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Writer's pictureRachel S.

Storyboarding it UP

It's no secret that this is the most ambitious project we have ever attempted. There are more stunts, more practical locations, more dialogue, and a huge spectrum of emotional scenes (from hopelessness to euphoria). But by far the thing that makes his movie so hard is the special effects.


We have our second shooting day in two days and all of the scenes (we're going to try and get three filmed) feature Toothless. We have our CGI model of toothless and our special effects team are in the middle of rigging him right now, BUT, they have given me very specific instructions, "Do not film scenes where Toothless is behind any characters."


That means I can't wing it day-of. I have to plan. And that means storyboarding.



First thing I do is read over the scene entirely and mark it up. I have my director's copy and it's all rainbowfied with notes like "Perform screen-test first," "Props: sketchbook & axe," "Morning shoot" and little dragon doodles. I also like to check off scenes once they are filmed and then again once thy are edited.


After reading of the scene, I begin to sketch. I used 3x5 cards, tacky-tack, and a large mason board. Now, I am not an artist AT ALL so it may be that no one else on the planet can interpret my storyboard, but at least it helps me conceptualize the whole thing and put together my shot list.



I storyboarded the scene where Hiccup and Toothless become friends AND the scene where Hiccup cuts Toothless loose. I still have to storyboard the Astrid-Meets-Toothless scene before filming-day-two. That scene is a whole two and a half pages long so it's going to take a while to storyboard.


Matthew helped me draw a few of the pictures. Here's a comparison between my art (left) and his hard (right). One of us has a future in storyboarding and it's not me :)

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