Chapter 9 Project Development 169
Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc.
Detailed Treatment
This excerpt from a detailed treatment
covers only Part Two, Scene Three, as
summarized in the previous version.
The Sidewinder Drill: Part Two, Scene Three
The daughter brings her broken sailboat to
the mother, seated at the kitchen table.
The mother says it will be simple to fix.
She uses the Sidewinder to drill a pilot
hole for screw. The daughter watches,
impressed. The mother hands the boat back,
and the daughter says, “Great! Thanks,
Mom.” The husband starts into the kitchen
saying, “Honey, I can’t find my Sidewinder
again!” Seeing that her husband is coming,
she hides the drill under the table as
the daughter takes the toy and runs out.
Husband enters and registers humorously on
wife’s guilty expression.
The amount of detail in your own treatments
will depend on how minutely you need to pre-
visualize your program, and how completely you
want to communicate it to clients and colleagues.
Creating a Storyboard
The old saying claims that one picture is
worth a thousand words, and this is often true
in developing video programs. In graphic-
based project design, a succession of pictures
resembling a graphic novel sketches all the
important moments in the program. This script
in picture form is called a storyboard.
Storyboards got their name from the bulletin boards on
which the drawings of scenes for animated cartoons
are pinned for inspection and editing,
Figure 9-10.
Storyboard Uses
Storyboards have two main uses: to help
others visualize the look of the eventual program
and to pre-plan complex sequences shot by shot.
Visualization
Storyboards are particularly valuable for
communicating content to clients and crew
because they present concrete images instead
of the abstract words that describe them.
Some people have less talent than others for
thinking graphically. The problem is that they
are often unaware of their inability to visualize,
and so they indicate understanding of written
descriptions when actually they are unable
to imagine them. The result can be serious
miscommunication. A storyboard presents
the images in pre-visualized form, along with
captions containing dialogue, sound effects,
and descriptions of the action.
Shot Planning
Where complex visual sequences are
involved, storyboarding can help you as well as
others. By planning all camera shots in advance,
you can see how well they will edit together
and how clearly they will communicate the
content. Many directors make extensive use of
storyboards in their productions, especially in
laying out highly complex action sequences.
Storyboarding is also useful for working out
consistent screen direction in complex physical
sequences, such as fi ghts and chases. fi
Managing screen direction is covered in Chapter 19,
Directing for Form.
In today’s productions, compositing and
other techniques are often used to combine
quite different visual elements. Storyboarding
is essential so that the creators of live action,
computer graphics, and other elements can
design components that match and fi t together fi
in the fi nal images. fi
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Figure 9-10. Part of a professional storyboard.