Production Diary: Storyboards

An initial story outline for Reckless Zen, using Xmind.

The saga with Lighting is on-going and I remind myself that every great film had some drama in its production history. Even if mine is just having the wrong or dead light bulbs and not trying to wrestle a few hundred thousand dollars into a shooting budget from those tight-fisted studio heads.

/shakes fist

I managed to storyboard key scenes today, so not all is lost. Even if the storyboard is badly drawn stick figures and scrawled notes, pencil directions and some squiggly lines - in my mind it all comes together in technicolour and pops! out of the index cards into three-dimensional magic. Good thing I don't have to explain these drawings to a crew.

Looking at the different scenes laid out so far, it does bring two questions to mind:

A. Will it all make sense to the audience?
B. Will it suck?

If I were to be completely honest, I'm more concerned about A, than B. It's one of the reasons I also don't like the "between time". The time between coming up with a great idea, developing it, and actually putting it into action. It's really a small space of time (unless you're arguing for those few thousand dollars from the studio heads... /shakes fist) but it can be so fragile to the overall "vision". The Big Picture of your big picture. I find myself constantly running sequences in my head so they stay fresh, or re-drawing a scene so there are finer details.

But between clutching onto an idea, and adapting it into a story, there's also the technicalities. Making sure that the message remains intact, that the characters arc and aren't dull (which let's face it, mine are a bit wooden...) -- and doing all these things within the right camera angles, using the right lighting, the correct effects, mixing good audio, flawless scenery, dynamic, crisp movement so that the message does remain intact, and the characters do arc and everything doesn't confuse/bore/bounce off the audience.

In my mind all these things are perfect. In reality, they have to appear perfect, and that's the hardest task of all.