How do you get started working in film or advertising?
Just by doing it!
Many, many years ago, I was working in Berlin for a multimedia and film company, doing concept designs for an internet startup.
They asked me to do some mood boards which represented the core ideas behind the project.
I got 30 minutes untill the investor would enter the door.
So I sat down, drew some mood boards and after the meeting was over my client said:
“Good job. We got the money! Do you also do storyboards?”
“Storyboards? Ehm…. storyboards…. Oh, yes, yes, of course I do storyboards!”
Then I flew back to Vienna, the project got finished and I needed a new gig…. fast!
So I set down and drew some spec storyboards which I sent to the top ten avertising and film production companies. I put a lot of energy into drawing them, using real ink (big mistake) and watercolours (bigger mistake) and I did not know anything about storyboarding or editing at all. But short time later I got my first gigs.
The storyboards had a lot of mistakes, but they did what they were meant for: Getting my foot into the companies I wanted to work for.
Below is one of these early storyboards. Who can find the most obvious mistake? Guess and feel free to comment! 🙂
I create worlds. John E. Brito's Blog 
Love your storyboard artwork! 😀
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Thank you very much :)))
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Very interesting John, how storyboards work, with the arrows and simple captions saying so much and with such clarity with just a few words. And amazing, I can hear noise of the vehicles, the wind whooshing, the impacts. It’s fascinating.
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Thank you Halim, I’m glad you like it. 🙂 Usually, storyboards for film production companies differ from those drawn for advertising agencies. Those for advertising agencies are much more shiny and colourfull, with lots of beautiful faces. And storyboards for film productions are usually not as carefully drawn as their counterparts, but they often have camera movements (like arrows in my case) indicated.
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Ah I see, thanks for the further info, John.
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My pleasure 🙂
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great insight! just do it eh?
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Yes, you’ll never know, if it works if you never tried it out 🙂
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Your talent is depressingly good. And this art is from a while ago you say? (Out of curiosity, what’s the mistake?)
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No reason to be depressed, everybody has his/her own talents. I do not know how to bake cookies for example. I tried but only produced steel hard ninja stars 🙂
And for the mistake: There is a so called Jump Cut in it. This means, that you got two consecutive frames, which have a very similar camera angle and object position within the frame. You won’t notice as a drawing, but seen in a film it looks like the object (in this case the Hummer) seems to “jump” around the frame.
You can see an example of this in the 12th and 13th picture.
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