For Research 4.2 I looked into the work of Brandon J Wallace and the way he created storyboards from TV in order to understand framing, composition and narrative. I liked the way that he used the exercise to understand how the filmmakers used different aspects to tell or propel the story.
For this exercise, I had to do the same, creating at least 20 frames. I created 24 frames in my sketchbook then chose the film to study. I had recently watched a science fiction action drama on Netflix called Altered Carbon, which is itself adapted from a novel and graphic novel. When I watched the particular episode I chose to study I noticed the cinematography and immediately knew I wanted the challenge of trying to storyboard it.
I noticed how the lighting was used to tell the story, so I used colour to try and capture those elements. I also used some grey ink pens to show variation in the dark values.
I was really pleased with the exercise, it was both fun and demanding. What I hadn't anticipated was just how quickly the cuts were! I had anticipated the panels to cover ten minutes of footage, but in reality, it only covered around five! The exercise suggested trying to do the exercise for more than one genre/pace, so I decided to try and do it again with something a little slower.
I picked a scene in The Witcher, a favourite of mine since I read the novels and played the PC games. I was pleased that a TV adaptation had been made and really enjoyed it. Whilst there is often a lot of action in the series, this sequence was a lot slower full of character development.
I really enjoyed this exercise as well and found it really demanding to work quickly whilst still remaining accurate. I found using shadows to depict lighting useful but sometimes forgot to do it! The hardest thing was trying to draw people quickly and show their positions and emotions. It was like doing life drawing dialled up to 11! It really showed me that I need to work on my anatomy and probably do a lot more life drawing/gesture drawing.
I liked the way that cinematography helped me understand storytelling, lines of action and pace. I found it really interesting to note the difference in the way that TV/Cinema does this when compared to sequential illustrations like graphic novels. Assuming you have the budget, it's relatively quick to have lots of quick cuts and transitions. However, for graphic novels (which are relatively more consuming to get a panel right and have more limited time and space in which to tell a story) the cuts have to be much more judicious. I think this shows one of the key differences between the mediums. The power of sequential illustration is not just in the frames, but the space between frames where the imagination fills in the gaps[1].
I am really interested in this technique and get excited by how one can use this kind of storytelling to convey information.
References
McCloud, S., 2018. Understanding Comics. New York, NY: William Morrow, HarperCollinsPublishers, pp.65-69.
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