Boarding is Process

From Richardson’s book on Emerson teaching writing;”First We Read, Then We Write.” It says art but say boarding instead.

“Art is the path of the creator to his work. “One cannot repeat it enough; art is not the finished work, art is the getting there. This is why good schools believe in art education, in doing art as well as art history. This is why we give children finger paints; it is the process of expressing that we value, along with-or even more than-the finished work, which as Emerson believes observes, passes at once into the mortuary state once completed and detached from its creator, unless, like a seed, it be good for starting the process all over again. “The painter, the sculptor, the composer the epic rhapsodist, the orator, all partake one desire to express themselves symmetrically and abundantly, not and fragmentarily.”

Robert Fawcett on Drawing

“Bob Fawcett always simplified form in his drawings. He once said, “Economy in drawing is essentially the shorthand which develops in the excitement of the fleeting moment. It is the thing seen subjected to editorial exclusion.” However, he tried to avoid slipping into superficiality: “One’s study can be admired for it’s beautiful line, but if that line is not expressing an understanding of the form itself it remains mildly interesting, but empty of content.””

From Drawing the Nude – The Figure Drawing Techniques of Noted American Illustrator Robert Fawcett” by Howard Munce.

Storyboarding is about economy of drawing. Fawcett would have been a great board artist.

Reference to Fawcett’s drawing methods, HERE

Speilberg on Boarding Part 2

JW: When there’s an action sequence in Indy and your other movies, you always have clarity. You never wonder, “Who’s that guy punching that guy?” But in recent action movies, there’s more confusion on purpose, on the part of the director, to create a feeling of chaos on-screen. You don’t seem to go for that.
SS: No, I don’t go for that. I go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy’s on and the bad guy’s on, but which side of the screen they’re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that’s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures. Quick-cutting is very effective in some movies, like the Bourne pictures, but you sacrifice geography when you go for quick-cutting. Which is fine, because audiences get a huge adrenaline rush from a cut every second and a half on The Bourne Ultimatum, and there’s just enough geography for the audience never to be lost, especially in the last Bourne film, which I thought was the best of the three. But, by the same token, Indy is a little more old-fashioned than the modern-day action adventure. I tried very hard, and I hope I succeeded, in not re-inventing the genre, because that would not make it an Indy movie. I just didn’t want to re-invent Indy in a way that would deny that these movies are more based on 1930s Hollywood pictures than anything else.

Remember your geography.

Speilberg Interview: Jim Windolf

Vanity Fair, January 8, 2008

Speilberg on Using Storyboards: Part 1

“A lot of director’s like to store things away in their heads, becoming the secret force of their own battle plans. They leave the crew high and dry, wondering what they’re up to and then they don’t get involved. I’ve always felt that the people who make direct contributions to what goes on the screen need to have, at least in my movies, a firm idea of what we’re collaborating towards, and storyboarding is a way to communicate, before one frame of footage is exposed, what the director is thinking about. It’s a way to draw the play on the chalkboard before the ball is snapped.”

Share your boards with the crew.

Notes on Boarding from Steven Spielberg
Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom
American Cinematographer, July 1984

A Sample of Sketching Directors Do for Their Boards

Speilberg Sketch from Raiders

Another Boarding Talk in Toronto

http://www.raindance.org/toronto/course/storyboarding-for-directors/

Storyboard Templates

Templates here.

Story Quotes

Hitchcock Rule

Gurney has a good post on the relationship of opening shots to illustration.

HERE.

Mendes and Hall on Boarding for Live Action

 

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