Introduction

Why is a book about storyboarding appearing in a series entitled ‘Studies in Screenwriting’? One might think the two practices are almost diametrically opposed. A screenplay tells a story in verbal form; a storyboard is visual. Screenwriting has existed, in some form, at least since the emergence of narrative films around 1903, whereas it is commonly held that storyboarding began in advertising and in animation, notably with the Walt Disney studio’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), becoming established in live-action narrative cinema only with preproduction on Gone with the Wind (1939). For most studio-produced narrative films, a screenplay (albeit one that is likely to differ from the final shooting script) will have been written in advance of production, telling the whole story of the film — among other reasons, to make clear to potential artists and financial backers where their creative or economic energies will be invested. On the other hand, while some films are storyboarded in their entirety, most are not; if required, their production is often piecemeal and ad hoc, created to assist in the visualisation of particular elements of a film such as complex action sequences.