The five rules of film-making a storyboard artist must know
Eye-level framing, sight lines, the rule of thirds, headroom, and the 180-degree line. Break them on purpose or not at all.
12 minute read · one activity · lesson 13 of 21
These five are where a storyboard artist stops being an illustrator and starts being a film-maker. Break any of them by accident and an editor will not be able to cut your sequence together. Break them on purpose and you have said something.
1. Eye-level framing
There is an imaginary line at the top third that eyes and action should sit on, frame to frame, so the audience's eye is not bouncing up and down between shots - whether the shot is a close-up or an extreme wide.
Then the power move underneath it: shoot from below and the subject looms larger than the viewer - power. Shoot from above and they are made powerless, vulnerable, small. Go higher still and the distance turns voyeuristic. Combine the two within a scene and you have told the audience who is in command without a word of dialogue.
2. Sight lines
For a scene to cut together, the actor must always appear to be looking in the correct direction from shot to shot - which is hard, because what they are looking at is usually off-screen.
The default: place the subject on the LEFT of frame, looking RIGHT. That shows they are looking at something outside the frame.
The deliberate break: put them on the left and have them look LEFT - out of the frame on their own side. It creates the sense of being trapped, of not knowing what is coming.
3. The rule of thirds
Divide the frame into nine equal parts with two horizontals and two verticals. Place your subject on a line or, better, an intersection. Put the horizon on the top or bottom line - never through the middle.
The purpose is not prettiness. It is to discourage dead-centre placement and stop the horizon cutting the picture in half, which creates more tension, energy and interest than centring ever does.
4. Adequate headroom
In a medium shot, leave a little room above the head. In a close-up you may crop a little forehead - but keep the chin in frame.
Break it deliberately in two directions. An extreme close-up on a face is intensely intimate and can be actively uncomfortable - be intentional. Or leave far TOO MUCH headroom, and the subject shrinks: powerless, diminished in their own frame.
5. The 180-degree rule
Draw an imaginary line connecting the two characters in a scene. Keep the camera on ONE side of it for every shot. Then character A is always frame-right of B, and B is always frame-left of A.
Cross it without meaning to and the two characters appear to swap sides between cuts, and the audience becomes disoriented in a way they cannot name. It is the most common continuity error in an amateur board.
Cross it on purpose to convey a shift in power, confusion, or the passing of time. But be fully intentional - otherwise it just looks amateurish.
“This rule can sometimes be broken to convey shifts in power, confusion or the passing of time. But make sure you are fully intentional about breaking the rule, otherwise, it will just look amateurish.”
- Mitchell James Hughes, Storyboard Art
Break the line - and mean it
A conversation scene, boarded correctly, then boarded wrongly, then boarded wrongly on purpose. Three very different documents.
- Two characters, a table, an argument. Draw the floor plan FIRST, from above: two figures, the 180 line between them, and mark your camera positions on one side of it.
- SEQUENCE A (correct): six frames - establishing two-shot, OTS on A, OTS on B, CU on A, CU on B, back to the two-shot. Every camera on one side of the line. Check: is A always frame-right?
- SEQUENCE B (broken by accident): redraw frames 3 and 5 with the camera on the WRONG side of the line. Look at the two sequences back to back. Feel the wrongness.
- SEQUENCE C (broken on purpose): put the line-crossing at the exact moment the power in the argument flips. Now it is not an error - it is direction.
- Finally, apply the other four rules to Sequence A: are eyes on the top-third line throughout? Sight lines consistent? Headroom right? Thirds respected?
What you should have at the end
Three sequences and a floor plan. Sequence C is the one to put in your portfolio - it proves you can direct, not just draw.
Day 13 in one line
Five rules. Know them cold so that when you break one, the crew reads it as intention rather than incompetence.
This course is free and stays free. If you want to board in the suite Mitchell James Hughes built for his own work - script, shot list, storyboard, animatic, AI artist - the free tier opens every app with no card.
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