Looking for Storyboard Software

Thanks Steve.

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Thanks for the tips.

Hi guys,

Really interesting to read that I'm not the only one struggling with this! In our company, multiple departments work with the storyboard that my team creates: content development, audio, video, animation, etc. I struggle with a couple of things:

• how to keep and safe guard version control within multiple department in relation to storyboarding, perhaps almost a 'patch notes' solution to this?
• How to deduct only that information that a specific department needs (for example, our audio crew only need the script, not the developer notes, etc).

And of course: automatic numbering, scene type indication, etc would be extreme helpful. 

I do agree with Steve, however, that almost every company out there does it different (although there should be a big common denominator).

My 2 cents!

Cheers!

Marc

Hi, Maureen:

Attached is a section of a storyboard I created recently. I think everyone struggles with storyboards. My Word based template is far from perfect and doesn't work well for courses that have a lot of branching. But it does let the reviewer see what information is being presented and how the slide is going to look. You'll various columns for VO narration, text on-screen, image on-screen, a place for reviewers to give feedback one I've build in Studio or Storyline. I don't usually include a lot of sfx, but if I do I'll just note that in a comment.

Totally open for ways to improve it if people have suggestions. Steve?

Perhaps someone could share how they storyboard fairly complex branching?

Mine are similar to yours, Daniel. A few differences but similar concept in row based capture of segments within a single element of a presentation or activity.

I like to have everything matched up side by side. I never use more than 2 columns to keep things simple and (mostly) readable. I add notes / remarks in [brackets]. If these are something I want to suppress from a reviewer, I'll add a style to my stylesheet and make them small and white to match the background. That way I can make them all bigger and dark when it's ready to send to the next stage (developer, if that's where it goes next). I usually develop my own stuff so I don't need to make a heap of notes to explain myself to myself I went crazy with the brackets, more than I normally would. This makes things a little less readable than I would expect.

There are a couple of advance organizers I like to add to the board as well. This can help avoid the need to add complex representations within the boards themselves. 

See the attached for an example of my style. This has been honed and adjusted for about 15 years. Simple is what I've found works best for all (and best for me). Many storyboard formats are just too complicated and hard to review. 

Similar to Daniel's boards, this type of row / column separated content makes it easy to copy and paste your narration into another document (I use a clean document for my narrator). 

I'm also doing something similar to Steve's and Daniel's whenever a process(es) needs to be defined. If I need a mindmap i use iThoughts on the iPad.

Once that's over and done with, I the use Adobe Proto on the iPad to give them a quick visual presentation, slide-by-slide. The good news is it's a huge timesaver, and often gives me a chance to segment content efficiently before development. The bad news is : It has been discontinued.

When I am creating a new course (after the content has been gathered), I head over to my whiteboard and start drawing everything out - slide by slide (or one slide to represent a group), the branching and everything is included in my drawings.

After this, I add more detail to my 'Storyboard template' to use as a guide when I actually start to create the slides.  My template is pretty basic, however they get the job done for me - especially because I am the only person who ever sees them.  I have attached the doc for you.

-Eric.