Storyboard art

The use of storyboard art is becoming important in Hindi films

While equipping hordes of burly men with swords, shields and helmets, Gigi George’s own weapon of choice was an Apsara pencil. He would create on a blank page these armies, later seen in the epic film Jodhaa Akbar, mainly using ideas from director Ashutosh Gowarikar’s mind. George is one among the often-overlooked group of storyboard artists working in Indian cinema. 

These artists are usually roped in during the early stages of a story’s development, when the director’s stream of consciousness needs a medium. In the course of hours-long meetings, they rapidly fill pages with illustrations that are later sent to producers to seek their interest or approval. As the first visual representation of a feature film, a storyboard is also something that tells members of various departments what a scene is expected to look like finally. 

The drawings also help see which ideas work and which ones ought to be expelled. Although technical and transient in nature, they have the quality of art — a bit like the initial draft of a graphic novel or comic book. But their exhibition is limited to bulletin boards in production houses or, occasionally, the B-sides of film DVDs. “It is a closed, unseen form,” says George, who has also worked on Mohenjo Daro. UK-based film critic Fionnuala Halligan, who wrote “The Art of Movie Storyboards” refers to practitioners as the “unsung hero of a finished film.”

Storyboarding has had an inconsistent role in the history of Indian films. Alfred Hitchcock, the master filmmaker of thrillers, got such detailed storyboards made that it is said he rarely had to look through the viewfinder. Unlike in Hollywood, the process was usually skipped in India for constraints of budget and time. According to writer Halligan, auteurs of art-house were the first to adopt the practice in global cinema. 

A picture from HarperCollins’s The Pather Panchali Sketchbook

If scenes from a Satyajit Ray film tend to evoke paintings, it is often because they were envisioned as such. Before shooting his Pather Panchali, he painstakingly filled up notepads with watercolour sketches of each frame complete with technical notes in Bengali. Made by a visibly quick and confident hand, they are rich with details of movement and the play of light and shadows.

Thought to have been lost after the filmmaker gave them away to the Cinematheque Francaise archive, these were published only last year in the form of a coffee table book. Another book released in 2014 showed Ray’s illustrated outline for a film on musician Ravi Shankar, who had been working with him on the score of the Apu trilogy.  Other directors who sometimes make their own storyboards include Martin Scorsese and UK’s Ben Wheatley. In India, Muzaffar Ali, the maker of Gaman and Umrao Jaan, first trapped his ideas on paper. 

A storyboard on Special 26 created by Atul Chouthmal

As production values in India improved, storyboards have been a more regular feature, and artists are brought in to make them especially for action and period films. Atul Chouthmal, who worked on story panels for Ra.One and Special 26, says artists need to have knowledge among other things of camera angles, framing, and production design. Storyboardist George says it helps to have seen large amounts of cinema, which he did while in media school. 

Todd Anderson, who has drawn for most Coen Brothers films, once revealed the near-psychoanalytical aspect of the skill. “It’s my job to interpret (a director’s) language into a visual language. It’s very important that I get as close to the image that’s in their brain on the paper, so that everybody when they walk on the set is making the same movie — they’re not all imagining what’s going on.”

After the sessions with the directors, it can become a fairly lonely task, with artists holed up in a room making heaps of drawings everyday for two to three months. Technology has eased that burden now. Gaming machines and software are commonly used to build backdrops and design characters, cutting the preparation time by at least a month. Its use is not rampant yet in India but storyboardists like George have become early adapters.

Most storyboard artists fell into it after stints in various parts of the art department. If the artists can prove themselves and give useful insights in the course of filmmaking, they are sometimes given titles such as “director’s assistant”. Still, there is no formal training on the subject in India and pay is relatively low, so people sometimes distance themselves from being slotted as storyboard artists. It is a job where artists try not to be too attached to their work, which is often subject to change.

Globally, the art for the Lord of the Rings series and Avatar were released in the form of books and DVDs. At the comic con in Mumbai, George found people knew nothing about storyboarding. Fellow artist Chouthmal hopes the atmosphere will change enough for “storyboard art” to be among the categories included in the film technical awards someday.

Chouthmal’s storyboard on Veer