Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542693
departments having conversations on how the sequence will be seen, built and captured. The action takes place on every level of the house, from basement to attic, so we gave visual clues to keep the audience oriented, like booming up and down between floors and dollying through walls. Once the action starts, it's no longer necessary to clarify geography, so the audience can revel in the manic tempo of the hunt. Set Builds If a Production Designer or previs team has built 3D models, they generously share them. Often, Storyboard Artists start so early on the models have yet to be built. If this is the case, I'll go into SketchUp and kit-bash. "Kit-bashing" comes from the early days of ILM. When the Model Makers were building spacecraft for Star Wars, they would buy hundreds of toy-model battleship kits to use the parts for ship details. I rarely need to build an extensive, highly accurate model for storyboards, often kit bashing shapes is enough. But SketchUp's user library is so extensive, you can almost always find something in the ballpark that'll work for the boards. SketchUp's field of view feature is a brilliant tool for blocking. It allows you to audition multiple lens lengths to find the perfect shot. It's an approximation, of course, but it's incredibly useful when building out a scene. This was particularly helpful during the tower climb sequence.