Directing the Story: Professional Storytelling and Storyboarding Techniques for Live Action and Animation
March 11th, 2010 | 
Author: 
- ISBN13: 9780240810768
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Francis Glebas, a top Disney storyboard artist, teaches artists a structural approach to clearly and dramatically presenting visual stories. They will learn classic visual storytelling techniques such as conveying meaning with images and directing the viewer’s eye. Glebas also teaches how to spot potential problems before they cost time and money, and he offers creative solutions on how to solve them.
* Uses the classic … More >>
Posted in Animation | 
Tags: Action, Animation, Directing, Live, Professional, Story, Storyboarding, Storytelling, Techniques
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MN57M8XY37L0 Note the title is about directing the story, not directing the movie, and the emphasis is on the story.
The goal of this book is to help you get your audience “lost in the story” of your movie. It details a lot of professional directing techniques and principles to help aid storytelling. The writing is clear and Francis Glebas even storyboarded a whole short story to serve as an example, in addition to the many examples already provided.
Using storyboards as a primary tool, he goes through the various storytelling techniques used in films , like ways to pace/cut scenes, introducing themes and story structure subtly, directing the audience’s eyes, creating characters people can related to, etc. Francis Glebas then breaks down these high level concepts into many smaller easy-to-understand points to focus in depth.
One particular point to note is the version of “One Thousand and One Arabian Nights” Francis Glebas has storyboarded to provided as an example throughout the book. All the techniques he teaches are used in the storyboard for that story. It ends with cliffhangers in every chapter. The story is absorbing even though it’s done in sketches. Goes to show that story is still king.
This book is for anyone who wants to direct professional stories. It should be made compulsory reading in film schools. Two enthusiastic thumbs up from me.
For more reading, I would recommend Ideas for the Animated Short, which goes even further in depth with storytelling techniques. Bad stories shouldn’t have excuses.
(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)
Rating: 5 / 5
Disney story artist Francis Glebas has put together a great book on the process of cinematic storytelling.
Directing the Story touches on composition, pacing and many dramatic techniques designed to creating more emotional connections in stories.
This book goes well with Nancy Bieman’s Prepare to Board! Creating Story and Characters for Animated Features and Shorts for quality story instruction, but whereas her book also focuses on character design and other aspects of animation, Directing the Story looks solely at storytelling, and not necessarily for animation.
What really sets Glebas’ book apart is that it includes a fully boarded out story (an adaptation of 1001 Arabian Nights) that incorporates the methods he’s teaching.
There are a couple sticking points with me. One is the writing style. There are plenty of spots throughout the book where I found myself glossing over text because it was so dense. Also even though this book seems to focus on cinematic storytelling in general, animation is where this type of storytelling is most common and people interested in this book are most likely interested in animation. It would have been nice to see a bit more focus on animation and traditional storyboarding to really top things off.
But all things told, Directing the Story has a great look on storytelling. One that other books don’t have.
Rating: 4 / 5
There are a lot of books tackling the subject of scripwriting and story structure, but never storytelling applied to animation. Francis’s approach to the subject is clear, fun and concise. A fundamental book every director and storyboard artist should read. Francis Glebas reach into his experience as story artist at Disney to analize in depth the story process and the ways to COMUNICATE visually trough character developpement and dramatic points.
I consider the book a MUST for animation filmakers. His telling of the story using a real story it’s very clear and definitively engaging.
I recomend the book.
Rating: 5 / 5
Excellent book , clearly explains the visual aspect of story telling, shot by shot, sequence by sequence.
Rating: 5 / 5
Highly recommended. This book conveys a great wealth of storytelling experience, naturally conveyed through well-designed visual examples. For writers, it complements for the more structural books on screenwriting (Syd Field’s, Dave Trottier’s) with its how-to approach. For directors, its visual approach touches on nearly every subject ranging from mise-en-scene to blocking.
A must-read.
Rating: 5 / 5