Storyboarding Exercise

For your object description assignment, you’ll need to create a storyboard as part of the planning and development process. As storyboarding practice, this exercise asks you to take a TV commercial and construct a storyboard for it, the reverse of the normal storyboarding process.

Task

Select a TV commercial from the list below. Use Storyboarding Pro to create a descriptive storyboard for the commercial, simulating the producer’s original plan. You’ll need to log on to the course lab materials, drag the Storyboard Pro folder from the Programs volume to your own class folder, and then beginning recording shots, music, screen text, narration text, and display techniques for the thirty-second ad. For a quick introduction to entering data into StoryBoard Pro, see the tutorial at

No piece of software is perfect for storyboarding. With iMovie, you can create an effective visual storyboard easily exported, but there is no place for recording systematic notes. With Microsoft Word, you can create effective individual storyboard frames, but you lose the overview capability of miniature clips. With Excel, you have notetaking and calculation capabilities but limited search and videography. With Storyboard Pro, you have quick data entry, sorting, and search, but no time calculations at the frame level or an easy way to show simultaneous effects visually. [Note: for this exercise, you might want to record frame numbers rather than seconds in Storyboard Pro and ignore its total time feature.]

Commercials

Select one of the following commercials to use for this exercise:

Apple Switch Ads:

Hartford:

Lincoln:

Mass Mutual:

Pepsi: Pepsi.mov

Saturn:

Schwab:

Purpose

This exercise is designed to

  • provide practice in storyboarding for upcoming assignments
  • increase understanding of video editing (shot selection; musical, visual, and narrative transitions, cut lengths)
  • analyze frame-based timing
  • increase ability to import and export files from program to program

Evaluation

This exercise will be evaluated primarily on the following criteria:

  • completeness of the storyboard record
  • clarity, accuracy, and helpfulness of clip annotations
  • usability of the storyboard for actual production

Submission

Transfer a Storyboard Pro copy of the commercial storyboard in the class Drop Box. Use a name format that includes your last name and the commercial name. Example: Bovenmyer-Saturn.fp5.

Due Date

March 4