What Is a Storyboard? How to Make One and 8 Famous Storyboard Examples
In the early 1930s, a Disney animator named Webb Smith started drawing scenes on separate sheets of paper and pinning them to a wall in order. Disney credited him with the first storyboard. Ninety years later, George Miller lined a room with 3,500 of them to plan Mad Max: Fury Road. The tool hasn’t changed much. Here’s what a storyboard is, how to make one, and 8 famous storyboard examples from film.
TL;DR: The Film Before the Film
A storyboard is a series of drawings that shows each shot of a film in order, before anything is shot. Each panel shows the framing, the action and any camera move. Directors use storyboards to plan scenes, brief the crew and save money on set. You don’t need to draw well. Stick figures and arrows work.
What Is a Storyboard?
A storyboard is a sequence of drawings, one per shot, that shows how a film or scene will look on screen. Think of it as a comic strip of your film, drawn before the camera rolls.
Each panel usually shows:
- The frame: what the camera sees, and how big the subject is in it
- The action: who moves where, drawn with arrows
- The camera: any pan, tilt, dolly or zoom
- Notes: dialogue, sound and shot number underneath
The first complete storyboards were drawn for Disney’s Three Little Pigs (1933). Gone with the Wind (1939) was one of the first live-action films to be fully storyboarded.
A storyboard is one of several planning tools, and they’re easy to mix up.
| Tool | What it is | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Storyboard | Drawings of each shot, in order | Seeing the scene before you shoot |
| Shot list | A written list of every shot | Scheduling the shoot day |
| Animatic | Storyboard panels cut to time, with sound | Testing pace and timing |
| Previs | Rough 3D animation of the scene | Complex action and visual effects |
Who Makes a Storyboard?
On a big film, a storyboard artist draws the boards with the director. On a small film, the director usually draws them.
Some directors draw every board themselves. Ridley Scott went to art school and boards his own films. “I know how to draw,” he says on his Alien: Covenant commentary, and he turns up with sequences “boarded, shot-by-shot, wide, close, medium.”
Others draw only what they need. According to the Directors Guild, Christopher Nolan storyboards only his action scenes. Clint Eastwood uses them only when special effects are involved.
Why Use a Storyboard?
- It saves money. Problems you fix on paper don’t cost a crew’s day.
- It briefs the crew. The DP, the gaffer and the stunt team see the same plan.
- It shows gaps. A missing close-up is easy to spot in a row of drawings.
- It sells the film. A strong board helps a producer see what you see.
That last one isn’t a small thing. Ridley Scott’s storyboards for Alien helped double its budget, as you’ll see below.
How to Make a Storyboard
- Break down the script. Mark every point where the camera would cut.
- Write a shot list. Number each shot, with its size and angle.
- Print a template. Our free storyboard template has six 16:9 frames per page and a shorthand cheat sheet.
- Draw one frame per shot. Boxes and stick figures are fine. Get the size and the angle right.
- Add arrows and notes. Show camera and actor movement, and write the dialogue and sound underneath.
For the shot sizes and angles to choose from, see our guide to the types of shots in film. For the shot list itself, see our shot list guide.
Here’s where I start with any storyboard.
I board the hardest scene first, not scene one.
The hard scene is where the money goes and where things go wrong on the day.
Once that’s on paper, the easy scenes take care of themselves.
8 Famous Storyboard Examples
These famous storyboard examples are ranked by how much the drawings shaped the finished film. Number 8 is a director planning every frame. Number 1 is a film planned in drawings from the very start.
8) Parasite (2019)
Bong Joon-ho drew every shot of Parasite himself, and the boards became a book.
- Director: Bong Joon-ho
- Who drew the boards: Bong himself
- The storyboards: Published as Parasite: A Graphic Novel in Storyboards, 304 pages
- Why it matters: Proof that storyboards can be a finished work in their own right
Bong storyboards because it calms him down. “I’m always very nervous in my everyday life and if I don’t prepare everything beforehand, I go crazy,” he has said.
The book pairs his drawings with the film’s full dialogue. Put it next to the film and the shots match closely. The staircases, the basement window, the rain. It’s all there on paper first.
7) Jurassic Park (1993)
Jurassic Park turned its storyboards into moving tests before the scene was shot.
- Director: Steven Spielberg
- Key scene: The raptors hunt Lex and Tim in the kitchen
- What the boards became: Animatics by Phil Tippett’s team
- Why it matters: It shows the step from storyboard to animatic
The kitchen scene was planned in drawings, then Phil Tippett’s team made rough stop-motion animatics of it. They let Spielberg see the timing of every shot before the full-size raptors were shot on set.
It’s a good lesson for any suspense scene. The storyboard tells you where the raptor is in each frame. The animatic tells you how long to hold it.
6) Star Wars (1977)
Star Wars needed storyboards because the effects team had to build shots that had never existed.
