When crafting stories or even delivering one to your friends and families, there are often a hundred ways of explaining the same thing.
Some use idioms, some manners of speech, anecdotes or metaphors. Each and every one has the ambition of doing the same thing: Explaining the feeling behind the meaning. And each and every method will reach the same goal, but with a unique twist and flavor each time.
What we’re always interested in, is exploring all the different ways we can illustrate and explain these feelings by trying out different methods.
One of these in-house mental acrobatics we’ve developed is called the “Bubble Board” aka (BB)
Often with a storyboard, we string together a set of compositions that both in a single frame and in a whole sequence aim to deliver a certain “rush” into the viewer.
Horror sequences often have sets of unnerving dutch angles, twisting camera movements and uncomfortable shots of slow still frames. Action sequences are elaborately choreographed, where the camera is never one place at any moment and aims to combine anatomical action with the camera angle that emphasizes the adrenaline to the highest level.
But in each one, if we jump into the storyboards head first and try out different iterations to “find the mood”, we’re leaving three main gaps in our methodology:
We’re not sure what the sequence is supposed to feel like.
We’re making indecisive attempts to illustrate the scene.
We’re taking more time to figure it out.
This is where the Bubble Board helps bridge the gaps.
Above is an example of a BB. The objective is to capture a tempo, a feeling, a progression and ultimately the most abstracted control of an idea.
A BB by this definition, can be made for anything. It can be used to map the progression of a song, the tempo of a scene, the visual flow of a single image; it’s a method of portraying a raw experience.
What do you feel is the theme of this BB Board? What genre could it be of, what story could it be associated with. Chances are, every reader thinking about this question has a completely different idea, and there may not all be reaching the same conclusion; but that's not the ultimate goal.
The goal is to generate inspiration from the board. A brainstorming session that feeds enough of an idea to snowball into even better ideas. At Other Stuff Studios, we don’t want to deliver mediocrity for you and definitely not for ourselves, so when we say we want to bring you ideas that are truly unique, we really do mean it.
Let’s go through some examples together.
The Conjuring (2013)
What emotion does this progression deliver to you?
What part of the BB is making you feel this way?
The progression of every genre and in particular any scene of any genre has a unique format, however, in the case of a horror movie, the scenes progress in a very dramatic build up, both narratively and sequentially, with a subversion or jump scare are an odd tempo.
This scene from The Conjuring (2013) is when the witch Bathsheba, manifests above the cupboard that Cindy has been banging her head against and attacks Andrea.
You can see that Cindy's head banging creates a rhythm, a predictable pace for the audience's tension, where the setup is being build up, eased off slightly when Andrea opens the cupboard but immediately jumps up in intensity when its revealed that the haunting entity was on top of the cupboard with them, instead of inside it.
A BB for this scene not only delivers the intensity of the script, but also makes it easier for music, sound effects and cinematography elements to collaborate and make the moment even more powerful.
Let's take another example and explore a completely different genre to see how a BB would translate there.
Keanu (2016)
Keanu (2016) is a comedy-action movie directed by Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael, where two regular samaritans get caught in the workings of an underground gang, trying to save their adopted mafia cat, Keanu.
This scene takes place as the finale of the movie, where both friends reach the mansion of the mafia boss, an execution and exchange deal gone wrong, as they rescue Keanu and make their escape.
Unlike for The Conjuring (2013), you can see that the BB for Keanu does not follow a rhythm, trying to set up any punchlines or jump scares, however it does break the subversion by making the audience feel like there's no tempo at all, until the smallest bubble at the end of board appears, implying unexpected happened anyway.
Since this is part of the finale, the expected tempo is supposed to be high energy anyway, so we can observe that there are no large dips in bubble size or position from one another, therefore maintaining that high energy and excitement, peaking at the moment were Peele does a backflip against a pillar, whilst holding Keanu and being shot at by the Don and his goons, successfully completing an unnecessary slow-motion stunt, only to be shot in the leg and butt immediately after.
You probably understand now by this point how simple it is to follow and explain ideas using BB’s, its an extra step that saves both us and our clients so much more time, while also engaging our clients in a process intuitive enough that the gap between vision and method is bridged between both parties, empowering both you and us, to make stuff even better!
If this process interests you or that you’ve become interested in working with us, be sure to check out our visual storytelling services that include animations, illustrations and storyboards all together!
