Individual Storyboard - Miss Miller

Storyboards are used to get the narrative down on paper in a way which illustrates what shots will be used and what will be seen in each shot. They are made by the director and writers of the film and are used as a plan for the directors and camera crew so they know what they are filming. Without a storyboard the filming process would be much less efficient as the director and camera crew would not have an exact idea of what shots they need to get and what they are supposed to look like.

Me, Charlie and Jess all created our own individual storyboards before using them to create one group storyboard. The purpose of this was to see what ideas we all had for shots and how they should be sequenced. We then took the best ideas from each storyboard and combined them to create the final version. If we didn't all create individual storyboards beforehand we would have had less unique ideas to choose from when creating our final version. I hoped my individual storyboard would help create the final version as I tried to think differently as it meant we had more variation in the ideas we had to choose from and were then able to choose what was most suitable.

The first frame is just white text on a black background and it is the first credit, introducing our production company. We learnt during our opening credits analysis that it is conventional for the production company to be introduced first. The next frame is an establishing shot from just outside the forest which shows the entrance as well as the sign which reads "Epping Forest". This is used to let the audience know where the opening sequence is set. I learnt about establishing shots in my research into cinematography. Without this shot the audience would be left wondering where the characters are instead of getting engrossed in the film. The next two shots are there to set the scene as we see four girls walking through the forest happily as they are heard laughing. This is to emphasize the the equilibrium the film starts in. I decided to add this as it follows Todorov's narrative theory which I learnt about while planning narrative ideas. The next four frames focus on one of the girls separating form her friends and how isolated she ends up being. We use a slow zoom out to a long shot in order to enhance the sense of isolation and the only sound heard is diegetic background noises and the wind rustling. Frames 9-12 focus on the increasing sense of dread and eeriness as characters start to get the feeling that something is wrong. We see the girl start to worry as her phone battery dies and she starts noticing strange sounds and rustling noises, she starts to become paranoid that she is being watched. We see her friend's body language noticeably change and become less relaxed when their friend stops texting. In frame 13 we are back with the soon-to-be victim and we notice someone watching her from a hiding place in the shadows. We see light shine on a knife he is holding. This is when the audience become scared and worried for Cathryn, our victim. The screen then quickly fades to black and the next credits appear which say "Directed by - Ryan Samuels & Charlie Stewart". This is is inspired from Se7en which I analysed above, I noticed that the credits were cut between different parts of the opening sequence so decided to do this in my storyboard. The final frame is when the screen fades to black and the title appears. I added this last for dramatic effect but it adds the unwanted effect of making the opening sequence more "trailer-like".

Even though my storyboard has room for improved and the sketches were awful I made sure it included some of the conventions we have been studying and matched the thriller genre. We don't want the opening sequence to be too similar to a trailer so we will most likely rearrange the order of the credits. I also didn't credit all the people involved in the film like the actors. This would have to be remedied with extra frames. I think ym individual storyboard will help my group as I made sure it sure it included some important conventions like starting with the production company and an establishing shot. Some of the more unique ideas I included give us extra options when we create the final version of the storyboard.