Show and Tell: Inside The Exhi­bi­tion High­light­ing The Art of Storyboarding

Cin­e­ma is an art that has a fair share of sci­ence behind it. How­ev­er bril­liant they may be, an individual’s ideas need to be realised by a team with diverse tech­ni­cal exper­tise. For many film­mak­ers, it is a mat­ter of pathfind­ing, and sto­ry­boards are often solicit­ed to medi­ate between cre­ativ­i­ty and prac­ti­cal­i­ty, ensur­ing their abstract thoughts are under­stood, and then act­ed on in a production.

Such is the focus of the ongo­ing exhi­bi­tion ​‘A Kind Of Lan­guage’ (on show till 8 Sep­tem­ber 2025) at Osser­va­to­rio Fon­dazione Pra­da in Milan, curat­ed by Melis­sa Har­ris, for­mer­ly edi­tor-in-chief of the esteemed pho­tog­ra­phy mag­a­zine Aper­ture. The 56 sets of sto­ry­boards on dis­play, some dat­ing back to the 1920s, exem­pli­fy the lim­i­nal nature of the graph­ic device and its propen­si­ty to shapeshift in the hands of dif­fer­ent directors.

Even though not every direc­tor adopts it, sto­ry­board­ing has been a cor­ner­stone of the indus­try for the major­i­ty of its exis­tence. Georges Méliès was among the fore­run­ners who incor­po­rat­ed it into his whim­si­cal works, such as in A Trip to the Moon where the intri­cate cam­er­a­work and spe­cial effects qual­i­fied the film as an ambi­tious pro­duc­tion dur­ing the 1900s. The direc­tor made rig­or­ous plans, among those series of prepara­to­ry sketch­es, ahead of time to coor­di­nate all the mov­ing parts.

More con­cert­ed effort to insti­tu­tion­alise sto­ry­board­ing into the work­flow came in the 1930s, when Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios con­sis­tent­ly fleshed out plots and char­ac­ters with detailed illus­tra­tions, as evi­denced by the beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed pan­els for Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs (1937) and Fan­ta­sia (1940) in the exhibition.

Since then, the prac­tice was grad­u­al­ly pop­u­larised across Hol­ly­wood, and a com­mon per­cep­tion of it – sequen­tial images visu­alised in box­es of the same size to map out the pro­gres­sion of a film – start­ed to emerge among the pub­lic. ​‘A Kind Of Lan­guage’, with its exhibits man­i­fest­ing a breadth of visu­al styles, nar­ra­tive struc­tures and appli­ca­tions, prob­lema­tis­es the notion that sto­ry­boards can or should be dis­tilled to just one for­mu­la. From the hun­dred-page ​“sto­ry-bible” for Train to Busan detail­ing each frame with clear instruc­tions, to the sin­gle large-scale ren­der­ing of Man­der­ley for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebec­ca, Har­ris empha­sis­es that there real­ly is not a fixed pat­tern in sto­ry­board­ing. Each board is a means to an end, devel­oped in response to the chal­lenges around a spe­cif­ic title.

“One thing about the process that is espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing, is the lack of uni­for­mi­ty. When a direc­tor makes a sto­ry­board, or com­mis­sions a sto­ry­board artist, they’re on a jour­ney,” she explained. ​“The sto­ry­boards rep­re­sent moments of intu­ition and emo­tion, and address prob­lems to be resolved, and at times might even show sequences that don’t end up in the final project. There’s a cer­tain inti­ma­cy to them.”

The cura­tor resists organ­is­ing the sto­ry­boards by theme, time peri­od or any obvi­ous order. Instead, vis­i­tors are asked to con­nect with – and con­front – the pieces indi­vid­u­al­ly. The result­ing view­ing expe­ri­ence is akin to a process of men­tal decon­struc­tion: break­ing up the mem­o­ries we gath­ered from watch­ing the films in a the­atre, match­ing them with the sketch­es of the same films in print­ed form, and using them to comb through the log­ic behind the direc­tors’ decisions.

