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Film & Television vocabulary · Pre-Production and Scripts

Storyboard

Meaning in film & television, with examples

/ˈstɔːribɔːd/nounCore term

In film & television, storyboard means: A series of simple drawings, like a comic strip, showing each planned shot of a scene in order before it is filmed.

In Turkish: storyboard, resimli çekim taslağı

How it is used

Directors and cinematographers use storyboards to plan framing and camera movement, especially for action, effects and commercials. People draw, sketch or board a scene, and a storyboard artist does it professionally. An animatic is a storyboard edited into a rough video.

Example sentences

  1. The car crash is fully storyboarded, so the stunt team knows every shot.

  2. Can you send me the storyboard for the opening scene before the meeting?

Common collocations

  • draw a storyboard
  • storyboard artist
  • shot-by-shot storyboard
  • storyboard frames
  • pre-productionThe planning stage before filming starts, when the script is finished, the cast is chosen, locations are found and the budget and schedule are prepared.
  • shotOne continuous piece of film recorded from the moment the camera starts until it stops, or the piece of it that appears between two cuts.
  • camera angleThe position and direction from which the camera looks at the subject, such as from above, from below or at eye level.
  • frameThe edges of the image that the camera records, and everything inside them. It also means one single still image of a film.

More terms: Pre-Production and Scripts

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