Previsualization (or Previz or Previs) is the art of visualizing how a scene, shot, or sequence will play out using tangible media.
Imagining something in your head isn’t previsualization, it’s just imagination. You could call it internal visualization. But, that can’t be recorded or shared.
Previz helps filmmakers confirm whether planned shots work and effectively communicate their vision to the rest of the team. Previz could take many forms, and this article will go over a few ideas and methods to previsualize.
What’s the best way to previsualize?
The best way to previsualize is the way that works for your film. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. The two most important reasons why filmmakers use previsualization are:
- To ensure the shots they have planned actually work
- To communicate their idea to the rest of the team
Simplicity is important. For straightforward dramatic shots and dialogue scenes, the director and cinematographer should ideally be able to see the sequence in his/her head. It would be wasteful to have any formal previz for these scenes or shots.
For more complicated scenes and setups, previz can greatly help in confirming whether the director’s intentions pan out or not. Sometimes it can be as simple as forgetting the set is of a certain size, and the shot planned might show what is out of bounds.
For really complicated action scenes and stunts, previz can help communicate the director’s vision to the entire team so everyone knows what’s expected. It saves the production a lot of time and money.
If you’re new to learning to film dialogue scenes or stunt scenes, I have comprehensive courses for both in the Wolfcrow Online Film School. Check it out!
Now let’s go over a few previz methods and software, with pros and cons of each. Let’s start with the simplest.
The simplest previsualization method
The simplest previz method, short of imagining it in your head, is to write down the shots on paper, like this:
1. LS. Hero enters room
2. CU. Hero’s feet as he trips the booby trap
3. ECU. Hero’s stupid face as he explodes
4. EXT. Building. LS. Block blows up
This would be part of a shooting script, prepared by the director.
It is practically a formal visual breakdown of the screenplay with shot numbers and type of shots involved. This ensures nothing is left out, and all the information is conveyed in the shots.
For simple dramatic films the shooting script is more than enough previz. If most of the film is just shot, reverse shot, over the shoulder, etc., previz is totally unnecessary. In fact, it might even be too restrictive.
Storyboarding
A storyboard is a visual representation of shots, typically created by a storyboard artist or director. These frames illustrate key actions, compositions, and camera movements.
This is what it could look like:
Storyboards can be simple hand-drawn stick figures as you see above, or really complex hand or computer-drawn images with shading, paint, etc. What a film director does is look for a happy medium that will get the job done without wasting time or money.
Obviously, the more complex the frames, the more expensive it will be to produce them. The costs can add up quite quickly!
You could divide storyboarding into two categories:
- Traditional: Hand-drawn on paper, then scanned for sharing.
- Digital: Created using software and tablets, offering instant sharing, easy edits, and color flexibility. I find most storyboard artists prefer this nowadays.
Who makes storyboards?
The Storyboard Artist
The storyboard artist sketches and paints storyboards. Storyboards are frames from your movie that you think are important enough to record, study and share with other crew members.
The really experienced artists are fast and have an excellent understanding of challenges unique to filmmaking:
- Lens perspective and focal lengths
- Mood and lighting
- Creative editing
- Camera motion and talent blocking
The hardest part of storyboarding is to draw in a way that aligns with the director’s vision for the film. After all, the director is only using storyboards (or previz in general) to validate his or her ideas. The storyboard or previz isn’t the end goal!
You can go all out with storyboards if you wanted to, make it a full-blown comic strip. But what’s the point?
Modern storyboard artists, at least the ones I’ve worked with, prefer tablets and ipads for drawing. Here are the reasons:
- With hand drawn boards, you have to carefully scan every single image.
- Resizing, compressing, etc., takes up a lot of valuable time. Organizing and file naming is another hassle.
- A computer image is ready to be resized and shared instantaneously. Imagine if you have thousands of frames. Which method is better?
- You can edit images easily when the director asks for changes. With a paper board, you must almost always start from scratch.
- You only have to buy one pen. Even for colors!
- Nowadays with AI-generated backgrounds, storyboard artists can get the job done faster. Sadly, it might even replace the conventional storyboard artist entirely in the future!
Storyboards are still the predominant method of previzualization for medium budget films. For over a century, it was the only way to previsualize, and you needn’t get more complicated than that.
What if a director can’t afford a professional story-board artist? Can they do it themselves? If they can draw, sure, but what if they can’t?
DIY Previz Software
I’ll provide a few examples, but please don’t consider them as endorsements. I’ve only used one of the following four:
Toonboom Storyboard Pro
Toonboom Storyboard Pro restricts itself to 2D objects, and allows the storyboard artist or filmmaker to sketch. However, this software takes things to a whole new level:
- You can create objects in layers, similar to Photoshop.
- You can manipulate these objects in 2D and 3D space, with cameras, similar to After Effects.
- You can edit your shots on a timeline with audio, similar to an NLE.
Here’s what you can do with Storyboard Pro and Harmony:
Frameforge Studio
Frameforge is a 3D previz tool that has built-in characters, props, sets and probably anything else you’ll need. It also allows for various cameras and lenses, and you can render frames as ‘toons’ or as realistic looking 3D scenes.
Frameforge has been around for a long time. It is what I use:
One of its more powerful features is that it also supports stereoscopy. Frameforge does not include complex animation.
Filmmaker
Filmmaker (previously known as ‘Moviestorm’) helps to create, animate, film and publish scenes.
