We have discussed the principles of good design; how to make a design plan; your options for finding and using locations; and planning and building sets. However, at some point during all these stages—and even after them, as you enter production and are actively planning specific shots—you will benefit from doing some kind of previsualization, or previs, work. The term previsualization can refer to state-of-the-art 3D computer animation, hand-drawn storyboards, simple sketches, paintings, simple models, stick figures drawn on napkins, and just about any other kind of conceptual art you can manufacture to help visualize individual elements, designs, themes, shots, camera moves, camera angles, complex visual effects, and any other images you will eventually need to create. The idea is to give yourself and collaborators a clear guide, or template, for what those elements will look like in the end and if they will physically fit in the space you are using.

Thus, in filmmaking, we often use the term previs loosely—it is not a linear process that takes place at one particular point during a project’s life. Rather, it is a process that is used whenever it can be helpful. It helps production designers certainly, but it also helps directors, cinematographers, visual effects artists, and many others as they plan their work, while they do their work, and when they are trying to solve problems during those stages. In this sense, previs has become in recent years an important component of making big-budget films containing significant effects and stunts. Entire companies have emerged dedicated solely to the idea of helping filmmakers use computer animation and other visual effects’ techniques to conceptualize complicated sequences.

Student filmmakers will have a hard time hiring previsualization companies or doing complex computer graphics previs work in most cases, but with affordable off-the-shelf tools available, even simple digital previs is within your grasp. You can use techniques such as storyboarding, sketching, and making concept art to help you design sets and elements, but over time, you will learn to use these digital tools throughout the entire filmmaking process. For production design, in particular, they will be most helpful to you only after you have a firm understanding of the basic design principles, planning, requirements, and options that we have examined earlier in this chapter. That is why we have saved the previs discussion for last.

Sketches and Storyboards

Sketching shots and designs by hand is as old as motion pictures themselves, and the term storyboards has been around since at least the 1930s, when it was popularized at Walt Disney Studios as a tool for making animated films. For decades, studio artists there and elsewhere would draw comic-book style panels depicting various scenes in animated movies, and then film them “flipbook style,” creating so-called story reels, or animatics, and even adding music, dialogue, and effects in order to create templates for filmmakers to follow as projects moved along. Over time, the concept was adopted by live-action movies.

Today, previs options have branched out into numerous areas, including doing everything on a computer. However, one way or another, even if you later plan to digitally previsualize shots or sequences, you will need to incorporate the idea of manually sketching out at least some key ideas into your design approach once you have done meaningful research. There is no single right way to do it, nor is there a requirement to be particularly artistically talented or detailed in your sketches. In fact, some designers warn against overloading storyboards and sketches with mi­nute detail to the point where you’ve added more than you can feasibly execute or stifled creativity regarding other possible options. Often, professional designers prefer to go with simple hand-drawn pencil or watercolor sketches.

At the prime level, there are two categories of sketches that you will need to concern yourself with. The first is concept art. Basically, these are relatively detailed drawings or diagrams that you create as reference templates for costumes or sets for yourself or other artists tasked with building those elements, frequently drawn in pencil, charcoal, or marker. When feasible, create concept art for all major characters, costumes, and sets to help you design the movie more efficiently.

Next, you will want to create storyboards. Storyboards are often used to visualize entire films or sequences as individual frames or shots, essentially as hand-drawn panels created to resemble comic books. Depending on your skill, time, and resources, they might be extremely detailed or little more than stick figures or shapes. But either way, their goal is to illustrate how you see characters, sets, and objects interacting in particular environments. This will help you design shots and camera angles and lighting setups later, and it will make it easier to move, solidify, and organize various design ideas along the way. Storyboards will also help you understand what you will and will not actually have to create, because they let you see what area of a set and what backgrounds will be in shots, and which will not.

Ideally, after you approve your storyboards, you will be able to make even more detailed drawings or blueprints of sets based on what you’ve come to understand from your research and your analysis of your storyboards. At that point, you have guides for building sets and set pieces, when necessary. Here is a list of the various storyboard approaches:

In the next section, we will discuss some of these digital previsualization techniques in more detail. But for hand-drawn storyboards, even if you don’t have the artistic talent to produce compelling, professional-level sketches, the web is full of dozens of resources for learning basic drawing and storyboarding skills. Don’t let your lack of drawing skills inhibit you from eagerly pursuing concept art and storyboards. As Jack Taylor noted, even rudimentary drawings will “get your mind going” as the design process picks up steam, and that can only help your project.

Digital Previs

Digital previsualization of shots, sequences, even entire movies, has been growing in sophistication and popularity in Hollywood since it first evolved in the late 1980s out of computer-aided design (CAD) technology used in the architecture world and the then-nascent computer-generated imagery (CGI) industry. Today, many filmmakers are commissioning extensive 3D animation to plot out complex sequences down to the last detail. Although you won’t have the time, resources, or experience to do that kind of work at first, you will have access to affordable yet powerful 3D tools, as we discuss in Chapter 13, with which to do some fairly simple previs work if you put your mind to it (see Tech Talk: Digital Storyboard Tools, below). In some situations, straightforward 3D imagery can give you a better perspective on what the shot’s design and technical requirements will be, and how it might work from different angles.

For production design, digital previs can be particularly helpful in allowing you to reach conclusions about what elements you will be able to build and shoot practically and what elements you will need to create on the computer. Particularly for action sequences, car chases and crashes, and explosions, filmmakers have found that they can more safely and affordably create those shots digitally. But even so, they need to design each and every element—from walls and cars to flying glass, smoke, and fire—just as they would for real-world elements, and previs is central to succeeding in that regard.

As we’ve noted, digital previs can also help plot camera moves and lighting placement in great detail. If, for example, you will be shooting actors in front of a green screen on-set, you can figure out long before productions starts what the digital background that will replace that green screen will look like by experimenting with different designs, including colors, textures, and patterns, during the digital previs process.

Indeed, digital previs is crucial in the growing trend toward combining real-world elements with digital elements through “construction” of entirely virtual sets or set extensions. Virtual sets—used either when productions cannot afford or do not want to travel to locations or build sets, or for stylistic reasons—involve shooting with a green screen and later surrounding the actors with CG environments. Set extensions are used when filmmakers build partial sets, and then combine them with virtual “extensions” that complete the illusion. While the digital age has made this easier to do, the technique of creating matte paintings on glass and combining them with minimal footage from the set is almost as old as the art of filmmaking itself. Like real sets, virtual sets or set extensions require intimate design. The computer allows unprecedented experimenting in this regard. You can change backgrounds, colors, and shapes; add or remove signs, cars, text, and doors; and so much more.

Digital previs allows you to view the sets you are designing in three dimensions and in greater detail than a hand-drawn storyboard can provide. As the creator of the film and its production designer, you will hopefully already have a good, three-dimensional vision of the movie in your head. But the ability to work with that image using sophisticated software on a computer, show it to others and get their input, and then revise it rapidly has been a major breakthrough.

An added benefit of doing digital previs is that it involves many of the same tools and techniques as visual effects work and, in some cases, will allow you to create portions of digital assets that you will be able to build on later, when you strive to create the eventual 3D image, rather than starting over. If you previs a building, for instance, the basic wire frame and possibly other elements may serve you well when you begin doing visual effects work on the scene involving that building.

Here are the basic steps you will go through if you choose to do digital previs work on your movie: