Storyboard Workshop and Reflection

In this workshop we discussed the art of storyboarding and how different filmmakers use storyboarding to represent their vision, allowing their cast and crew to better understand what they want. We discussed how, in animation, each individual frame must be illustrated in a storyboard before being animated, and how in live action film, we only really have to capture certain shots to establish what camera angles, mise en scene, etc you want for the shot. We had a look at famous directors and their use of storyboards, for example; we looked at Scorsese's storyboards for Taxi Driver, this showed us that the quality of the drawings aren't important, as they only need to inform the viewer of it on how the director wants the shot(s) or scene to occur, which camera angles, etc.

After looking at some storyboards, we were given a task: to read through this script extract from the godfather, analyse it, and then draw a storyboard on how we think the scene should pan out. We were given a time limit, we weren't expected to convert the whole script into storyboard form, just a couple panels to demonstrate our  ideas. In this time limit I completed 4 panels, in which I chose to go through the scene with a number of centred, wide shots of the room, in a Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick sort of style. I chose this because I liked the idea of capturing as much information as possible in one shot without it being too disconnected and boring. So in the first shot I wanted to capture Hagen, sitting alone in his chair, behind his desk, drinking, then the car pulling up outside, represented by the light from the headlights glaring through the window, then the sound of the car, and the Don's footsteps, followed by the opening of he door, at which point the camera cuts to the opposite end of the room, a similar shot, however, this one captures the door opening, the Don walking in, sitting down, asking for a drink, Hagen getting up and getting the drink, before returning to his seat. That's as much as I got done in the workshop. While the quality of the drawings is obviously not great, it adequately captures the shots I'd want, and the brief bit of information given with each panel fills in any gaps the poor quality of drawing may leave. The rest of the workshop, we spent looking at everyone's work and talking about eachother's choices of camera shot, mise en scene, etc. It was interesting to see my classmates' style in terms of what cinematography they would use and how it varies to mine, as it helped me learn about different approaches to the same piece of work. Following the workshop, we were set another task to either finish the Godfather storyboard or create a new one of our own work. I decided that, for the workshop work, I would finish the Godfather storyboard.

 I continued with the theme of wide, centered long shots capturing the whole room until the conversation started, at which time it switches to a back and forth of reverse over the shoulder shots from each character's perspective. I used this because wide, long shots in a conversation would seem weird and disconnected and would make it difficult for the viewer to read the characters feelings and reactions during the conversation. So I decided to bring it in closer while they were talking to focus on the characters' body language, reactions,etc. Until the final shot of the Don's reaction to the news of the death, for this I chose to zoom in on him to show the emotion in him as he hears the news, and I kept it from Hagen's perspective so that when the Don looks into Hagen's eyes it's almost as if he is looking at us the viewers.