Build a storyboard

What this is about

Storyboards exist to answer disputes in advance. When a scene involves complex blocking, visual effects, product moments the client cares about, or money that only flows once — a stunt, a drone pass, a crowd — a drawn frame is the cheapest rehearsal available. The rest of the film usually does not need boards; it needs a shot list. Teams waste prep time in both directions: boarding forty frames of interview b-roll nobody will consult, or shooting an effects-heavy scene from a paragraph of prose and discovering on set that director and DP had imagined different films.

The order matters more than the tools. Skip a step and you usually notice two steps later — by which point the fix costs several times as much.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Boards are selective: complex blocking, VFX, one-chance moments and client-critical frames get drawn; routine coverage does not.
• Frame numbers must map to shot list IDs, or the two documents drift apart during prep.
• Arrows and annotations carry the information — camera movement, subject movement, lens feel — the drawing itself can stay rough.
• A board is a contract about intent, not a promise of the final composition.

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Select the scenes that earn frames: complex blocking, VFX, product moments, one-chance events. Boarding everything buries the frames that matter under the ones that do not.
2. Fix the aspect ratio before drawing a line. A board in the wrong ratio teaches the whole team the wrong framing for weeks.
3. Draw rough but decidable: figures as shapes, spaces as lines. The frame must answer what is in shot and from where — not look good on a wall.
4. Annotate movement with arrows and words: camera push, pan direction, subject crossing. Movement is the information a still drawing loses first.
5. Note size and lens feel per frame — wide and close, long and compressed — so the DP reads intent, not just geography.
6. Number frames to match shot list IDs and keep the two documents synchronized through every revision.
7. Review the board with director, DP and client at the right altitude: this is the film's plan, subject to what the location allows on the day.
8. Bring the board to set in printed form and tick frames as they are shot — it doubles as the fastest progress report the client will accept.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Boarding every scene, so prep time goes into drawings nobody consults on the day.
• Treating the board as a binding promise of composition, then fighting the location instead of using it.
• Beautiful frames without annotations — pretty, and silent on movement, lens and intent.

With TillyGen

TillyGen generates storyboard frames from the briefing and keeps them linked to shotlist and schedule — a changed scene updates its frames instead of orphaning them.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.