The Art of Movie Storyboarding

Storyboard artists are some of the movie industry's most unsung heroes. Not so in the animation business. In fact, the use of storyboards began at Walt Disney Studios with the 1933 classic animated short "Three Little Pigs." One of the first live action films to be completely storyboarded was "Gone with the Wind." The artist was legendary film production designer William Cameron Menzies.

Storyboard artists eventually became a necessity because most film directors and many art directors couldn't draw.

Many of Hollywood's great film directors like Alfred Hitchcock were known for drawing their own storyboards shot by shot.

Saul Bass

Hitch, however, was only a passable sketch artist. In his classic film "Psycho", he needed special help with the most complicated scene in the movie, Janet Leigh's shower death scene. That's when he brought in genius sketch artist and designer Saul Bass, who he had originally hired to design the spare yet intricate opening titles for the film.

After Hitch's death, Bass claimed that he had actually directed the film's shower scene. Actor Janet Leigh and assistant director Hilton Green both disagreed with Bass. (See Saul Bass's original shower scene storyboard sketches here)

Saul Bass was, in fact, best known as the king of movie title designers. Besides "Psycho", he designed the titles for Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and "North by Northwest." He, however, is more closely associated with director Otto Preminger than Hitchcock. His legendary Preminger titles included "Exodus" and "The Man with the Golden Arm."

Bass's simple yet elegant style, however, grew out of fashion in Hollywood for years. In the eighties, he was rediscovered by director Martin Scorsese, who used him to design titles for "Goodfellas", "Cape Fear", "Age of Innocence", and "Casino."

Bass died in 1986.

J. Todd Anderson

In the past twenty years, J. Todd Anderson has come closest to inheriting Saul Bass's legacy as the unsung storyboardist collaborator of genius film makers Joel and Ethan Coen. The Coens believe in shot by shot storyboarding not just as an artistic tool, but also as a primary tool to keep their films within budget. Anderson has worked on every Coen film from 1987's "Raising Arizona" to 2000's "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

According to Anderson, it would take him five to six weeks and 600 sketches for an average Coen Brothers film. His process included rapid sketching in pencil, and then finishing the details with pen and marker.

In 2002, J. Todd Anderson stepped out of his anonymity and directed his first motion picture, "The Naked Man", from a script that he had co-written with Ethan Coen.

SOURCES:

"From the drawing board to the big screen", Cindy Young, Wright State University

"The Big Lebowski", William Preston Robinson, pgs 64-66

"The Naked Man", Keith Phipps, The AV Club

"Hollywood's man behind the title", Susan King, L.A. Times

"Three Little Pigs", Disney,

"Exploring Storyboarding", Wendy Tumminello, pgs 29-30