I have been story boarding for the film Automatic. A while back I had thought maybe I wouldn’t bother too much with this and just wing it on the day. Yeh, right! My prospective DOP told me I needed to story board so that he could generate a Shot List. So I set about it. I found an arty friend who was willing to do the drawings and we started off pretty well. Initially she spent time filling in details which looked good but took too long. Eventually we got down to some excellent little sketches. showing just enough detail. However, I realised that I was having to draw out camera positions to show her what to draw and that meant more work for me!

I started to lay out the scenes, the actors, some of the blocking and the camera angles using PowerPoint. There are apps fro this but I realised that by the time I’d learned them I may as well have done it in Powerpoint. Now I’m starting to understand that the more camera angles I put in, the more time it will take and the more it will cost.

I had a chat with the DOP and agreed that the powerpoint documents would be sufficient but I still had a lot of detail so I started playing with the idea of deliberate limitations. There is a film making movement known as Dogma 95 which sets very strict limits on the camera. I think the rule is something like one hand held camera and one light mounted on the camera. Maybe this is going too far but I am wondering about the idea of limiting each scene. Perhaps a wide establishing shot and then back and forth between the actors? It sounds very basic and could lead to a very dull look but I was watching an old 1963 version of The Caretaker the other night which had very basic camera work and was still very watchable… to me, at least. I guess that the script and the acting also had something to do with it’s success. Some of my actors may be a budding Alan Bates or Donald Pleasence but I’m no Harold Pinter and that was fifty years ago.

Today the public expect much more from cinematography and I have some off the wall ideas for the visuals so I shall persevere but I have enough to start planning out a schedule. So that’s next on my agenda. That and maybe ramp up the social media a bit.