Initial Storyboard

Our movie opening begins with a black screen and then the sound of an alarm being played almost immediately. Next, the black screen quickly fades to a close up shot of an alarm clock, letting the audience know where this sound is coming from. In the same shot, we see a hand shutting off the alarm. Now this cuts to a medium shot of Betty, the main character of this movie opening, waking up and getting out of bed, giving a face to the hand that turned off the alarm. This shot also is the beginning of the voiceover, in which Betty explains who she is and her story. The next shot is a slow pan of Betty’s room that reveals to the audience different important items important to the story such as a teddy bear and ripped up picture of her and  boy in her trash can. While the camera pans around the room, Betty is also getting ready for the day and the movie’s opening credits are shown at the bottom of the screen. Melanie drew and captioned this part of the storyboard.

 

In this next part, there is a cut to an over the shoulder shot of Betty in front of a mirror, applying makeup, as the voiceover continues. Betty finishes her monologue and then her doorbell rings suddenly. Now the scene cuts to a POV shot of Betty walking up to the door and opening it, seeing her ex-boyfriend, James, at her doorstep. He holds flowers and is pleading with Betty to talk the situation out with her. Then, there is a cut to an over the shoulder shot and a brief period of dialogue between the two in which over-the-shoulder shots are used. Daniel drew and wrote under this part of the storyboard.

 

This scene, which immediately follows the last, is a medium shot and cuts from the previous scene to a POV angle from Betty’s perspective as she is slamming the door on James’ face after having a brief conversation. The flowers he had in his hand fall to the floor as he appears desolate. He cries out “But!”, as a last attempt to talk to her, but the door closes before he can say anything more. Next, the scene transitions with a dissolve to a wide shot of James walking away from Betty’s house towards the street, sulking with his head down. Melancholic score plays in the background. Now there's a cut to an over the shoulder shot of James and August, his ex-fling, pulling up to him in her car, winding down the window. August says, “Get in the car.” and the music that had been playing stops. I drew and captioned this section of the storyboard.

This last part starts off with a cut to a shot of James walking to August's car. As he moves closer to August’s car, they begin arguing, and as he comes into the car, the arguing erupts into fighting. Then, the camera begins to move backwards with a  dolly shot, showing James and August still arguing. Finally, as the camera has the two characters still in the shot but showing them much smaller, it tilts up to the sky, in which the title of the movie would appear. In addition, the sound of August and James’ argument begins to sound muffled and melancholic music blocks that sound out. Tori drew and captioned this part of the storyboard.

In my group, we discussed and compromised on what we were actually going to have in our movie opening, keeping in mind what is actually possible for us to film and include in such a small time frame. For example during a discussion, we all agreed to make the opening scene end with a tilt up towards the sky and began to formulate what we wanted the opening scene to look like throughout, and once we were all on the same page we started. But, since none of us are very masterful in the art of drawing, we decided to split up the storyboard amongst us four, each of us doing 3 squares, and I think it turned out pretty well.