Easy Pre-Production Cost Saving Tips p.1

Storyboards are an extremely helpful tool to everyone on the film set during production. To enter production without storyboards is to your entire film budget at risk! An architect wouldn't expect builders to build a building without blueprints and a military general wouldn't start a war without mapping out a plan for the soldiers. Using the same logic, directors should not enter into production without fully storyboarding out the entire script. Of course, every plan is subject to change. But at least, you should start out with a thought out plan.

My first tip for saving money during pre-production is to storyboard the entire shooting script. This will save lots of money during production and help keep your production within your film budget because the crew can look at them to be on the same page. There is less of a chance of lights being placed wrong or production design going wrong if the crew can see the director's creative vision. Don't worry so much about making each cell a beautiful masterpiece. First and foremost, make sure that it's easy to understand and looks like how you want to shoot each shot (angle, POV, camera direction, framing, etc).

Studio films must abide by the guilds which include storyboard artists. These storyboard artists frequently consult with the director to understand and most accurately draw his/her vision. On independent films, the director will usually hand draw the first set of storyboards to capture all of the above mentioned purposes (angle, POV, etc.). If the director wants a professional version or maybe the crew can't easily understand the storyboards, then you can hire a storyboard artist. Like I said above, guilded storyboard artists can cost thousands of dollars. However, you can find much less expensive artists, like recent art school grads will do them for significantly less. (This is pretty common since art school students usually do this work on the side to pay the bills). Another even less expensive option that was recently introduced to the industry is storyboard software, like Storyboard which costs a couple hundred dollars usually.

To see how much money to allocate in your film budget to storyboarding, check out www.quickfilmbudget.com