Animatics/ Storyboards

A Storyboard can be as simple as this.

Drawn with a Pencil or a pen, or can even be created with pictures from magazine and even photo graphs for all you non drawers. Storyboards are an essential to a great movie, as its a plan and a rough summary of the visual ideas in the directors head. Using a storyboard helps in organising your film. They also help to paint a vivid picture of your intentions which will be the guideline whilst shooting. Creating an animatic is the step before shooting and the step after the storyboard. Animatics take an awful lot of time, however it is a cheap and effective way of getting a clear pre visual of your product before shooting.

Here is a Clip of the Animatic process taken to construct The Lord Of The Rings.

As said in the Clip, this is a good strategy as it gives the actors a sense of the emotion and movement expected from them, these animatics can even contain voice overs in order to make it seems life formed.