Summary

Overview

• A speaker presents on the craft of storyboarding in animated film production, drawing on personal experience and using Smurfs: The Lost Village as a primary example
• The talk covers the storyboarding process from initial drawings through to story reels, including a live scene pitch

What is Storyboarding?

• Storyboards are sequential drawings that represent a complete action sequence; stepping back reveals how many drawings are needed to depict even a single scene
• The speaker traces their introduction to storyboarding to a childhood game with their father: alternating sentences and illustrations to build a story together

Story Reels

• After storyboards are complete, they are compiled into a story reel — a slideshow of drawings played in real time with temporary dialogue and sound effects
• The story reel allows filmmakers to effectively "watch" the film before it is produced

Live Scene Pitch: Smurfette & the Carnivorous Flowers

• The speaker pitches a scene involving Smurfette discovering a beautiful horizon, which is then interrupted by carnivorous, Smurf-eating flowers
• The scene escalates with Clumsy confronting the flowers alone, backing away with "Nice flowers… not nice flowers!" before turning to run
• The pitch is used as an example of how boards are presented to the team before moving to story reel

Production Context: Smurfs: The Lost Village

• The film took three and a half years to make, with approximately two-thirds of that time dedicated to story development during the storyboarding phase
• The speaker emphasizes the creative reward of the role: "Your job is making up stories and drawing pictures for a living. What could be better than that?"

Notes

Transcript

When I was really young, my dad and I would play this game where we would make up a story. My dad would say maybe the first sentence, and then I would draw a picture to illustrate that. And then I would say the next sentence, and he would draw a picture, and we'd make up, and we would end up with like this little story that we made with pictures. And so I realized, wow, I grew up doing that. My dad taught me how to storyboard and didn't even know it.

Today, I'm going to talk about storyboarding. Each drawing represents a progression in a whole complete sequence. And when you step back and look at the whole thing, you see how many drawings it takes to describe one action sequence in a movie. From the storyboards, we take those and we do what's called a story reel. And a story reel is essentially a slideshow of those drawings going by in real time as if you're watching a movie with temporary dialogue, temporary sound effects.

And you watch this and you're able to see the film before it's actually made. So we have here Smurfette. I'll just pitch a little bit. Smurfette looks up and she sees something off screen that's amazing to her.

It really lives up to its name.

See this beautiful horizon.

It's so magical. The sky, the trees.

We're now over the shoulder of Brainy and Hefty as they watch her walk away. She goes, "Wow, wow." Turns around, "Wow, isn't this beautiful?" And then this flower comes in from off screen and grabs her.

Whoa! Carnivorous smurf eating flowers.

Pulls her off and the boys go, "Wow!" And then suddenly the pace is gonna be picked up. Clumsy's by himself. And he's trying to get away, and then finally it's Clumsy against the flowers. Clumsy's backing up, he's saying, "Nice flowers." Nice flowers. Flowers are getting closer, right at camera, coming closer and closer and closer, and then he realizes, "Not nice flowers!" He turns to run, and when he does...

I would go and present this entire thing So people go, okay, that's looking good. Let's now take it to story reel and see how it works on film.

Nice flowers. Nice flowers. Not nice flowers!

Murph's The Lost Village took three and a half years to make. I would say a good two-thirds of that was story development, and that story development happens during the storyboard phase. Your job is making up stories and drawing pictures for a living. What could be better than that, you know?