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Reader SurveyShoot Review — StoryBoard Artist 4
May 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Tom Patrick McAuliffe
Comprehensive storyboarding tool adds polish to preproduction
Would you like to make better videos? Want to pitch your visual story ideas in a professional way to the powers that be? You can boil it down to one word — preparation. Once you have a story with a good beginning, middle, and end, you have a script. Next, it's time to plan the production shoot. For me and for many video makers, that means stickmen and crude pen drawings. Although this method may get the point across, there's still room for misunderstanding, and whether it's a few thousand dollars on a local shoot or a big-budget movie, time is money.
New for StoryBoard Artist 4 are the 3D Director Tools, which let users create large arrows that show the direction of actors or cameras.
Enter PowerProduction Software's StoryBoard Artist 4 and its junior cousin StoryBoard Quick. With StoryBoard Artist 4 (SB4), you can turn your ideas into creative blueprints and build storyboards for video, film, DVDs, games, and almost any visual or stage project. A professional-looking storyboard helps ensure a smoother production, and if you need funding, it'll also help with that.
SB4 allows you to create storyboards with only a few clicks. The software includes pre-built locations, buildings, and props, all shot from various angles, along with 3D characters posed in various positions. (More elements are available in optional libraries, or you can import your own digital images.) Characters can be full length, from the waist up, or a close-up shot of a face, and there are even various facial expressions you can use, all with no rendering. Available props range from plants and animals to planes, trains, and automobiles.
To storyboard, however, you need more than representative frames of the angles you want shot; at least a portion of the script is necessary. Importable script file formats include .txt and .doc, as well as those from dedicated script-writing programs like Final Draft Pro.
The new ability to play or animate your storyboards is nothing short of wonderful. This adds a whole new aspect to what was formerly a one-dimensional paper-and-board medium. SB4's new pan/zoom functions, frame duration control, and between-frame transition tools allow users to create great, albeit rough, animation-like “movies.” It is a long way from the old days of paper and pen.
The software install ran smoothly, and it was nice to see that the application came for Windows or Mac. I tested StoryBoard Artist 4 on a Mac G4. Right off the bat every tool was readily identified, so the learning curve was almost zero. The tool icons and indeed the whole interface under Mac OS X is truly a thing of beauty. Each tool icon is easily recognizable and similar tools are grouped together. If you get stuck, email tech support is free, and I found it to be very responsive, something increasingly rare these days.
PowerProduction’s StoryBoard Artist 4 includes pre-built 3D characters posed in various positions, in addition to basic drawing tools that allow users to write directly on the frame.
Video editors will find familiar the program's timeline GUI with multiple tracks of editable sound . The audio is displayed as a volume waveform, which helps you time out the duration of your scenes or shots. SB4 is almost like a little editing program in that, with the new resizable audio tracks, you can import sounds, dialogue, and music and overlap each with the other. You can also edit sound directly on the timeline. To help keep track, there's a timecode clock that measures each scene and your total project time in minutes, seconds, or number of frames or feet of footage. It would, however, be nice to have SMPTE code recognized.
I like my scripts and storyboards to follow the side-by-side approach — audio on one side, and sample video frames or camera and shot directions on the other. I imported my script, and it appeared in a window above my timeline, allowing me to keep track of the scenes and ensure they matched the dialogue. You can get to any point in a script with a single click via the SB4 navigation tools. You can also link to and import info from budgeting programs such as Excel or Filemaker as well as industry-standard production-scheduling software packages.
When it came to images, I imported just about every image format, including JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PIC and even GIFs grabbed straight off the Internet. Users can also import PDFs and a few other image formats to use as backgrounds upon which to place characters. Using a photographic background, however, was a double-edged sword. Although a photographic background adds realism, included characters can stand out too much, wind up the wrong aspect ratio, or get lost. To save time and effort, I found it most effective to use the elements that the software provides.
SB4 also includes some basic drawing tools, which allow users to write directly on a frame. I found this handy for notes on production and lighting people or actors.
StoryBoard Artist 4 makes it easy to import scripts as .txt, .doc, or Final Draft Pro project files, and images in just about every popular file format.
When it comes to printing out a hard copy of a storyboard, SB4 has an almost unlimited number of pre-built or self-created page formats. Users can change the frame size, caption font size, and item locations on the page. I always like to use the side-by-side video/audio format for my scripts, and SB4 offers that, also allowing me to change the size of the frame and automatically adjust the narration copy. I also enjoyed having complete control over all elements on the page, from headers to footers, along with the ability to create customized storyboard scripts — one for the actors, one for the prop person, one for the costume person — each with side notes. My storyboard printouts included such important information as start and end times, scene transition, duration for each frame, and a field indicating the last time the script or scene was updated. SB4 also allows you to publish your storyboards directly to the Internet as HTML files or output them, complete with animations, to QuickTime or Final Cut Pro 4.
Among SB4's best new components is its Animation feature. Users can transition from shot to shot in the storyboard through cuts, dissolves, wipes, pushes, slides (up, down, left, and right), and iris in and out. Changing a transition's duration is a simple click-and-drag affair. I found the clockwise and counterclockwise radial wipe transitions very useful in showing the passage of time. The pan and zoom features allow simple but effective in-frame animations. Just set up a scene, and then have the camera start at one character and do a variable-speed zoom to another character in the background or vice versa as a pullback reveal shot. Likewise, you can pan from one side of the frame to the other. Another innovative feature are the 3D Director Tools, which lets users make large arrows that show the direction of actors or cameras. Arrow colors and opacity are changeable. All of these new features lift storyboards to a whole new level.
When evaluating software, you have to ask if it will eventually pay for itself. With SB4, I'm off to a great start. I recently made a pitch to do an anti-drug PSA for a local nonprofit and received the go-ahead. Among the reasons cited was the clarity of the printed storyboards, and the short animated QuickTime versions I sent via email sealed the deal.
It's nice to have choices when you're planning a production, and with this software you can choose to draw your own storyboards or to use animation or stills, print or digital. No matter which option your preproduction planning requires, SB4 makes creating professional production storyboards a simple affair.
BOTTOM LINE
Company: PowerProduction Software
Los Gatos, Calif; (800) 457-0383
www.powerproduction.com
Product: StoryBoard Artist 4
Assets: Easy learning curve, deep feature set, available for Mac and Windows.
Caveats: Doesn't recognize SMPTE code in timeline.
Demographic: Video pros looking to add polish to their storyboards.
Price: $799.99 (StoryBoard Artist), $279.99 (StoryBoard Quick), $299.99 (StoryBoard Artist Upgrade), $49.99 (each optional StoryBoard add-on package)
Tom Patrick McAuliffe is a journalist, entertainer, and video creator living on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.
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