Storyboardig is more than taking a series of nice pictures and posting them on a wall.Your different scenes must be believable and your viewer must be able to identify with at least one of the characters being depicted.Ordinary characters doing ordinary things that the viewer can identify with is most important.Giving your characters human emotions by the use of dramatic lighting,posing and setting the stage for each and every shot can really add some drama to your work and make the whole experience much more interesting for your viewer. It is what I call keeping it in "the now".
Upshots and downshots and point of view. How to shoot it? angle of composition ,you get to choose the POV (point of view) The camera really represents us and our attention and to where it is directed.It is the heart of our indentification with the character.So "he matters" to the emotional involvement of the viewer. Upshots and downshots can also imply the relative size of the characters as well as the background. A floor can represent a downshot where a ceiling, ceiling would do the opposite.By manipulating the background we can control the POV.Decorating elements such as pictures on a wall ,lighting fixtures will also convey the same message.
Walt Disney: " at our studios we don't write our stories.we draw them" A storyboard artist is really a good storyteller.The drawings must have meaning and feelings behind them.They provide great way to begin to visualize the content of your story.The storyboard artist must be a great communicator of ideas and not necessarily a great illustrator or animator.Storyboards allow film makers to see a blueprint of their movie before even going into production.By tacking a sequence of images up on a wall you can visualize the entire story before eyes your eyes and study it for flow and continuity.It is a very effective and inexpensive way to develop a story.Boarding it up saves time and money.
Along the rear wall of the engine shop the Camel wings are being crated for the trip to Hollywood.Originally it was planned to load everything on one truck with the wings being lashed to the fuselage sides but it looks now like another truck will have to be sent to pickup the wings and flight surfaces.
Along the engine shop wall sits an old air show car that was used for car/airplane races and ground to air wing walker transfers for many years.Sitting there in the weeds it seems to be have been forgotten,its glory days long gone by. The guys delivering the coal and wood would be glad to see it outta there to make their job easier.The boss however hates to throw anything away, so there it sits rusting away.
Sorry folks I got a bit ahead of myself on this storyboard walk around.This is the view through the backdoor,with the WC on the left and coal bin on the right(not visible in this pic).The boss is in conservation with two pilots ,one in flying gear and the other in RFC uniform. The boss in the fedora seems to be giving his best impression of Al Capone standing in the shadows of a early sunset on this November afternoon in Canada.(maybe a little rum across the border guys?) Please note: there is a more understandable sequence to this story in my photobucket under the My Book album.
Here is an old OX5 engine that was removed from the military Jenny and is being packaged up and sent out for major overhaul.We are equipped to do minor repairs to engines and airframes here but the major stuff requires outside help.Right now the guys are on coffee break so the truck drivers are having a little game of checkers while they wait.
This is a night view through the engine shop doors.The guys are working on an old water cooled Mercedes engine from a Fokker D7 racer of which there were a few around just after the war.Last one out has to turn off the lights and stumble around in the dark looking for his car keys.
No mention of this era would be complete without the topic of air racing.Many of the guys here at Reid & Sons are avid fans.Our company is more concentrated on the airshow aspect but we do help on occasion with some of their research and development and the occasional pilot.Our worlds exist side by side but their emphasis is on speed and aviation technology where ours is more on entertainment. (between 1913 and 1931 Schneider cup winners increased the speed from 45.71 mph and 340.08 mph)
