A storyboard is a series of sketches, drawings or photographs used to plan and prepare for filming (one may consider storyboards as virtual shoots in this sense). As your filmmaking skills develop and the scope of your films increase you’ll realize more and more that storyboards are a small but essential component of directing and producing a film.

The most important thing when approaching a story board is the script or treatment, look at these and try and understand what it is you're trying to get across to the viewer, then breaking it down, coming up with ideas for shots, thinking how things will run in sequence, think of the edit and get those sketch up.

Click here to view Dave from Realm Pictures advise on storyboarding.

They're many advantages to storyboarding before you shoot :

Large productions hire storyboarding artists to draw for them so don’t worry about how your storyboards look. Most of the time simple stick figures will do the trick. Don’t let storyboards constrain you. You’re scenes will probably only slightly resemble (sometimes not at all) the storyboards.

Storyboarding the entire movie (or even scene) is not necessary (as long as you can justify it). Remember; there are no real storyboard standards or rules, only guidelines (just like this). Storyboards come in different styles, find yours and stick to it!

Click here to view Taxi Driver Storyboards by Martin Scorsese.

The following terminology is used in most storyboards to describe the frame composition, angle and setting. They usually appear in the heading of the frame.