For the week 3 challenge we were tasked with reverse engineering an existing artefact back to how it could have been rapidly ideated. I decided to reverse engineer the opening cinematic of Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) (PlayStation, 2020) in the form of a storyboard.
Because my illustrative abilities are somewhat lacking nowadays and with the time provided, I decided to take several screenshots of the key moments from my favourite game cutscene and change the style to that somewhat resembling concept art via Adobe Photoshop CC (Adobe Photoshop CC, 2021), and incorporate these images into a basic storyboard template containing the relevant information. My favourite edit of the bunch was this one of the character, Barret, leading the eco-terrorist group, Avalanche, in the Bombing Mission of Mako Reactor 01:
In this case, storyboarding is started during or after the writing of the script and shot list in which the two are combined into a visualisation of what is then to be prototyped and/or developed. The storyboard artist usually liaises with the writer to make sure that what is drawn and the information added correlates correctly with what was originally envisioned.
In the past when making films I hadn't really worked with storyboards, but instead just shot lists in conjunction with the script or treatment. I knew what I wanted, sure, but to have to explain how everything should look without visual aids to cast members and a big crew was a nightmare and wasted too much time that should have been spent with directing cast for example. In reality, the storyboard (if there was any) that Square Enix devised would, I imagine, be that of less quality and that of sketches. If anything, what I have come up with might be similar to that of a final draft storyboard.
"A storyboard will likely convey some of the following information:
What characters and objects are in the frame, and how are they moving?
What are the characters saying to each other, if anything? Is there any narration?
How much time has passed between the last frame of the storyboard and the current one?
Where is the “camera” in the scene? Close or far away? Is the camera moving?" (Neuman, 2015)
I included:
- The description of the shot(s) such as: characters, props, actions, locations, etc. ("Cont": is a continuation of the previous storyboard piece with no cuts)
- The camera shot types to be used: The comma is to join two types of shots as one whereas the hyphen is to be interpreted as "into" due to either camera or subject movements; this is especially due to there being numerous amounts of continuous shots and a limited number of cuts.
- Audio such as foley, dialogue, sound effects, and soundtrack.
- Lighting I could only really input what was obvious, for the most part, I just listed ambient such as streetlights, lights from windows, etc.
- FX: Anything from particle effects to light beams to the superimposing of title cards.
The only information I did not include was that of timings.
In retrospect, this method works wonders for translating script to actual imagery as well as for showing which elements are required for the scene. When advancing into the animation stage, for example, this makes the process much easier to implement due to the vast amount of information provided in this point of reference.
Bibliography
2021. Adobe Photoshop CC. Adobe Inc.
Neuman, K., 2015. Dev Blog: Storyboarding for Cinematics. [online] Axon Interactive. Available at: <http://axoninteractive.ca/storyboarding-for-cinematics/> [Accessed 10 March 2021]
Playstation, 2020. Final Fantasy VII Remake - Opening Movie | PS4. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOA5GwRcBks&t=47s&ab_channel=PlayStation> [Accessed 3 May 2021].