Digital Filmmaking

Mobile Storyboarding with Hitchcock

October 6, 2009 October 6, 2009 My short films are so low-budget that my leads don’t have last names.  I’m so indie that I can’t get in to Hollywood as a tourist.  My shoots are so guerilla that Dian Fossey once tried to groom me.  I think my point is clear:  I’m not particularly funny.   Also, I’m economical.  So why throw down a not insubstantial $20 for a “mobile storyboard composer” iPhone application?  Because time and flashes of creative inspiration are precious commodities, and Cinemek’s Hitchcock app harnesses both quite well. Using Hitchcock is a fairly straightforward process that starts with photos.  Choose the pictures that you want to include in your storyboard.  Each picture is a “panel” that you drag and drop into the proper order.  Use glossy shots captured with high-end photog equipment or – and here is the “mobile” in “mobile storyboard composer” – pics you snap on the spot with your iPhone.  Imagine your next on-location project meeting, the impressed client hovering over your iPhone screen reviewing a rough sequence that conveys the essence of what you had discussed only moments ago!  Twenty bucks starts to seem more reasonable.  (For us low-budget indie short preditors, to whom paying clients are as tangible as the mythical Yeti or domestic distribution deals, there is always the “Starbucks scale”: 1 cool iPhone app = 5 lattes.  Decisions, decisions.) Once you have the storyboard sequence in place, set the duration for each shot.  Then add textual information, such as scene and shot indicators (“1A”, “1B”, etc.), dialog snippets (“Are you talking to me?”) or scene location (“Ext. Warehouse – Night”).   Take it up a notch by recording audio for the panel, like a dialog reading or production note. You can insert two basic graphical elements to enhance any panel: “stand-ins” and arrows.  Male or female silhouetted figures can serve as actor stand-ins, either facing forward or in profile position.  Straight or curved arrows help with “blocking” movement of people or objects.  Both these element types can be placed anywhere on the screen and resized using the well-known iPhone finger-pinching gestures. Now you have a timed, labeled, blocked storyboard with actor stand-ins and on-location photos. Still, a tad static.  And, in theory, most of it could be accomplished with a pad and pencil.  (It would probably take longer by hand and you would not get a sense of pacing, but at least you would have your 5 lattes).  This is where Hitchcock’s most persuasive feature makes its case: animated camera movements.  You can execute dolly, zoom, track or pan movements on each panel to get an authentic sense of how your scene will flow.  Adjust the size and location of the starting and ending frames in each shot for near-total directorial control. Click here to download a five-panel storyboard I crafted in a few minutes while standing outside CDIA’s Georgetown campus. Hitchcock is not without its faults.  You can export the finished storyboard as a pdf and share a link to the file with clients, crew or beleaguered family members wondering whether you still have a day job. But you cannot export a movie file, thus losing the dynamics achieved by adding animated camera movements.  Nor can you import movie files, which would take the application to another level of utility and slickness.  If you were itching to add your own doodles to complement the silhouetted stand-ins and clip-art arrows, you will not be scratching that itch with Hitchcock - at least for now.  And that is part of the beauty of good iPhone apps written by solid companies: updates and enhancements (hopefully soon and probably free) are inevitable.  Indeed, word on the street is that Cinemek will be adding movie file exporting, perhaps more, to an upcoming version. Paying $20 for an iPhone app can be a shock to those, like me, who have populated their screen with free or .99 cent offerings.  (Did I mention that my projects are so unfunded that my craft services are on lay-away?)  But I expect Hitchcock to be a worthy investment with a generous return paid out in saved time and developed creativity.