DIMM030: Storyboarding is actually useful?!?!
I have been storyboarding the video that I am putting out relatively soon. I started this a week and a half ago and was like "pfff, ill have this done in two days easy!" and I'm still doing it.
I have just been shocked about how much this has helped how the video sounds and is paced in the script. I always kinda thought of storyboarding as being a thing that big animation studios do after the script is already set in stone. As like a inbetween step to try and help translate the writing to something that can be put on a screen.
It kinda seems like and obsessive standardization practice that hollywood likes to do a lot. And surely it wouldn't help little old me, a lowly youtuber.
But really, this seems a lot more like a step that I should do more often, and should be done together with the writing because it helps sooooo much.
I find that storyboarding really make you intensely look at every single word in your script and make a decision if it should go there. It really slows everything down because you have to write out the dialogue and draw out the scenes. This makes it very easy to tell if you have already said a sentence before in the script, because you have to physically write the words again.
And since I'm noticing that I am repeating myself a lot, that means that I can fix it in the actual script before I start making it. I honestly can't believe that I was going to make this video in the state that it was in before storyboarding. A lot of things I said multiple times and I would just have to fix on the fly while editing with different takes, but here I can actually change them before they happen.
Also it feels nice to get out all of the stupid editing ideas that I have on to the paper. I can leave them alone and I feel more confident that they will make it into the actual video. There are often a lot of things that I think about doing while I'm writing, I write it in the script as a comment, then while filming and editing I never think about it again. This kinda leans into what I was talking about earlier with storyboards being a way for the writers to communicate with the cinematographer and editor. It's just in this case, both of those people happen to also be me :3
I, of course, made a custom D4 storyboard printable that I have been using, here's the link to that. It is made with safe zones on the sides so that you should just be able to download the PDF and ⌘P without having to change settings (you probably want to print it single sided though). I am a dot grid enjoyer, so there are no lines, its just a big dot grid that covers the whole paper. I usually use them as lines, but you can also draw on them, or write big, or make a graph or whatever! Dot grid is the alpha and the omega of paper.
In the future, if this becomes a big part of my process (which it's looking like it might), I'm thinking of buying an iPad with an Apple Pencil to draw on these easier and with less paper & toner usage. I've wanted a good reason to have an iPad for a while, and this seems like it might be my ticket.
Anyways I thought that the script for the video was done when I made the last post, but now it is one week later and I'm realizing still how far it is away. Anyway, it will eventually come out, probably in July.