Here’s a reel of boards for a scene from Horizon. I did extensive storyboards for all the shots in Horizon that would need visual effects and assumed other scenes wouldn’t need it. Turns out storyboards keep everyone on the same page in terms of screen direction, especially when you’re dividing a scene into pieces that will be shot across several days. We wound up with a scene that wouldn’t cut together, so we scheduled a day for reshoots. These boards were tying down exactly what we’d need to shoot. On a short film where you don’t have anyone working continuity, a little time spent storyboarding will save your ass.

As soon as I finished these boards, they were rendered useless by a story grenade (you won’t see this version of the scene in the finished short) but fortunately, the shots still worked. You do the preparation so that you can afford to be spontaneous.

Caveat: the boards aren’t actually timed out, so the timing is awfully even. Still, you get the idea.