Like all the projects in this course, adapting a quote, lyric, poem or joke into a short digital film takes a lot of planning at the outset. The more care, thought, and problem-solving you put into the early stages of your adaptation, the more likely that your finished movie will match your artistic vision. In digital film production, Abraham Lincoln's approach to planning is a good place to start:

In the world of movies, the planning stage before the cameras start rolling is called pre-production. In a big budget movie, pre-production can involve everything from writing a screenplay to casting actors to scouting locations. But big or small, every great film starts with a strong storyboard. For this lesson, we're going to take the text that you're adapting, and "sharpen the axe" by planning out each shot, scene, camera angle, and sound effect.

In a previous module, we used a simplified storyboard to help plan a webcomic/visual narrative. Hopefully, you got a chance to see just how helpful storyboarding can be, letting you sketch different compositions and experiment with subjects and backgrounds to refine your visual storytelling. Now that we're adding the video dimension (including time, sound, and movement) our storyboards have to get more complex as well. Instead of just dealing with static panels, video storyboards include directions for things like sound effects, 3D camera work, background music, and more.

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As you navigate through these pages, have some blank copies of the storyboard template below handy. That way, if you feel inspired by any of the shots, techniques, or sound effects you see, you can quickly draft them into your storyboard for later use. At the end of this lesson, you'll turn in your completed storyboard for feedback from your teacher.

Click below to download a storyboard template, and print out a few copies to sketch on as you read.