Individual Storyboard - Miss Miller

Storyboards are used within the film industry to allow the director to share their ideas and thoughts onto paper so that everyone can visualize and understand what they mean and what they would hope for it to look like. They are used to help the planning take place so that everyone is on the same page that the person who made the storyboard is on. It can also be used as a checklist of all the things that the director would like to include within the film that they are creating. When it comes to production, the storyboards will make it much easier for the director to tell the staff what they need to do next. Storyboards also allow time to be saved due to the fact that once it is done, you may just look at it without having to think about them again.

When planning our group narrative, myself and my partner, Krista, each had to create storyboards for our ideas on how the film should look like from our points of view. The reason that this was necessary to do was so that once our ideas have been written down, we could explain them to each other in order to create a finalized storyboard that have our ideas incorporated in it, this is done so that we can make a brilliant opening thriller sequence. By creating my own individual storyboards, it will allow myself to really think about how this opening sequence should look from my own eyes. Once it is completed, i can go back over it to change or alter anything that i have written down. My storyboard is shown sheet by sheet, to show how i visualize the opening sequence to look like;

Within my first storyboard, i have made sure to include various camera angles so that the audience never gets bored of what they are watching upon the screen. The setting within this scene and the next one will be in an unknown area. This highlights the sense of confusion that the hostage/hitman is going through, the audience will never find out how he developed amnesia. This creates the element of mystery as the audience want answers but will never get them. This scene shows a man who wakes up in an unknown location and is asked to kill a woman in exchange for money.

On the second storyboard, i am showing that i would like this scene to have all low key lighting throughout so that it evokes a sense of darkness and evil. This represents the antagonist well because he is very evil as he wants his wife to be killed because she is cheating on him. Again, there will be a variety of camera angles that will be shown within this scene, this gives the audience different views, it makes it less boring for them as they have different ways of looking at the same thing. This scene shows the antagonist paying the hitman to kill his wife.

This next storyboard shows the hitman going outside after agreeing that he will kill the antagonist's wife. He calls a taxi to take him to the road but not infront of the house so that suspicions are not raised. He then walks up to the house. This scene will be a mostly high key lighting so show the natural light that is outside. The sounds will be varied, some of the parts will have no sound, therefore, building up the tension and some will include sinister music to allow the audience to connote that something bad will happen in this scene.

In the fourth storyboard, the scene changes to show that the hitman has now entered the house of the antagonist where his cheating wife is cleaning some plates. He slowly walks behind her grabbing the knife out of his pocket. The scene contains almost all the same camera shots, which are POV. This allows the audience to be filled in the same shoes as the hitman. It also builds up tension as he is about to stab her because the audience are waiting for it to happen. The lighting will remain the same as low key lighting is present throughout because the scene is dark and this helps to portray that.

This part of the storyboard shows the woman as she looks behind her to see her killer infront of her, she screams and the killer is holding a knife up infront of her. Shot reverse shot will be used to show the hitman holding up the knife as well as the woman screaming. Again, the whole scene consists of low key lighting, this helps to portray a dark, mysterious and evil scene. The audience feel terrified in this scene because they know something bad is about to happen. The last scene shows the woman being stabbed, this will be shown in a close up of the hitman and a stabbing sound effect will be played as his face is shown.

On this page, the next scene progresses, the woman falls on the floor, and the hitman holds up the bloody knife. This will mean that the kuleshov effect is taking place as the audience are able to connote that he is the one that stabbed the woman without actually seeing the stabbing happen. A variety of camera shots and angles are used such as high angle, close up, mid shot and low angle. These shots and angles allow the audience to view the scene is different ways therefore making it exciting and sinister at the same time.

 The last storyboard shows the scene where the antagonist has come home and the audience can see the hitman re thinking his decision to killing the wife. The antagonist tells him to leave and then walks over to the womans body, stands over it and smiles in a very sinister way. The sounds  that will mostly be used within the scene are silence; this makes the audience build up the tension as they are unaware of what is happening next. The other sound that is used is sinister music, this is used when the antagonist comes on the screen, therefore, connoting to the audience that he is sinister.

There are many elements that i kept the same when creating this storyboard. For example, i used a wide range of POV angles, this was done when the hitman and antagonist where doing different things. In thriller films, POV is mostly used to get the audience in the same place as the villain, for example, in the film Halloween, Michael Myers is often shown in the POV angle. The POV angle allows the viewers to feel as though they are the person, and this also makes them feel as if they are part of the sequence. They begin to imagine themselves in that position. Using this angle made it clear to the audience that both of the men were villains. Secondly, most of the shots were low key, i have chosen to use this because low key lighting is dark and mysterious, which evidently describes the opening sequence perfectly. Having low key lighting helps to create tension, so the audience feel as though something bad was going to happen. I used low key lighting when dark scenes where being shown, which was almost the whole piece.

When looking over my ideas, i noticed that there were a few problems with the storyboard i had created. Firstly, i am using silence a lot within my idea. Although it helps to build up the tension of the audience, the silence may also be boring when the audience really want to know what is going on within the scene. I need to change this so that more variety of sound effects are used so that the audience pay attention to what is happening on the screen. I am hoping that my partner will agree with some of my ideas on the storyboard such as using mostly low key lighting. This allows the audience to understand that darkness is around them and it also gives them clues that there is evil lurking. 

When listening to each others ideas, i am hoping that some of my ideas are changed for the better so our opening thriller sequence can be as perfect as possible in order to thrill the audience. I am hoping that my partner will also know what sound and editing skills we should use due to the fact that i am not very creative when it comes to these elements. When combining our ideas, our story should be even better than before. 

In conclusion, i think that creating individual storyboards was very helpful as it allowed us to think outside the box with our ideas and elaborate on them. It also helped me to gain a better understanding of what i would hope the sequence to look like. Storyboards make it easier when filming so that you don't have to keep trying to remember what your ideas were for a certain scene. It also makes it easier to explain and visualize my ideas and thoughts to my partner and that way it will be much easier to combine all of our ideas into a group storyboard. Creating a storyboard has allowed me to understand that i need to give more detail when explaining what i would like to happen within the sequence. It has also taught me that i need to think outside the box to create original ideas as to what the piece should look like. It takes time to create storyboards so it has shown me that i must be thorough with my ideas. I also need to keep checking over them to make sure that each frame fits perfectly with the one before, so that the audience are not left confused when watching the sequence.