Conclusion

What pressures might redefine the storyboard in the not-too-distant future? The storyboard’s current form has been shaped by the comparatively passive and classically linear experience of cinematic narrative; yet with the increasing popularity, profitability, and critical acclaim surrounding the modern video game, it is perhaps this moving image medium that may exert the greatest influence over the future development of the storyboard.1 With growing frequency, action-based feature films — particularly stereoscopic releases — include sequences that might be mapped directly into a companion video game. An example is the sweeping barrel escape in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), which features as the ‘Barrels out of Bond’ level in the video game LEGO: The Hobbit (2014). While such crossovers seemingly originate in the cinematic domain, with the film typically released before the game, it is clear that film-makers working in mainstream cinema are increasingly — and understandably — looking to video games for direction, and not the other way around. This raises an important question regarding the future role of the storyboard in such a cross-media system, because the storyboard is a much less widely used pre-production and production document in video game development.