Story, Screenplay, & Storyboards

Story Development

Plot
Plot or storyline is all the events in a story, particularly towards the achievement of some particular artistic or emotional effect. In other words it's what mostly happened in the story. Such as the mood, characters, setting, and conflicts occurring in a story.

Story arc

• Plot is often schematically represented as an arc reflecting the rising action described in the following phases:

1. Initial situation – the beginning. It is the first incident that makes the story start.
2. Conflict or Problem – goal which the main character, or other characters, of the story has to achieve.
3. Complication or Rising action – obstacles which the main character has to cope.
4. Climax – highest point of interest of the story.
5. Resolution – what happens to the character after overcoming all obstacles and reaching his goal, or failing to achieve the desired result and not reaching his goal.
6. Conclusion – the end result of the plot.

Short Story (for short film)

• Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually, a short story will focus on only one incident, has a single plot, a single setting, a limited number of characters, and covers a short period of time.

• In longer forms of fiction, stories tend to contain certain core elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting, situation and main characters); complication (the event of the story that introduces the conflict); rising action, crisis (the decisive moment for the protagonist and their commitment to a course of action); climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point of the story with the most action); resolution (the point of the story when the conflict is resolved); and moral.

• Because of their short length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern. Some do not follow patterns at all. For example, modern short stories only occasionally have an exposition. More typical, though, is an abrupt beginning, with the story starting in the middle of the action. As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a climax, crisis, or turning-point. However, the endings of many short stories are abrupt and open and may or may not have a moral or practical lesson.

• Of course, as with any art form, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary by author.

Script writing

• Is a back bone for a whole movie.
• It must be in present tense
• Description for the environment is written for visual aspect, different than a novel.
• It must have: scene title (location and time), action (what is happening, what should be seen in the screen, camera view, and sound effects), dialogs or narration (character's name and expression, and what they talk about)
  

Screenplay format:

• EXT- external, INT-interior, follow by the location name and time, either "DAY" or "NIGHT", all must be in big caps. eg. INT. CLASS 105 - DAY
  

• Short forms: (V.O.) and (OVER) - for voice over of a person or a sound produced by an item that is not present in the scene. POV - point of view of the character.
  

• Words with big caps in "action" is for new character's name. To make notice for the reader when a new character is introduced in the movie, or it can also represent sound effects. For example, Jason realizes a cell phone is RINGING, it is from the girl sitting behind him, SUSAN, dark hair, light make-up, t-shirt and jeans, she picks up the phone from her handbag and answers the phone.
  

• Sometimes, the writer can include brief emotional description for the character before the dialog, in italic form. eg.

Big Daddy
(angry)
I hate you, you ate all my cookies, I hate you for the rest of my life.

• Cinematography description can be included in brief as a suggestion. Nevertheless, it is the director and the cinematographers who are responsible in how they shoot it, not the writer.
• "FADE IN:", "FADE OUT:", "CUT TO:", "CROSSFADE:" are the few editing notes a writer can put in the screenplay.
• using bold and italic in the dialog can show different speaking styles when the character is speaking to different people alternatively in a scene.
  

Sample screenplay from the movie "Da Vinci Code"

SOPHIE
Oui. The numbers are only out of order.

Langdon’s eye narrow; how the hell did he miss that?

LANGDON
Ow. It is the Fibonacci sequence. From
the top of the order, too.

Sophie hands Fache a sheet of paper from the case file.

SOPHIE
Commissarie, I will explain. But I just
Have a message for …
(turning to Langdon)
Professor Langdon, right?
(to Fache)
I get the impression it’s urgent.
( to Langdon)
I am Sophie Neveu, DCPJ Cryptology.
Your embassy called Division.

She hands Langdon a scrap of paper.

EXT.CHURCH OF SAINT-SULPICE-NIGHT
A might Gothic structure. WIND blows. (OVER) A
PHONE.

INT.CHURCH OF SAINT-SULPICE-PARIS-NIGHT
A small room. Stone floors, Bed, Bible, hot plate. Single
Window open to the autumn air. (OVER) The phone
RINGS on.

An elderly WOMAN’S hand reaches out from bed
To answer. She sits up groggily. SISTER SANDRINE
BIEL.

Story board
A film storyboard is essentially a large comic of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand to help film directors, cinematographers and television commercial advertising clients visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Often storyboards include arrows or instructions that indicate movement.

Some live-action film directors, such as Joel and Ethan Coen, used storyboard extensively before taking the pitch to their funders, stating that it helps them get the figure they are looking for since they can show exactly where the money will be used. Other directors storyboard only certain scenes, or not at all. Animation directors are usually required to storyboard extensively, sometimes in place of doing a script.

Animatics
In animation and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence. More commonly, a rough dialogue and/or rough sound track is added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.

Often storyboards are animated with simple zooms and pans to simulate camera movement (using non-linear editing software). These animations can be combined with available animatics, sound effects and dialog to create a presentation of how a film could be shot and cut together

Guide Line for story development:

1. Character / Initial situation
2. Character's need / Conflicts / problems
3. Goal/achievement
4. statement of conclusion
5. in what kind of Setting /situation / location 
6. events (last event is usually when climax occurs)