Storyboarder:Tangible Storyboard Interface

Josh Gomez, Travis Pinnick, Chris Goetz

Storyboarder: How Does This Help?

Filmmaking is a very collaborative and a very expensive undertaking.

Our product proposal aims to facilitate this collaborative process and reduce the costs involved.

A typical day of a movie shoot requires dozens (possibly hundreds) of cast and crew members to be present.

This is very expensive, so each step of the filming process must be precisely planned out well before actual production begins.

Storyboarder: How Does This Help?

Shooting schedules are used to maximize the production and reduce the costs of cast, crew and equipment.

However, before a schedule can be made, the director must know exactly how every scene of a movie will be shot.

Storyboards in the Production Process

The traditional way this is done is with storyboards.

Each shot of each scene in the movie is sketched out.

Now the director does not have to waste time experimenting during the live shoot.

Traditional Storyboard Creation

Sometimes these storyboard images are drawn on cards and rearranged while creating the production schedule.

Traditional Storyboard Creation

The problem with storyboarding is that it creates a bottleneck in the collaborative process.

Several people make up the creative team: Director, Producers, Assistant Directors, Cinematographers, etc.

However, only one person can draw out the storyboard sketches. Often the artists are hired hands, not actual members of the creative team.

The sketches are also not dynamic. Experimentation is difficult.

The Current Problem

Digital storyboard software alleviates some of the problem by making the images somewhat more dynamic.

However, the members of the creative team are usually looking over the shoulder of an expert user of the software, so collaboration and experimentation are still hindered.

The Current Problem

To open up this bottleneck in collaboration we propose a tabletop TUI that can create storyboard images dynamically by moving physical objects on a board.

This follows in the footsteps of previous projects like Urp and metaDESK.

Storyboarder: Concept

The Storyboarder is a workbench TUI that can detect the position and direction of phycons on the surface.

Each phycon would represent a person, prop, light or camera.

This is better than sketching because it imitates the process of movie making, which involves moving 3D objects to create images on a 2D medium.

Storyboarder: Functionality

This kind of interface facilitates both collaboration and experimentation, as the images are rendered dynamically and several people can move the objects around at any time.

Storyboarder: Benefits

Storyboarder: Activity Flow

Users interact with the storyboard by physically manipulating the phycons to stage the next frame in the storyboard.

Once a frame has been created, the process begins again.

Storyboarder: Implementation

To be determined, but possibilities include RFID tags and the I/O bulb.

Actor phycons will need to be posable.

Camera icon must be able to determine its own angle and to change the depth of focus.