- Director: George Lucas
- Storyboard artist: Joe Johnston, among others
- Key sequence: The Death Star trench run
- Why it matters: The boards told the model makers exactly what to build and shoot
Joe Johnston drew storyboards of the trench run for the effects crew. Every ship, every angle and every explosion had to be planned, because the models and the cameras were being built from scratch.
Lucas also cut war film footage together as a guide for the dogfights. The storyboards turned that rough idea into shots a crew could make.
5) Kagemusha (1980)
Akira Kurosawa painted his storyboards for Kagemusha while he waited years for the money to make it.
- Director: Akira Kurosawa
- Who painted the boards: Kurosawa himself
- Why he painted them: He waited nearly four years for funding
- Why it matters: The paintings became a record of a film that almost didn’t happen
According to Criterion, Kurosawa “directed” the film in his head while waiting, and painted what he saw. The images grew larger and darker over time, full of armies and cavalry charges.
Kurosawa trained as a painter before he became a director. The finished film has the same bold colours as his paintings. Put the two side by side and you can see the frames he planned.
4) Gone with the Wind (1939)
Gone with the Wind was one of the first live-action films to be storyboarded from start to finish.
- Director: Victor Fleming
- Who drew the plan: William Cameron Menzies
- New job title: Production designer, created for Menzies
- Why it matters: It brought storyboarding from animation into live action
The film went through several directors. Menzies’s drawings held it together. The title “production designer” was coined for him, to show he had the final word on the film’s look.
His drawings translated producer David O. Selznick’s ideas into images the directors could shoot. Menzies won an honorary Oscar for his use of colour on the film.
3) Psycho (1960)
The shower scene in Psycho is so tightly planned that its storyboard artist later claimed he directed it.
- Director: Alfred Hitchcock
- Storyboard artist: Saul Bass
- The scene: The shower murder, built from more than 70 shots
- Why it matters: It shows how much a storyboard can shape a scene
Saul Bass, who also designed the film’s title sequence, storyboarded the shower scene. In 1970, he claimed he had directed it. His boards are close to what’s on screen.
Janet Leigh disagreed. “Saul Bass is brilliant, but he couldn’t have done the drawings had Mr. Hitchcock not discussed with him what he wanted to get,” she said. The storyboard is the plan. The director still has to make it.
2) Alien (1979)
Ridley Scott’s storyboards for Alien doubled the film’s budget.
- Director: Ridley Scott
- Who drew the boards: Scott himself
- What they did: Fox raised the budget from $4.2 million to about $8.4 million
- Why it matters: A storyboard can sell a film, not just plan it
Scott drew detailed storyboards for Alien in London, including the ship and the space suits. When Fox saw them, “they could see the vision,” Scott says, and the budget went “to $8.4m like that.”
His drawings are known as Ridleygrams. “Vision is everything,” he has said. “If you haven’t got it, then it’s going to be harder work.”
1) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Mad Max: Fury Road was planned in 3,500 storyboards, and they drove the whole film.
- Director: George Miller
- Storyboard artists: A team including Brendan McCarthy
- How many boards: About 3,500, lining the walls of the Mad Max room
- Why it matters: The film is almost one long chase, and the boards held every beat of it
Fury Road is one long chase with very little dialogue. Miller planned it as a sequence of images, and the storyboards covered the walls of the production office.
That led to a myth that the film had no script. “Of course there was a script!” Miller told IndieWire. “I suppose it’s because of the room lined with storyboards.” The script told the story. The boards showed how to shoot it.
Look at that list again.
Bong and Kurosawa drew their own boards. Scott did too. Miller had a whole team.
There’s no single right way. What they share is that every one of them decided the shots before the day.
That’s the habit to copy, not the drawing style.
For more on planning your shoot, see our guides to film coverage and mise en scène. To see how the order of shots changes their meaning, see the Kuleshov effect. For the full process, see our filmmaking guide.
FAQs About Storyboards
How Many Panels Does a Storyboard Need?
One panel per shot, plus extra panels when a shot moves a lot. A short advert might need a dozen. A feature can need thousands, like Fury Road.
Do You Need a Storyboard for a Short Film?
Not for every scene. Board the scenes with action, effects, stunts or complicated camera moves. For a simple dialogue scene, a shot list is often enough.
What Software Can You Use to Storyboard?
Paper and a pencil still work best for most people. For digital boards, many artists draw in Photoshop or Procreate. There are also dedicated tools like Storyboarder, Boords and Toon Boom Storyboard Pro.
The Final Cut on Storyboards
A storyboard is your film drawn out shot by shot before you shoot it. It shows the framing, the action and the camera move in every frame.
The famous storyboard examples here range from Bong Joon-ho’s own drawings to Fury Road’s wall of 3,500 panels. Every one of them shows the same thing. The best films were seen on paper first.
Print our storyboard template and board your next scene. Then check each frame against the story you want to tell.
Jay Neill
Jay Neill is the founder and managing editor of iFILMthings and believes everyone should have access to the film resources they need to plan their filmmaking project, which is why he’s dedicated iFILMthings to helping all filmmakers.