Prof. Michael O'Rourke
DDA 514, Storyboarding & Storytelling

The Arrival

Background

A young student from <Country?> arrives for the first time in New York City to attend art school. He/she feels nervous. It will be the first time for him/her to be living so far away from home, and everything will be so different here. (Note: The audience does not know any of this as the film opens.)

Opening Scene
Storyboard the first 15-30 seconds of this as a live-action film. The first scene is in the airplane as the airplane approaches NYC.

Audience comprehension
Focus especially on audience comprehension - that is: How much do you want the audience to understand? When do they understand it? How? Remember that if the audience understands everything immediately, they will probably get bored. If they don't understand anything at all, they will probably lose interest. Use audience comprehension to generate interest.

Three components
Remember also to think in terms of the three basic components of cinematic storytelling:

A) What happens? Keep the events simple. Don't be flamboyant or dramatic here. (This is live-action, not animation.) Nothing out of the ordinary – just normal events.

B) What do we see? What camera angles do we see things from? How close or far is the camera from the subject? Is color significant? Facial expressions? Props?

C) What do we hear? Sound effects? Voice? Dialogue? Music?

In this first scene, make this short introduction to the story as interesting as you can. You want your audience to want to know more, to want to see the rest, to want to continue watching. Don't try to tell everything or convey everything here. This is just the introduction, only the first scene of a longer story. But you must make the audience immediately interested.