Storyboard/Shot development

I think we were all pretty happy with the shots we had to far from the storyboard, but we really wanted to make sure we were establishing the intern and the environment in the best way possible, so we went through the opening scene to refine our efforts.

We all really liked the idea of having the establishing shot of the office seem completely endless, just to establish that he's a small fish in a big pond and as a reference to the scene from The Incredibles. As a result Dave was going to be modelling a few cubicles and duplicating them beyond belief! The first shot was going to be a really slow zoom towards the only lit area in the office where our intern will be sitting.

This shot above is a detail shot just to reinforce the environment, and it was pan across an isle in which a photocopier is still printing. It might not be the most exciting of all shots but we all think that it will add to a nicely paced introduction to the film and set it up well. It's hard to think of the timing of a film when it's only at the boarding stage, but I think it's important to keep it in mind, and this shot is a product of that thought process. It also makes a great case for being a shot to show the title in, but we can decide on that later.

This shot is to establish the intern's cubicle. We wanted it to be overly messy and clogged so that it emphasized how busy and over worked he is. It's going to be another slow horizontal pan to continue the momentum established in the first couple of shots.

When we showed everything to Mike he suggested that a close up on a character's face is often the best way to establish a new character is to show their face so the audience immediately identify with them, which is why I split the previous shot into two shots so that this can be possible. I think it's going to add a nice variety in the opening scene as there is a good variety of shots.

This shot is more or less the same as the previous version of it, but maybe framed a little tighter depending on the props that populate the desk. Hopefully once they're all modelled we can work a nice shot with the props low down in the foreground.

This is the updated storyboard. We sat down as a group and went through all the shots to refine them so Joe could build a more accurate animatic. Everyone had some really good ideas, particularly a sequence of shorts shots that link the office environment to the lift that Joe came up with and everyone liked. We also refined the fast paced sequence in the lift that I'll go into more detail about later.