Storyboarding in Film- Core Skills

Rule of 3: dividers in the frame, to do with where the eye is drawn to, composition, grid of 3x3.

20% Rule: Move camera at least 20%. (Like Walter Murch explains with the bees- move hive 20% away bees heave hive as don't recognize, but more than 20 they know it is theirs). Walter Murch, "In the blink of an eye"- 2001. We are organic beings and have a heartbeat and therefore natural rhythm. If we experience tension for example we blink more/ faster than when we're calm at a steady heart rate.

30 Degree Rule: Same as 20% but with space, move camera angle at least 30 degrees.

180 Degree Rule: Make an arbitrary line that splits the space, consequently all of the scene would be shot from the same spacial direction. You can break the rule in 2 ways (1, show movement of camera and changing line or 2, mistakes- cutaways).

SHOT TYPES
Outside:   - EXT
Interior:   - INT
Close Up:   - C / U 
Extreme Close Up:   - E / C / U
Medium Shot:   - M / S
Long Shot:   - L / S
Long Long Shot:   - L / L / S


CAMERA MOVES
Zoom (Change of focal length)
Pan (Fixed axis camera move)
Track (Camera travels)
Handheld
Steadycam
Glidecam
Tripod
Tilt

Why move the camera?
It can follow action, adds visual interest, adds dramatic impact, provide new subject of interest, provide a change of viewpoint, interpret an aspect of the narrative.

Effects of camera movement?
Duration, pace, shot has own interral pattern of development, can create pattern across film, emphasize a cut 3 dimensional space, spatial effects through temporal continuity.

Unit 3, Part One Costume Ideas

These were my costume ideas for the Alpha character for our unit 3, part one video. The structure and geometric are alpha with the earth tones of the omega character. I think they work well but would have to think about fabrics that would allow for movement; possibly a jersey fabric.

Costume Core Skills- Glossary

ARMSCYE - Armhole.

BUST POINT - The position of the apex of the bust bulge, the nipple.

NOTCH - A tiny "V" snipped into the edge of the seam allowance exactly at 90 degrees opposite a balance mark.

DART- A stitched-in triangular fold in the fabric, used to shape the garment over a bulge, or control fullness.

DESIGN LINE - A line drawn on the wrapped shape to indicate the design of the garment.

EASE - 'Space' included in the pattern which allows the garment to curve around the outside of the body (or over other clothes).

FULLNESS - 'Space' included in the pattern which gives the designed shape/ silhouette of the garment.

BALANCE MARK - A mark on a pattern to indicate an important point along a seam (where a dart terminates, where another seam meets, sections of a curve etc.)

GRAIN LINE - A long arrow drawn on each pattern piece indicating the direction of the lengthwise grain (warp threads in a woven fabric, wales in jersey) along which the piece is to be cut. (The garment will not make up or hang properly if this is ignored).

BASIC BLOCK PATTERN - A flat pattern which is a map of the body; used as a basis from which to make patterns for garments.

WORKING PATTERN - One of possibly many generations of intermediate patterns, traced one from another, used while developing the pattern for the garment.

FINSIHED PATTERN - The final pattern to be used to cut the fabric, marked with all the necessary information. It may include seam allowances or it may be "net".

SEAM ALLOWANCE - Extra fabric, beyond the edge of the pattern piece when it is laid on the fabric from which the garment is to be cut, which will be used to stitch the seam. The seam allowance is the fabric between the stitching line and the cutting line. (Costume usually 2.5cm)

SEAM - A join between separately cut sections of the garment/ pieces of fabric.

Storybording in Theatre & Live Performance - Core Skills

WHY DO WE USE A STORYBOARD?
To communicate ideas to: producers, production team, directors, actors, builders etc.
It helps you as a designer, the worker, to visualize the narrative and consequently brings questions & queries to the surface which help you to make decisions.

WHAT IS A STORYBOARD?
A series of images describing a performance over time as the audience experience it. Better to acknowledge the space around what's happening. Costume can be shown, as well as lighting ideas.
It is what the audience sees, moment by moment (don't ignore where they sit).
Important to note where the audience are and what they see, their point of view should be how a storyboard is shown.

WHAT FORMAT CAN YOU USE?
There are really no rules for creating a storyboard as it is about using what best suits the project and your style (not aerial view).
Any medium (eg. Drawn models, mixed media etc.) As few or as many images as you like (as long as more than one- is a series).
Any size (just be practical)
Must be selective, cannot show every moment of a performance (choose moments which best convey what happens).
Can be accompanied by text ( details of your choice but not to overdescriptive instead of visualizing).

TIPS & NOTES.
Pick one audience member's experience, move through performace as they would view it.
Helps to go into actual space, draw or take photos.
Can simply draw form head at the beginning liberating rather than being precise.
At the beginning visual thinking and communicating are more important than quality of drawing, for final assessments (more finesse & refinement is expected and necessary).

Text Workshop

What is the function and purpose of text in PDP?
> Direction, a path to follow.
> Documentation.
> Considered audience.
> Descriptive and informative.
> Creates structure.
> Stimulus.
> Idea.
> Source of inspiration.
> Theme (continued element).
> Communication.
> An aid.
> Takes many forms, not always words.
> Concept or non-concept.

Hans Lierman:
> Thesis, ' a central claim'.
> Synthesis ' composition/ discussion/ amalgama- truth of ideas'.
> Chronology.
> Discourse, a sequence of thought.
> Discursive.
> Dialogic, how a concept, idea, words, 'summons up' a transgressive idea.

"The Sense of an Ending" - Julian Barnes

Here is a collection of my favourite lines from the book, which really made me reflect on time (aptly for our unit 3 part 1 project). Throughout the book I questioned my memory, how time distorts our memories. How all events happen in the same space and time but every person will have a different account, point of view and experience. 

• We live in time- it holds and moulds us.”
• “It takes the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing- until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.”
• “Most people don't experience the 'Sixties' until the 'Seventies'.”
• “You can infer past actions from current mental states.”
• “History that's happened in my own lifetime.”
• “For some people the time differentials established in youth never really disappear: the elder remains the elder, even when both are dribbling greybeards. For some people, a gap of, say, five months means that one person will perversely always think of himself-herself as wiser and more knowledgeable than the other, whatever the evidence to the contrary.”
• “We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time.”
• “Memory is what we thought we'd forgotten. And it ought to be obvious to us time doesn't act as a fixative, rather a solvent.”
• “The less time remains in your life the less you want to waste it...how you use your saved up hours.”
• “They say time finds you out.”
• “This may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.”
• “Nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions- and a regret that such feeling are no longer present in our lives.”
• “I'm sure psychologists somewhere have made a graph of intelligence measured against age.”
• “How time first grounds us and then confounds us...Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.”
• “Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits, and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, day. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're our own. If so that would explain a lot of lives...our tragedy.”
• “What is history?...the lies of the victors? 'As long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.' Do we remember that enough when it comes to our private lives?”
• “The time-deniers say: forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, Sixty's the new forty, and so on. I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And his personal time, which is true time, is measured in your relationship to memory. So when this strange thing happened- when these new memories suddenly came upon me- it was as if, for that moment, time had been placed in reverse. As if, for that moment, the river ran upstream.”
• “As I tend to repeat, I have some instinct for survival, for self-preservation.”
• “Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him.”