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Guide to Storyboarding
Storyboarding is one of the most effective ways to communicate visual ideas and organize your thoughts and plans for a video. The idea behind story boarding is to give a rough visualization to your project. You don't have to be good at drawing to storyboard, it can be just as effective using stick figures to illustrate the movement of a shot.
If you feel that stick figures just aren't getting your Idea across try using still images with people to illustrate your idea. The most important thing is communicating your thoughts into a visual medium for later use.
Below is an example of some things you can do with story boarding.
Below is a blank storyboarding template.
What is 3 Point Lighting?
Three point lighting is a classic Hollywood lighting setup that you can use for many different scenarios. The lighting setup consists of a key, fill and back light.
| They Key Light is the primary light in this setup and is usually the largest brightest light. This light will give most of the detail to our image but as you can see some of the details on the left side of the face are indistinguishable. |  |
| The Fill Light is just as it’s name implies, it fills in the details left out by the key light. This light also defines the contrast to our image, a dimmer fill light will add contrast to the picture. |  |
| Here is the Key + Fill Lights this is almost what our final image should look like, however as you can see the left side of her face seems to almost disappear into the dark. This is where we add a Back Light or Rimmer. |  |
How to Setup 3 Point Lighting
This tutorial will walk you through the steps to setup a 3 point lighting scheme.
1) First you want to setup your Key Light, the key light will be your primary and brightest light. Usually you will place the key light to the left of the camera facing your subject.
2) Now your ready for a Fill Light, this will go on the other side of the Camera from your Key Light facing the subject. (Tip: A quick way to adjust how much fill light you have is to move the light closer to get bright or further away to get dimmer.)
White Balancing with the Sony Video Camera
This tutorial will walk you through white balancing the Sony Video Camera found in the Digital Commons Studios. The Camera should be white balanced each and every time it is used. (Note: White balancing synchronizes the color recorded on the Camera to the Color coming off of the lights)
1) First you want to make sure that only the lights you are shooting with are turned on.
2) Next have someone in your group hold up a white piece of paper in the same spot that your subject will be.
3) Zoom in on that paper until nothing can be seen except the paper and then hold the white balance button for a few seconds to allow the camera to adjust itself.
(Tip: White balancing can be a fun way to give strange colors to your videos, for example using an orange piece of paper instead of white will make your video look more blue. You can experiment here with different colors for different effects.)
Lighting and Shooting Using a Greenscreen
Lighting for a Greenscreen can be tricky and it is important that you have a very even light on the screen behind your subject. If you do not have an even amount of light on the screen it will make it much more difficult to key out the green color.
Block out any unwanted light.
Lower the green screen.
Next, light the green screen separately from your subject. It is important to create a soft even light over the entire screen. Use at least 2 lights and try to avoid hotspots by diffusing the light with an umbrella or filter.
Once the screen is lit, place your subject at least 4 – 5 feet away from the screen. The further away the better. This way it will be easier to light your subject without casting shadows onto the screen or having your subjects light hit the screen.
Capturing Footage into Final Cut Pro
Using Final Cut Pro requires that you set the program to match the source from which you will be digitizing your footage. These are your Capture Settings. You can mix footage from several different sources in one project, but you must change your Capture Settings each time.
Before capturing footage Make sure that you Setup your Project Appropriately by following the steps detailed in the tutorial: Setting up a Project in Final Cut Pro
To set the device control presets, go up to Final Cut Pro and choose Audio/Video Settings
From there, follow either option below to achieve the setting needed for your desired media.
A. For MiniDV:
1. Device Control Preset: Change the pull down menu to FireWire NTSC or FireWire NTSC Basic from the Device Control.
This setting will allow you to log and capture and capture directly. You will have full control of your DV device from Final Cut Pro HD’s Capture window.
2. Click OK to save changes.
Basic Editing with Final Cut Pro
This tutorial assumes that you have read and are comfortable with the Setting up a New Project in Final Cut Pro tutorial and any of the various capturing tutorials that you may need to load your footage into Final Cut Pro.
In Final Cut Pro the gray area in the top left-most square is referred to as the “Bin.” The Bin is found under the tab that has the name of your project on it.
Within the Bin you will find any footage that you have captured into your project. You can also import additional assets (such as music, video files, or still images) into the Bin as well. Once they are in your Bin you are able to use them in your project.
To import files into your Bin, you can either drag the file from your desktop directly into your bin or you can go to “File” at the top and choose “Import.” Choose your file and click “Ok.”
Keying Green Screen Footage in Final Cut Pro
Always Setup your project in Final Cut Pro by using this Tutorial.
First import your footage and background (image or video to be the background) into Final Cut Pro.
Now lets bring our background down into the time line by dragging it in.
Now we want to create another video track for our other file, to do this click Sequence > Insert Tracks a dialogue box should pop up asking how many tracks and of what type. Type in the number 1 in the Video Tracks and click OK
This bottom track will be the background of your video, you can use still images or movies as a background. You should now have two video Tracks that look like this.
Now we want to add our green screen clip to the top Video track, the reason we want it on top of the other clip is because Final Cut Pro works in layers, the top most track is always the displayed or top layer.
Exporting from Final Cut Pro to a Streaming Quicktime File
This tutorial will cover exporting to a streaming quick time file.
1) Once you have finished editing your video in Final Cut Pro the first thing that you want to do is Render your audio and video. To do this we want to select “Sequence” across the top then go down to “Render All” then move over and select “Both”, this will render both your video and audio.
2) Now that the rendering is completed we export the timeline, to do this select the timeline with a single mouse click on the timeline. This step avoids exporting single clips from the viewer window.
3) Next we can click on “File” located in the menu across the top, we will then move down and select “Export”, then move over and choose “Quick Time Conversion”
4) Under the format Drop Down arrow you want to choose "Quick time Movie"
Exporting from Final Cut Pro to iDVD
This tutorial will cover exporting from Final Cut Pro for iDVD.
1) Once you have finished editing your video in Final Cut Pro the first thing that you want to do is Render your audio and video. To do this we want to select “Sequence” across the top then go down to “Render All” then move over and select “Both”, this will render both your video and audio.
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