Purpose and Suitability of a Storyboard

A storyboard is a pre-production document that plans a media product shot by shot. Each scene or shot is sketched roughly inside a frame, and the frames are laid out in the order the scenes will appear when the product is finished.

What a storyboard does

Its purpose is to make the content of each scene clear in picture form, and to set those scenes out as a timeline you can read from start to finish. Because the frames sit side by side, the storyboard shows the flow from one scene to the next and how the separate scenes fit together as one product.

It also identifies which scenes have to be captured on camera or built in software, and how the finished clips will be joined together during the edit. That planning saves time and money during production: the director and crew know exactly what has to be filmed before any work starts, so nobody turns up on location guessing what is needed and no costly return visits are caused by a forgotten shot.

Where it sits in pre-production

A script is normally written before the storyboard, because the storyboard turns the script's words into pictures. A shot list is normally produced after the storyboard, because it turns each sketched frame into a numbered list of shots to capture. The storyboard is the visual plan in the middle.

When it is suitable

A storyboard suits live-action film and video, including adverts and promotional videos, where the order of shots needs agreeing before a camera is set up. For example, a group planning a 30-second trailer for a school sports day could sketch six frames: the starter pistol, the sprint, the finish line, the crowd, the medal and the school logo. It also suits animation and computer games, where the frames plan movement and the sequence of events before anything is built.

A storyboard is not a mood board: mood or inspiration images are not usually part of it. It also does not usually hold real stills taken during filming, or plan the typography of the end credits.