Research and Planning 13: Our Shoot-Board

Following the production of our animatic, we decided that a shoot-board would be necessary for our test shoot. Our shoot-board collected important information about each shot such as a sketch and description of the shot, a list of the necessary props and actors and a section to note down our best takes. All of this information will be important for our test shoot and our layout will make it easy glance at the shoot-board and find what we need. In theory, the shoot-board is an adjustment to our storyboard which makes it more usable during our shoot.

We decided to group our shots according to the availability of our actors, as it would allow people to leave earlier in case they had other commitments. We also prioritised our long-shots, as there is more room for error since there are more actors involved than a mid-shot or close-up.We also tried to group together shots that would be necessary for continuity. In the shoot-board page above, the events in shot 10 will carry over into shot 11, so that we can maintain a continuity link.

After our test shoot, it was obvious how vital our shoot-board was. It gave us a clear order of shots to follow and meant that we were able to gather our shots quickly and effectively. However, in the future we will need to be certain that the information on the shoot-board is current and correct, otherwise we may miss shots or shoot them incorrectly.