I tend to do the pencils by hand and then scan them in, manipulate them on the computer, darken them, lighten them and then put some tone on using Photoshop and Painter. I tend to just draw on photocopy paper, with a 2B pencil. I have a pencil sharpener, and a rubber to take away all my mistakes, and that’s it really. I do like the idea of doing pencils by hand, so you have an original that you can keep, because if you do it all in computer then technically, you have got no original artwork.

I’ve seen the product of some of the computer software, when I’ve been approached by people and they’ll say, “I’ve got this script. I’ve done some storyboards… Why don’t you have a look at it?” You look at the software package and it’s just dead, absolutely dead. And to me, part of it is that you do have that element of an art, which gives it a warmth rather than makes it a sterile image. I’m keen to keep that, which is why I’ve been so reluctant to use computers up until now, but I can see a way of using pencils and scanning them in, so you still have that original. You can still develop form on a drawn line on paper, rather than something that’s just been input straight into the screen.

Working with directors

I’ll meet with a director, literally with a script and a small notebook, and I’ll just jot down things that he says relevant to the sequence. Then I’ll go back to my office. First of all, I’ll thumbnail it, so in my book I have a visual shot list with my little scrawls. I’ll break it down and go where I want to go and where the director wants to go, touching the bases he wants me to get to, then I’ll start to develop those into pencils. Possibly I’ll see him with those pencils so at least he has an overview of the sequence, and can make amendments. Or at that point he’ll say, “Yeah, go and work it up.”

I then sit down at the computer, scan the pencils in and then them up into a more finished sequence. Then we’ll sit down and look at what we’ve got and the director will pick out elements that he likes, elements that he doesn’t like. Other times they won’t like anything, not because it’s wrong or inadequate, but because when they see it, they know what they don’t want, so sometimes it’s a process of elimination. Other directors are very specific. They’ll say, “I want to go from a mid shot, to a tight, to a wide, and we’re going to move here,” and they’ll have it blocked in their mind’s eye.

If I’m putting my own things into it, it’s not necessarily doing what the director wants. You don’t want to lose track of the fact that you’re there to put someone else’s vision on to paper.

If you want the best information you can get, you go to the production designer. They will have given specific sets to specific art directors. And if you want information regarding a specific set, you go and work with that art director and glean as much from them as you can. You look at the white models; you look at the floor plans. You have a word with set decorator to see what’s happening in terms of the dressing within the set. You should get an idea of all the paint finishes, and then you’re armed with your information. I would normally go to the director, have my meeting about a sequence, and then, once I’ve seen what he wants me to do, I would then go to the production designer and work my way down, getting as much information as I can.

Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the first Potter film that David Yates had done. I met up with David beforehand, and got the job. I think I was number one on the payroll for that film. So we both started together, and we had days where we would sit down and block out quite a lot of sequences.

On Potter I loved the final third of the film. I split it into three sections – the Ministry of Magic, then the Hall of Prophecy and the Veil Room. It was quite a big chunk. Those three different aspects of that final act of the film were storyboarded 13 times before we got there. The Hall of Prophecy was particularly challenging because that set was virtually entirely a green screen.

To realize something that doesn’t exist is always the biggest challenge. It’s the biggest challenge for actors, the biggest challenge for DPs, because of all the lighting problems you have, and it’s also the biggest problem in terms of storyboarding, because you have to get the idea across. And then when people have those boards, they’re quite often pinned up on a board when they’re shooting on a stage. They look at a shot on the board, and they look around and it’s just a sea of green. Those are the problems you face, because there’s nothing tangible; there’s nothing real in front of you.

The Dark Knight

In The Dark Knight, probably my favourite part was the car chase, where it develops into the Bat Pod. That was a good one to do, because it’s such an iconic thin, but it has a lot of limitations, because you’re shooting in Chicago and you’re shooting it for real.

When it comes to the quality of your drawings, you wouldn’t want to do stickmen purely from a professional point of view. You want them to look as good as possible. You want a figure that is recognizable as Batman.

But you can’t linger too long on the specifics of the costume, unless they’re relevant to the action. Certainly on the first film, the way the cape went hard and soft by putting the electric pulses through it had an impact on how I storyboarded it. As soon as you get on the stage floor or as soon as you get on a location, that can influence you to, because there are a lot of Chicago locations on those films, and you can’t help but be guided by what’s in front of you.

You can have planned a shot and then you get on set or onto location and you just see a happy little accident, or something in the background, or something in foreground that you want to move around or develop. That becomes what dictates your shot rather than the storyboard, so you can get an overview with the storyboards, and you can work out specific shots, but sometimes they change because of the environment.

Drawing the Joker

Jim Cornish