Effective Storyboards and Improvements

An effective storyboard is easy to follow from the first frame to the last. Its scenes run in a logical order, so a reader can see how one shot leads into the next, and everything on it relates to the brief — the product, audience and purpose you were given.

What effective looks like

Use a suitable number of scenes: enough to cover every key moment, but not so many that the story repeats itself. Each frame should be clear enough for someone else to understand what happens without having to ask you.

Every frame should carry the technical detail a crew needs, so they know what to set up before filming: scene numbers, timings, which can be approximate, camera shot and angle, camera movement, lighting, sound, location and camera type, such as a DSLR, a phone or a drone. Shot types describe how much of the subject fills the frame; angles describe where the camera is placed. They are different pieces of information, so you need both.

Improving a storyboard with weak written detail

Neat sketches with almost no writing are not an effective storyboard, because the drawing alone cannot tell the crew what to do. Imagine a 30-second advert for a bakery's new breakfast menu where the artist has only drawn the food. Improve it by adding scene numbers and timings, labelling each shot type and angle, drawing arrows for camera or character movement, and noting lighting, sound, location and transitions such as a fade from the kitchen to the counter. Add a short description of the action in each frame so the drawing is not left to guesswork.

Finishing the job

Complete the header with the storyboard title, your name as author, a version number and a page number — without them the team cannot tell which draft they are looking at. Then read the whole thing through and check the order makes sense and that it does what the client asked for. If the client wanted the product shown in the first five seconds, the sequence must do that.