The thought exer­cise is not unlike how the actors, set design­ers, edi­tors and oth­er per­son­nel involved in a film pro­duc­tion assess the boards, pic­tur­ing, digest­ing and adding to the director’s vision. This is espe­cial­ly appar­ent in the sto­ry­boards for Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind and Jodorowsky’s unre­alised ver­sion of Dune from the 1970s. Exe­cut­ed in dis­tinct styles, they let the projects’ col­lab­o­ra­tors in on the fan­tas­ti­cal set­tings with few ref­er­ence points in real­i­ty, or in the case of the ges­tur­al draw­ings for Wings of Desire, the sur­re­al ele­ments height­en­ing the Wim Wen­ders’ sub­jec­tive sen­ti­ments towards Berlin.

In a lat­er inter­view, Wen­ders elab­o­rat­ed on the way he mobilised dif­fer­ent sets of pre­lim­i­nary mate­ri­als spon­ta­neous­ly dur­ing film­ing. ​“The film was large­ly done with­out a script… The script was a huge wall in my office with all the places in Berlin I want­ed to shoot. On the oth­er side of the room, I had all the scenes that we could pos­si­bly shoot,” he said. ​“Every night I was pick­ing a scene, and then I was look­ing for the place where it could happen.”

Anoth­er task sto­ry­boards excel at is cap­tur­ing the depth of spe­cif­ic scenes and char­ac­ters. Saul Bass, for instance, detailed the show­er sequence of Psy­cho with a frame-by-frame out­line. It accen­tu­ates Mar­i­on Crane’s fear as the images’ focus shifts across her hands, feet, eyes and face, which was recre­at­ed vivid­ly by Janet Leigh. Bass admit­ted Alfred Hitch­cock was tak­en aback by the board’s claus­tro­pho­bic mood and quick cut­ting at first, but after he did a test run with Leigh’s stand-in fol­low­ing his design and showed the edit­ed clip to the direc­tor, Hitch­cock final­ly gave his green light to the pro­pos­al. ​“It was an amaz­ing moment… I set up each shot, match­ing them to the sto­ry­board,” Bass said.

Mean­while, the graph­ic port­fo­lio for the Indi­an film Anju­man serves as a freeform char­ac­ter study, inte­grat­ing vignettes of the pro­tag­o­nists’ facial expres­sions in dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios and lit­er­al remarks of their traits in an organ­ic man­ner. There are end­less ways to play around the for­mat, always con­tin­gent on what requires atten­tion, who needs to be informed, and when deci­sions are made.

“This kind of exchange between col­lab­o­ra­tors can take place before pro­duc­tion begins. And the sto­ry­boards may be used to con­vince var­i­ous indi­vid­u­als to par­tic­i­pate in a project,” Har­ris adds. ​“It’s a unique form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and we think the name of the exhi­bi­tion ​‘A Kind Of Lan­guage’ real­ly reflects that.”

One of the exhibits that nat­u­ral­ly stands out is the ani­mat­ic sto­ry­board pro­duced by Jay Clarke and Edward Bursch for The Grand Budapest Hotel which high­lights technology’s role in rein­vent­ing the sto­ry­board­ing process. For a direc­tor whose works stand out for the metic­u­lous scene com­po­si­tion, being able to pre­dict how his char­ac­ters and spaces move against one anoth­er gave Wes Ander­son a leg up.

Look­ing for­ward, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence seems to be an inevitable agent to dis­rupt the prac­tice. To what extent? Time will tell. But Har­ris hopes the essence of sto­ry­board­ing will remain intact. ​“I’d go back to the jour­ney anal­o­gy. You’d want to get to the des­ti­na­tion in your own way, at your own pace,” she says. ​“It makes the jour­ney poet­ic and pow­er­ful, and you’ll like­ly end up with some­thing interesting.”

‘A Kind of Lan­guage: Sto­ry­boards and Oth­er Ren­der­ings for Cin­e­ma‘ is open at the Osser­va­to­rio Fon­dazione Pra­da in Milan until 8 Sep­tem­ber 2025.