Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer, he is known mostly for his work directing the Sci-fi Horror Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Historical Drama Gladiator (2001), and The Martian (2015).
In an interview I have found on YouTube with Ridley Scott he talks about Storyboarding, he says that storyboarding is the first look of the "film" this can be animation, movie, TV or a short Documentary, he describes that as you look down the boards you see the film come together. As starts reading the script of whatever he is working on he will imagine glimpses of the storyboard and how he wants it to look, and would give him as he describes "Flashes" and imagine how places should look and the location of what a scene should be.
As soon as he has thought of a scenes location or how he wants it to look he will start to "Thumbnail" which is a quick sketch which he can refer to later on when he is sketching his storyboards, he will then refer back to his storyboards and revise them and if he feels like the storyboard should change he will add more thumb nailing to it, or add certain notes that he feels will make the scene better, as soon he goes onto a set to direct he has a conversation with the storyboard artists to prepare for directing, so when he arrives on set he knows exactly what he is going to do, because he needs to know exactly what the whole scene should look like and try and translate that vision onto the film.
When he goes to film a scene, he says that this method has been done by "Film makers since the 20s" he describes how Alfred Hitchcock was known for his iconic storyboards and that he would stick to the storyboard, and describes how going from one small thumbnail drawing to making an entire storyboard is like telling a story, Ridley Scott describes that the best way personally to storyboard is to get rid of the "White Canvas" which he talks about what many artists do, because if you don't do this he finds himself always looking at that empty space and treats it like a whole blank sheet, and to a writer's perspective they will often make a script as fast as they can as they don't like working with pages upon pages, so that makes it easier to go back and improve a set piece of work or add more to it. Someone who Ridley has worked with describes it as massaging a page and making it seamless. You start off with thumbnails you get sucked in to certain scenes and have more thoughts of how you can use the actors more, the script more and how it can help improve a scene.
Personally he doesn't draw everything frame by frame, he draws enough so that he can follow and then direct the story, as best as he can, if there is a scene he needs then he will draw it in more detail, effectively making a comic strip. Ideally this what storyboards would be as you are seeing the "dynamics" of the sequence and if it's only dialogue then you can always change what happens with that scene instead of having 2 talking heads, depending on the perspective.
He doesn't really like electronic storyboards being physically shown a room on a screen and being almost "Toured" around the scene, personally he doesn't like that he likes being put into the room and making observations himself, there can just be the cage form of the storyboard or you can add colours and more detail into that storyboard to get a better idea of the scene, Ridley says he doesn't need to go into this detail as it takes too long, he talks about how visually he has been critiqued of being an over designed artist, and took this to heart to begin with in his career. But now he just stays loyal to whatever he plans.
Here is the video Below:
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