Creating the Vision... storyboards and all that

The storyboards from our fabulous artist Karla Lozano are pretty much completed. All 20+ panels were ready by December 30 in preparation for my scheduling meeting with co-writer Mick Erausquin. Since no one knows the script better than we do, Mick stepped in to help schedule our shoot and review the boards for planning the shot list.

While features have Unit Production Managers, this short film doesn't have the luxury of a large crew to organize, plan and schedule the shoot. Mick and I put it in some order -- identifying outdoor scenes, shots that need daylight in the background, and grouping cast into workable chunks of time so they don't have to be there all day every day. This means important things like shooting scenes 4 and 5 to start, then shooting the final scene 16. Twenty-two pages for an indoor/outdoor shoot doesn't give us the luxury of shooting in order.

Today we had our crew meeting and a rehearsal for the lead actors for the key scenes. This also gave us a great opportunity to try on wardrobe, hairstyles and plan makeup and accessories. I'll be spending this week returning items that didn't work, but overall they looked fabulous. The gals sure have some swanky accessories.

The storyboards were a great help and once we get the last few scenes reworked we'll have a great set of plans ready for production. Karla is a talented illustrator and agreed to do her first set of storyboards for us. We provided a script, and she took 100+ photos during our stage rehearsal. Also, our Art Director Sam Murphy and I did a walk-through of the whole script at the location so I was able to provide her a DVD to draw from. You can check out Karla's work on her website.



Karla is a fine artist illustrator based in the Bay Area. She has a BFA in Illustration from California College for the Arts and is a graduate of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Her work includes surreal imagery, pen and ink detailed graphics, and colorful cartoon drawings. She is currently working on a new series of drawings.

Just putting all the pieces in place... like a big jigsaw puzzle.