Abstract
Why is a book about storyboarding appearing in a series entitled ‘Studies in Screenwriting’? One might think the two practices are almost diametrically opposed. A screenplay tells a story in verbal form; a storyboard is visual. Screenwriting has existed, in some form, at least since the emergence of narrative films around 1903, whereas it is commonly held that storyboarding began in advertising and in animation, notably with the Walt Disney studio’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), becoming established in live-action narrative cinema only with preproduction on Gone with the Wind (1939). For most studio-produced narrative films, a screenplay (albeit one that is likely to differ from the final shooting script) will have been written in advance of production, telling the whole story of the film — among other reasons, to make clear to potential artists and financial backers where their creative or economic energies will be invested. On the other hand, while some films are storyboarded in their entirety, most are not; if required, their production is often piecemeal and ad hoc, created to assist in the visualisation of particular elements of a film such as complex action sequences.
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Notes
Kristina Jaspers, ‘Zur Entstehungsgeschichte und Funktion des Storyboards’, in Katharina Henkel, Kristina Jaspers, and Peter Mänz (eds), Zwischen Film und Kunst: Storyboards von Hitchcock bis Spielberg (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2012), p. 15. We are indebted to Julia Knaus for all translations from the original German of this book.
Jean-Claude Carrière, The Secret Language of Film, trans. Jeremy Leggatt (London: Faber, 1995), p. 150.
Nathalie Morris, ‘Unpublished Scripts in BFI Special Collections: A Few Highlights’, Journal of Screenwriting 1.1 (2010), pp. 197–198.
Fionnuala Halligan, Movie Storyboards: The Art of Visualizing Screenplays (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2013), p. 9.
Alan David Vertrees, Selznick’s Vision: Gone with the Wind and Hollywood Filmmaking (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), pp. 67, 117.
See Steven Price, A History of the Screenplay (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013).
Katharina Henkel and Rainer Rother, ‘Vorwort’, in Katharina Henkel, Kristina Jaspers, and Peter Mänz (eds), Zwischen Film und Kunst: Storyboards von Hitchcock bis Spielberg (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2012), p. 8.
Vincent LoBrutto, The Filmmaker’s Guide to Production Design (New York: Allworth, 2002), p. 62.
John Hart, The Art of the Storyboard: Storyboarding for Film, TV, and Animation (Boston: Focal Press, 1999), p. 5.
Steven Maras, Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice (London: Wallflower, 2009), p. 120.
Kathryn Millard, ‘The Screenplay as Prototype’, in Jill Nelmes (ed.), Analysing the Screenplay (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 156.
Millard develops related arguments in ‘After the Typewriter: The Screenplay in a Digital Era’, Journal of Screenwriting 1.1 (2010), pp. 11–25.
Millard, Screenwriting in a Digital Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014).
In addition to Maras and Millard, on this point see also Steven Price, The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), pp. 46–47.
See, for example, Andreas C. Knigge, ‘“Watch Me Move”: Über die Beziehung zwischen Storyboards und Comics’, in Katharina Henkel, Kristina Jaspers, and Peter Mänz (eds), Zwischen Film und Kunst: Storyboards von Hitchcock bis Spielberg (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2012), p. 18.
Michael Farr, The Adventures of Hergé: Creator of Tintin (London: John Murray, 2007), p. 59.
Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, The Pocket Essential Tintin (Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2002), p. 90.
Edwin G. Lutz, Animated Cartoons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), p. 60.
Edward Carrick, How To Do It Series Number 27: Designing for Films (London and New York: The Studio Publications, 1949), p. 14.
Tony Tarantini, ‘Pictures That Do Not Really Exist: Mitigating the Digital Crisis in Traditional Animation Production’, Animation: Practice, Process, and Production 1.2 (2011), pp. 257–261.
Kristina Jaspers, Zwischen Film und Kunst. Storyboards von Hitchcock bis Spielberg – Exhibition Guide (Berlin: Deutsche Kinemathek, 2011) p. 6.
Vladimir Nilsen, The Cinema as a Graphic Art: On a Theory of Representation in the Cinema (New York: Hill and Wang, 1936); see also Jaspers, p. 3.
Jay Leyda and Zina Voynow, Eisenstein at Work (New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 24.
Katharina Henkel, Kristina Jaspers, and Peter Mänz (eds), Zwischen Film und Kunst: Storyboards von Hitchcock bis Spielberg (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2012).
Steve Wilson, The Making of Gone with the Wind (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014).
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© 2015 Chris Pallant and Steven Price
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Pallant, C., Price, S. (2015). Introduction. In: Storyboarding. Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137027603_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137027603_1
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