Directing 101 Storyboarding to Screen

On November 9th, 2009, the October class of the NFI attended their first directing class. As part of the course, instructor Michael D'Anna introduced the students to the wonderful world of storyboarding, teaching them how to translate their vision of the script into visuals on the page. Each student was given a scene from a script & asked to storyboard it out the way they would shoot it. Student Jimmie Jones, whose work is showcased here, learned the importance of framing, blocking, and camera placement, while also demonstrating the well-known fact that storyboards aren't supposed to be works of art, but rather tools to aid the director & the D.P. in the translation from script to screen.

The photos were snapped as Jimmie directed the translation of his short scene from storyboard to screen, with classmates Jessica on sound and Corey on camera.

Blasting through Acting by (instructor) Adam Black

Covering four giants of the acting profession in four days is very tough. Each of the acting coaches we studied (Stanislavski, Adler, Strasberg, Meisner) deserve weeks and weeks of study each. However, in the Fundamentals of Acting class, the goal was to give the film makers a working knowledge of the types of actors they will come across. And, more to the point, give the film makers the tools they will need to direct those actors (or direct themselves).

Probably the most meaningful day this time around was day three, when we were studying Stella Adler. One of the primary tools she taught was to be THOROUGH with your imagination, creating the most intricate details of the scene you are in. The unique and inspiring information that came out of each student really brought to life the scene work. As most of the students in this class are planning to be film makers, learning the basics of HOW to pull new and fresh performances from themselves will eventually allow them to pull unique and moving performances from their actors.

One really funny exercise we did was the Gibberish Exercise. This is used when either the actor doesn’t fully know their lines yet, OR they are trying to come up with new interpretations of the lines. Put simply, the scene is performed in Gibberish language. This allows the students to focus on the MEANING of the moments in the scene, and not be encumbered by the lines themselves.

Another little behind the scenes look at the Layne Wrye shoot

Brent passed off the little flip video recorder to Tom during the big performance scene so he could capture a few moments of the behind the scenes action while we were filming a music video for Layne Wrye.

For more information about the shoot see the earlier post on the Layne Wrye music video.

Shooting a Music Video of Layne Wrye by Brent Louis Miller

I shot this little video (and a second one that I am posting as another blog entry that follows) with my tiny 'flip video' just to give you a sense of what it was like on the set. The sound was terrible with the wind blowing--but remember, in a music video we aren't shooting for sound--everything is synched with the professional recording of the song.

Today I spent eleven hours shooting about 321 minutes of HD video for a 3 minute and forty-six second Country music video. Along with Tom Wooldridge and Andre Churchwell (my fellow students), I co-directed this music video under the supervision of our Music Video Instructor, Chris St. Croix.

Two weeks ago, for class we pitched treatment options to the artist. He really liked our ideas. The song is about a singer being late to a gig, while rushing to the gig, he gets chased by the sheriff. Country music videos tend to be very literal, so that the action in the video is tied to the lyrics. For example, Chris St. Croix said, “If the lyric says a guy walks into a bar and orders two beers, then the video will probably follow a guy into a bar and he’ll hoist two fingers at the bartender.”

In our video, the story we pitched was that Layne (the artist) was late to a gig and was chased by the police and has to lose the police on the way to the gig. He barely arrives on time to sing his song. We needed to shoot car chase scenes, and a performance scene next to a railroad track, as well as some short performances in front of a church.
While shooting the car chase, we got pulled over by an actual police officer! But all was well because we had a constable in our employ to maintain our safety standards.

We had a great crowd at NFI for the performance scene. I think NFI got some great exposure. People kept asking how many music videos I had made—and they were quite surprised to learn that including today—I had worked on one! And I had only been in school since July.

The whole experience was very enlightening about how music videos are produced. All the crew involved maintained a high degree of professionalism—with Tom, Andre and I all got a chance to direct—though all of us had a camera in our hands pretty much all day.

It was a lot of fun for everyone.

Now each of us has to tackle editing our own version of the footage to then present to the artist who will pick his favorite. To hear the song visit Layne's website at http://www.laynewrye.com/