Create Your Video Storyboard
Video Planning—Step 4 of 6
Now it's time to think about storyboarding and scripting. A storyboard (MS Word, 24 KB, 1 page, February 2012) is a powerful document that contains all the visual, audio and time components of your video. You can use pictures to describe the visual element, like this:
Storyboards capture these three elements for every scene of your video:
Visual:Description—A quick, rough sketch—no need to be an artist!
Time—The length of this particular image, in seconds.
Audio—Narration/Music/SFX - What you will be hearing when the image is shown. The three major components of audio are: Narration (people speaking), Music (background sound) or Sound Effect (SFX)—doors opening, car horns, birds calling, etc.
Storyboards can also skip the pictures and just describe the visual elements:
Do not use a script, since it lacks the visual descriptors and only captures the dialog.
How to Time Your Video
Slowly read your audio narration out loud while counting the seconds to determine the length of each section in your storyboard. Using your fingers to count can help you focus on both at once. Then add up the seconds to see how long it is.
If your video is an interview or a series of interviews, you’ll have to make separate storyboards for each video. However, you can still create items like video "intros" that can be used multiple times.
Resources
- Storyboard Template 1 (MS Word, 24 KB, 1 page, February 2012)
- Storyboard Template 2 (PDF, 322 KB, 3 slides, April 2012)
- Storyboard Example (MS Word, 95 KB, 4 pages, March 2012)
- Storytelling Framework for the Web
Next Step
Go to our Video Planning step 5: Legal Responsibilities Around Video Content
Content Lead:
Jonathan Rubin
Page Reviewed/Updated: July 11, 2012