Chapter 5. The First AssemblyStoryboarding

Every video production is essentially a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Special effects, titles, and voice-overs can all be added later in the process, but the first step is to get the order of your story right so that it actually has these three story elements.

To get this right, people in the film industry use sketches of each scene to help them visualize how the film will eventual look. Historically, this actually meant sticking hand-drawn sketches on a wall and shuffling them about to create a basic visualization of the story for the producer, director, and writer. This technique is called storyboarding and it is essential for video productions of any significant length. Nothing saves timeand moneylike preparation!

By using the storyboarding technique, you can visualize the first layout of the video with a few simple mouse clicks, experimenting with the order of scenes or just figuring out which take works best. This is called creating a first assembly, and its importance should not be overlooked, because this type of workflow can be much quicker than using the Timelineespecially in the initial stages of the project. It does carry a disadvantage in that you can't add titles and certain effects, but you don't really need these items at this stage. Much more important is making sure you have a coherent story. Remember: all the special effects in the world will not keep your video alive if you fail to provide a good story.