Narrative and Storyboarding Workshop.

4th February 2015
Today was a one day session on what I believe is a key part of our industry: narratives and storyboards as well as pitch lines.
We were given an introduction to what pitch lines are, the official tag lines to summing up and idea for example film themes, and how powerful they are in pitching an idea to a group of people in the industry perhaps. Ultimately, it's an effective way of allowing your own ideas to be visually and descriptively displayed but in a simple format.
It became apparent that these interpretations could be made just from one descriptive sentence, not to necessarily give the whole game away, but to inform the persons reviewing it of what they actually involve within the storyline. Examples such as Batman and Shrek were given.

 Storyboards & Narrative
It has always been the case of using storyboards in my work in the past, however it has become more of a defined skill since this workshop helped us develop a further understanding of the power that can be found behind storyboards. Without even using dialect, storyboards can really impact the visual outcome of the work, it becomes more distinguished and allows creativity to be more accurately displayed.
A key example of this is Hitchcock's 'Psycho' who's storyboards constructed by Saeur Bass were so precise and visually explained that he didn't actually have to preview them himself through the camera. The director had such a trust for his design team that he could rely his ideas completely on the storyboards that they created.

As additional viewing of how storyboarding could help assist animation as well as film making, I looked at the book in class called "Storyboards - Motion in Art" by Mark Simon, which developed an idea of how initial sketches are the most important in the process of developing ideas etc. Without the original sketches and the mistakes in the sketches, there wouldn't be the outcome that comes out of it. The storyboards help develop ideas as well as envisioning others and showing your peers your thoughts in a more efficient and professional way.
In addition to this, the storyboards are a way that in professional pitches, designers show their ideas.
 However, directors such as Steven Spielberg don't actually have the skills in storyboards, but is shown that the initial sketches are more useful, as then he can quickly put down his ideas in a way that his designers can translate into professional looking storyboards.
It has been made clear that when we design our own animations and films, we need to make sure that the storyboards are going to backed up by rough sketches and rough storyboards, as alike these celebrity directors, we need to ensure we keep our initial ideas and learn from them of why they didn't work, or why they can no longer be considered as ideas.
An example is pencil sketches don't have to be a temporary measure, you could draw out a first draft of sketches or a storyboard in permanent marker but it wouldn't matter, the fact is that the idea has been shown effectively and the story board helps to finalise your ideas on paper to then edit and work on in future pieces. The storyboards could then be further altered and perceived differently.