I tried it many years ago and the results are impressive:
Other software:
Some of these apps require skill in drawing, and others provide ready-made templates that can be dragged and dropped. When I need to storyboard something on set, I just sketch stick figures. When I need to know the challenges of moving a camera in a confined space, I pick Frameforge for the advantages it provides.
One thing you shouldn’t expect is to have this easy. It’s extremely time-consuming to place characters in 3D space, design sets (even pre-built ones) to your specifications, move cameras around, light a scene, etc. On top of that, you still need to account for rendering time. In fact, making a previz is almost like making an animation film.
My experience has been that even if you use these programs to the max, you’ll still need the artistic ability to pull off realistic looking scenes. Even with these apps, I still have to use Photoshop to “fix things”. That’s another learning curve.
Overall I feel film directors can benefit from learning one of these because you can use it to create frames to pitch films to a producer as well. It’s not going to be a wasted effort.
Advanced Previz Software
Advanced previz software is not really previz software. At least they are not made for previzualization. They are 3D applications used to make visual effects.
Here are some industry-standard 3D applications for previz:
- Unreal Engine – Real-time rendering engine used for hyper-realistic previz.
- Blender – Free, powerful tool with animation and rendering capabilities.
- Maya – High-end 3D animation software used in Hollywood previz.
- 3DS Max – Excellent for architectural visualization and 3D object rendering.
- Cinema 4D – User-friendly 3D animation tool with motion graphics integration.
It would be rare for one individual to complete a previz project with any of these programs. It is certainly doable, but takes a lot of skill and training in the software.
Most of the time, previz studios will take on projects and treat it like a ‘mini-VFX’ project. There’ll be character developers, animators, compositors, etc.; all depending on the budget the client is prepared to pay. For a $1 million movie, you wouldn’t look at this option, but for a $100 million movie you’d better.
Well, that covers it!
I hope this brief overview of previz will help you started on your adventure-before-your-real-adventure. No matter the budget, you have an option to previsualize your project in advance before bad things happen. Trust me, it’s worth it.
I’m not sure that animation is necessary for all previz. I think that previz needs to be optically correct to save production time. This is true of FrameForge and maybe others. I’m currently doing a previz in FrameForge of a script I wrote with Premiere Pro as my editor. I’m mixing in stock photos for backgrounds with voice over and supers to add to the dialog.
joellovell I figured for pre-vis, creating a general idea of what the action will look like is more important than a pretty-looking final render, especially if the set is only an approximation of what the final will be.
joellovell Thank you! Cheap and quick Mocap would really be cool, and fun!
Sareesh Sudhakaran joellovell Stability is really not an issue from what I have seen – it was…DAZ and Moviestorm in particular were absolutely painful for a long time. The bigger question is whether the pre-vis artist is interested in creating images created from a 3D environment and posed figures or animation – and whether they want physics based lighting and camera and film look on that scene. DAZ3D and Poser Pro both have a plug-in called Reality that will provide the latter in rendering photorealistic images very quickly.
If animation is important then that is a hugely different set of variables – you need to consider how time intensive a high quality render animation will be vs something more ‘real-time’ but much lower quality, such as iClone and Moviestorm.
If state of the art mocap was available for a low cost for Poser or DAZ then I would say that would be the best bet. Cinema4D and Carrara Pro can provide superior professional functionality for a price, and for an even steeper learning curve.
It boils down to what is on your wish list. Take a peek at Reality 3d renders vs iClone renders.For the price, you can’t beat DAZ3D if you want high quality scene image rendering. You can create a set of panels for a story board in a fraction of the time of even a sketch artist.
joellovell Thanks for the excellent overview. I did come across DAZ during my research and many have said it’s like a ‘free’ alternative to Poser.
It does take a great deal of commitment and patience to learn any of the previz software solutions. Something that newcomers don’t understand, but ends up in frustration.
Which one do you consider the most stable platform?
I own iClone 5 Pro with 3DXchange, and have been wrestling with the software for years, because I am a bit hard headed with learning curves on some programs and too busy to really spend the time necessary to master them. It’s expensive, and I am not thrilled with the poor quality of end result ‘movies’. It has some nice real time lighting effects and features for animation – being able to mobcap with a kinect sensor is cool even though it’s a bit limited. I’d say iClone is superior to many of the previs purpose built tools out there, but I have found easier products to use that deliver outstanding high quality realism, such as Vue, Poser Pro 2014, Carrara Pro and DAZ 3D, all of which I own.
I’ve also used and owned Moviestorm since it’s inception. It’s come a long way in terms of stability and has always been a bargain – but in terms of final image quality it’s like stepping back into a 90’s video game, it just isn’t going to give you that realistic scene, but if all you need is rough toonish layouts or animation I’m sure it would beat sketched panel boards. This will give you good camera field of view, angles, placements, in a way that translates well into what you would do in the real world. It’s certainly worth kicking the tires on it and is fun.
Back to DAZ3D. It’s FREE. There is also a lot of free content out there and a lot of cheap content. Take a peek at the video demo of it’s capabilities on their home page – you will be blown away. And now you can export content into iClone with 3dXchange. DAZ best use is for illustrations. But you can create your previs ‘panels’ very easily and quickly. For light weight animation you can use aniblocks that give you some easy basic motion to your characters. You can also import from thousands of free BVH motion capture files that are out there.
Poser Pro can get you similar results. I have both and have been using both for years – I still don’t know which one I like best, both have pro’s and con’s. Both use compatible content. Both can export to other programs. Poser recently added an upgrade that makes it easy to use kinect to do motion capture for animation.
Regards,
Joel Lovell
http://www.joellovell.com