How to write a shot?

Just looking at these split-shot scripts, you can basically feel the general atmosphere of the film and the story you want to express.

So first of all, we need to know, what is a split shot?

On the basis of the script, the director divides the story into different scenes, angles, sound and picture forms, lens relationships and so on. According to his general idea, it is equivalent to the text workbook of the visual image of the future film. Later shooting and production are basically based on storyboards, so it is also called directing scripts or workstations.

Storyboard is the director's overall grasp and design of concreteness in the transformation from literary image to visual image, which can reflect the style characteristics of director's creation.

The content of storyboard generally includes the number of shots, scenes, shooting methods, length, content (referring to actions, lines, scene scheduling, environment modeling in a shot), sound, music and so on. , listed in a unified table.

It can be said that it is the shooting plan and blueprint of the film.

The use of shot sketches (storyboards) may have started with Walter Disney's first cartoon. Weber Smith is an animator in Disney. He invented the storyboard in the early 1930s. However, even without Disney's influence, the close relatives of comics and storyboards had taken root among most Americans in the 1930s. The concept that movies can be visualized with a single drawing board has become an inevitable development result.

Hitchcock is perhaps the best director at storyboards. He used elaborate graphics cards to decorate his videos and controlled the shooting process to ensure that his initial ideas could be completely transformed into movies.

His hand-painted perspective "North by Northwest" has now become a must-read manual for many filmmakers to watch and learn. For Hitchcock, who was an artist, this is also a way to confirm that he is a film creator. He often says that his films have been finished before they are made. We can prove that he seldom looks at the viewfinder at the scene, because the scene is just equivalent to a storyboard, which has already been completed.

In Hollywood, almost every movie has a special storyboard production team. From the early silent films to the current blockbusters, the production of storyboards is an essential part of the film preparation. According to the script and storyboard drawn by the director, after the basic composition of the picture and the time of moving the mirror are prepared in detail, the film starts shooting, and the director can arrange shooting according to almost every picture.

However, in China, due to the lack of funds, the lens analyzer industry has gradually begun to emerge in recent years. Generally speaking, it is the films of great directors that pay for film splitters. Some films with small investment, the director can draw, the director will not let photography draw, and some don't draw at all.

There are also directors in China who attach great importance to storyboards, and Tsui Hark is one of them.

For example, the hand-painted storyboard of Tsui Hark's movie Di Renjie's Kingdom of Heaven circulated on the Internet. Over the years, he has kept the habit of hand-drawing lenses, and he will draw a few strokes whenever he is inspired. The hand-painted shots of films such as Empire of Heaven, Seven Swords Down the Tianshan Mountains and Biography of Shushan are all gorgeous and beautiful without exception.

The function of the splitting mirror mainly has several purposes:

First, he allows film creators to show their ideas in advance, and like writers, they develop their ideas through constant revision;

Secondly, it can be used as the best language to exchange ideas with members of the overall production team.

The spread value of split mirror will increase because of the complexity of production, but it is not limited to action scenes and high-cost production. Even small-scale and dramatic movies can benefit from storyboards.

But the most obvious limitation of storyboard is that it can't express motion, not only in the picture, but also in the camera. In addition, there are optical effects beyond the performance range of storyboards, such as overlapping, fading in and out, and the manipulation of depth of field and focus. The most direct way is to use words and sketches to describe things that cannot be drawn.

The following picture can be regarded as the standard format of animated storyboards. Of course, there are other modes. In fact, as long as the director's intention is clearly expressed, the story can be explained completely. There is no fixed frame.

The leftmost part of this form is the scene number and lens number. Many beginners will mistakenly think that a frame is a shot number, but it is not. Some continuous shooting will take up several frames in order to show the motion mode of the lens or the behavior of the characters in the lens in detail.

Then there are "pictures", that is, putting pictures in these squares.

The "content" and "lines" part is to write clearly some contents and shooting techniques that can't be expressed by pictures and need more explanation, such as the motion mode of the camera, the lines of the role, facial expressions and movements.

"Seconds" is seconds. Some video productions don't need to be particularly accurate, but for animation creation, they are often accurate to seconds, so the lens time is mainly marked here.

On the far right is the description of sound effects and special effects.

Next, I will introduce some basic theoretical knowledge related to split mirror.

A storyboard (storyboard) drawing requirements:

1. reflects the director's creative intention, creative thinking and creative style.

2. The use of the split lens must be smooth and natural.

3. The image of the picture should be simple and easy to understand.

4. The connection between sub-lenses must be clear. (generally does not mean the connection of the sub-lens. Only when the serial number of the sub-lens changes will the connection be switched. If necessary, it can be dissolved inside and outside. The storyboard should be clearly marked. )

5. Signs such as dialogue and sound effects need to be clear. Dialogue and sound effects must be clearly identified and should be identified next to the appropriate storyboard pictures. )

Second, about the lens.

Scene: it is a picture taken by the camera with a zoom lens at different distances or different ranges from the subject. In order to meet people's psychological and visual needs when observing a certain thing or phenomenon, movies can change different scenes at any time, just like in real life, we often look at the whole scene from a close distance, look forward, or stare at the main body or even a part of things according to the psychological needs at that time. In this way, the image reflected on the screen will change more or less; In lens shooting, there are also distant view, panoramic view, middle view, close view and close view.