Storyboards vs Shot Lists vs Floor Plans

These three documents all describe how a scene will be shot, and each answers a different question.

A shot list is a written, numbered list of the shots: what they are, in what order. A storyboard is a sequence of drawings showing what each shot looks like. A floor plan is an overhead diagram showing where the camera, the actors and the lights are physically positioned.

Most productions need a shot list. Some need storyboards. Anyone shooting something spatially complicated needs a floor plan and rarely makes one.

Shot lists

Covered fully in what is a shot list.

What it is good at: completeness and speed. You can write one for an entire feature in a few days, it fits in a pocket, everyone can read it, and it is trivially easy to change.

What it cannot do: show you what a shot looks like, or reveal a spatial problem. A list saying "wide, then over-shoulder, then reverse" does not tell you that the two reverses cross the line.

Make one: always, for everything.

Storyboards

A sequence of drawn frames, one per shot, showing composition, with arrows for camera and subject movement, and often a caption with the shot description.

What it is good at:

• Visualizing composition before you commit. It is the only one of the three that shows what the audience sees.
• Communicating intent unambiguously. A drawing removes the interpretive gap between a director and a DP.
• Planning anything you cannot improvise. Effects, stunts, animation, anything with a fixed technical dependency.
• Working out cutting rhythm on paper.
• Selling a sequence to financiers, or explaining it to a department that has to build something.

What it costs: time and, usually, money for an artist. Boarding a whole feature is a substantial undertaking, and boarding a dialogue scene is frequently a waste of both.

Make one for: action sequences, effects shots, stunts, complex camera moves, anything involving VFX, anything requiring a set to be built to a specific design, and any sequence where getting it wrong means you cannot fix it later.

Do not bother for: most dialogue scenes. The composition of a two-hander is better discovered in the room with the actors than predetermined at a desk, and a boarded conversation tends to produce a stiff one.

Floor plans and overheads

A top-down diagram of the location showing the walls, doors and furniture, with the camera positions marked and numbered, the actors' positions and paths, and often the lighting.

This is the least used and, for many scenes, the most valuable of the three.

What it is good at:

• Showing spatial relationships, which neither of the others can. This is where you discover that two camera positions cross the 180 degree line.
• Planning coverage efficiently. Grouping setups by direction is obvious on an overhead and invisible on a list.
• Lighting. The gaffer can plan a rig from a floor plan in a way they cannot from a shot list.
• Working out whether it physically fits. Whether the camera can get far enough back, where the lights can stand, whether a dolly move is possible.
• Communicating to every department at once.

Make one for: any scene with more than two people, any scene with movement through a space, any scene in a location you found difficult on the tech scout, and any scene where geography matters to the storytelling.

It takes ten minutes with a pencil and it prevents a specific and expensive category of error.

Previs

Animated 3D versions of sequences, produced with dedicated software or in a game engine, showing camera moves, timing and blocking in three dimensions.

Good at: complex camera moves, effects-heavy sequences, anything where the timing has to be exact, and anything where the set will be partly digital. It gives you an actual duration, which storyboards cannot.

Costs: significant time and expertise, though the cheap end of this has become far more accessible. Some directors now block scenes roughly in 3D themselves.

Worth it for: large sequences with a technical dependency, and for anything where the cost of getting it wrong on the day is enormous.

Using them together

They are complementary rather than alternatives, and a well-prepared scene often has all three at different levels of detail.

A practical combination for a mid-sized production:

• Shot list for every scene. The spine.
• Floor plan for any scene with spatial complexity. Cheap and high value.
• Storyboard for the ten percent of scenes that are technically demanding.
• Previs for the two or three sequences where it is genuinely warranted.

The order to build them is: floor plan first, because it tells you what is possible in the space; then shot list, derived from it; then storyboards for the shots that need visualizing.

That order surprises people, who tend to storyboard first. Doing it the other way round means you board shots the location cannot support.

On a short

Shot list everything. Non-negotiable at this scale, for the reasons in the previous post.

Draw a floor plan for every scene with more than two people or any movement. It takes ten minutes, it costs nothing, and it will catch the line crossings and the physical impossibilities. This is the highest-value preparation available to a first-time director and almost nobody does it.

Storyboard the two or three shots that matter most, however badly you draw. The ones you cannot afford to get wrong.

Skip previs unless you have a specific reason.

One additional trick worth knowing: photograph the location during the recce and draw your framings over the photographs. It is faster than storyboarding, more accurate than imagining, and it forces you to plan shots the room can actually deliver.

Next

A whole category of shooting with its own rules. Next: how to plan a night shoot without wrecking the two days on either side of it.