There is no question that a storyboard can be the make or break for the fluidity of a films. Storyboards are the preliminary artwork of a film and often set the artistic tone well before any shooting begins.
With the storyboard comes endless possibilities in vision and style for artistic directors and cinematographers and are often as engaging in their own right as the final films. Thanks to the Museum für Film und Fernsehen in Berlin, we have the opportunity to see the story boards for some of the United States most controversial, and pop culturally relevant films.
Storyboards have lacked the title of ‘art form’ historically, though many films of late have begun including story board artistry in ‘making of’ extras on DVDs and the world of graphic novels has been opened up in the art world dramatically in the past decade. It is not entirely surprising that until now, they’ve remained outside a museum context.
“The curators of the exhibition have succeeded in bringing together loans of storyboards from important international film studios and film archives for approximately 20 influential films, such as GONE WITH THE WIND (Victor Fleming, 1939), THE BIRDS (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963), TAXI DRIVER (Martin Scorsese, 1976), APOCALYPSE NOW (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) and A.I. – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Steven Spielberg, 2001). A large percentage of the exhibits are being publicly displayed for the first time.”
Storyboard images will be displayed alongside the actual films to demonstrate the importance of pre-visualization of a film and the directors execution of that vision. It’s a really fantastic concept for a show – I just wish I could get to Berlin before the show closes in November!
As our In Depth Artist Bradley Furnish discussed in our interview, the storyboard is not just vital for an animated film’s production: it’s as important to the film as the actual script and is where the editing process begins and ends. While I do not believe animated films are included in this exhibition, I would be interested in a whole exhibition of how animated films’ storyboards compare to the final product as well.
If any Junkyard fans get to see the show, let us know!
ArtDaily /
