Thread by @JamesOmokwe

ANOTHER PRODUCTION THREAD

How important is concept art and story boarding in any production?

A couple of things to do but here is what i do. One of the main crew members i hire is the production designer. They are responsible for the entire look and feel of the film.

Sometimes, there is a colour scheme, or a particular look and feel that the director wants.

Here is an example of some.

In the above images, you can see that colour is used on purpose.

Colour is one thing. There is more. Just a general look of each scene or location, costumes, props etc.

So the Director, producer and the production designer will sit down and discuss the artistic direction...

direction of the film.

Here is an example... I shot a short film in 2017. It was a story set in a fantasy Yoruba land but we borrowed ideas from old Oyo. Here are some of the characters we designed for our story. It gave us an idea on how to execute our costumes,...

make up and even some props

This process is usually called concept art phase. I usually divide it into two

1) Character design
2) Environmental/ Building design

Here is some Environmental/Building design

Even though we didnt get to build the sets for this production ( we had planned to do 13 episodes of the short), we did go ahead to do costume, make up and special effects design for the characters.

Now we took these images, we worked on a 2 page script and used this as a guide.

The next thing i did (I directed), was to draw up a story board. Sometimes directors can also do a shotlist. Here is an example

This is very important. It guids you while filming. Sometimes a lot of directors go on set with a preplanned shot list in their heads. This is not bad. However there will be pressure on set and you may experience a creative block while on set.

Here is how the story board helped me. Unfortunately i can not show the full film but enjoy the screen shots.

Here is some more...

In summary, conceptualizing the entire world from your story is important. It gives you a better edge creatively when filming. In your spare time watch some BTS videos on youtube to learn more.

You can always ask me questions as usual.