One of the most important aspects of pre-production is to create a storyboard.  While having a script perfected is important, it is just as important to have a storyboard before you start shooting so you don’t miss any essential shots.  This will prevent you from wasting time and money.  In this week’s Reel Rebel we look at an app by Cinemek to help you easily put together a useable storyboard using your iPhone and iPad mobile device.

Reviewing the Storyboard Composer App by Cinemek:

If you are an iPhone user, a great app to use for storyboarding is called Storyboard Composer by Cinemek ($14.99 in iTunes App Store).  Storyboard Composer is the world’s first mobile story boarding application.  You don’t need to know how to draw and there are no complicated programs to learn.  It works with pictures from your photo library, so your first step is to take some pictures. Think about how you want your shot composed, set up a rough version of the scene in your home or on your location if you can make that happen, and then snap some photos.   That is something you can handle on your own.

Then the fun part comes, you get to dive into the app.  To load your pictures tap—Menu, New Storyboard, and select photo library.  Then all you need to do is click on any of the pictures you want to load up for your piece.

When you click cancel to close the screen, you’ll now see all of your photos on the canvas.  If they’re not in the right order, just drag them around until they tell the story properly.  This isn’t difficult at all.

It doesn’t matter if there aren’t actors in your pictures.  Just click on the photo you want to add someone to, click on these little people, and you have instant actors.  Just fiddle with the settings at the bottom until they match your characters as closely as possible.  Once you’re done adding people into your scene, add some motion to your shots.

Storyboard Composer has made it extremely easy to simulate camera moves.  Just select your shot, pick what kind of move you want to add from the choices on the left, and adjust it intuitively with your fingers.  When you play it back, magic happens.  You see what your final shot should look like. You can even set a duration time to make sure you get the timing right.

When you get everything in place, you can playback all your clips in order and see a rough idea of what your final product will be. Make any final tweaks and then either export a movie file, or export a PDF to keep with you on set to keep you on track and keep you from forgetting any of your shots.  You can have your first story board up and running in a matter of minutes. Storyboard Composer allows professionals and students to portray their vision to others in an easily controllable and transportable format. Overall, Cinemek has provided people who can’t draw at all an easy way to organize their storyboards so they can run shoots as professionally and efficiently as possible.