Writing a storyboard for a film is a new experience for me. I’ve written storyboards for software training videos, but that’s a tame task compared to letting my imagination run wild through my pysanky oeuvre. This work is enjoyable but also challenging. And I’m not done yet ….
I’m challenged in part just thinking about pysanky at this time of year, never mind looking at them. For me, pysanky belong to springtime and though we’ve had a relatively cool summer here, I’m not fooled.
The other hard thing about getting deep with my pysanky, is choosing which ones will star in the film. Some of the ones I really like don’t fit well in the narrative. Maybe I can include some stray favorites in outtakes after the closing credits.
The draft storyboard captures ideas for movements, perspectives, sound, music, and interactions that flesh out the 3-act story that I outlined in the script for Into the Ovoid . Much of the work of writing the storyboard is in manipulating image files of the eggs and using drawing tools to show what I want happening over several frames of a scene.
Here is a random smattering of storyboard pages as thumbnails:
I also have a flowchart to map the scenes and scene changes.
Some drafts of this work are available online here . I’ll be adding more in time.
On October 4th Abbott Imaging and I have our first full day of filming scheduled . I’ll be contacting those of my funders who scored a visit to the studio so that we can make a date for you that coincides with some interesting work. No matter what, you’ll get to see a bunch of these pysanky in all their fragile three-dimensionality.
Also in October I’ll try to firm up more of the sound ideas I have for the film. There are permissions to consider for existing music but I’ll also be exploring public domain options and improvisations from some of my musician friends. By the end of the year I hope a bunch of scenes are ready for editing. And early next year, we’ll build the time lapse sequence of the pysanky creation process. There, too, I expect improvisation to play a big role, from coming up with the pattern I draw on the egg, to figuring out where to pause for a real time moment at critical points in the process.
By the next update, I should finally have some news from the studio.