Today’s producers enjoy stream-lined workflows with software that caters to every task from scheduling to distribution. Gone are the days of scripts from Microsoft Word and hand-drawn storyboards. Or, if we were desperate, we’d hand-draw stick-figures and hope they’d work. So, in the past, if we wanted good storyboards, we had to hire someone to draw them. Most of the readers of Videomaker are Lone Wolf producers, not drawing artists drawing isn’t exactly our forte.
Many of those hand-drawn storyboards are incredible works of art and some are even collector’s items.
#FREE WRITING STORYBOARD PROGRAM MOVIE#
Scriptwriting was a true blood, sweat and tears artform, and once the scriptwriters’ job was done, the story would be given to a storyboard artist who would hand-draw visual representations drawn frame-by-frame of how the writer or producer envisioned the finished movie to be. (But unfortunately, they might have been given blame for its failure.) Many scriptwriters worked long hours into the night hacking their stories, and were often rarely acknowledged for the final film’s success. When the IBM Selectric Composers came along, scripts were processed faster – the scriptwriter didn’t have to slow down to fix errors for the carbon copy, but they still lacked the instant rearranging that we can all do now with word processors.
The use of carbon paper necessitated perfect typing skills and a scriptwriter’s job was both artistic and manual. In the early days of movie and television production, a producer would come up with an idea and give it to a scriptwriter who would bang out the story on an old Smith Corona or Underwood typewriter.