I tell stories in the comic book medium. I'm talking with people about producing them as movies, and one of questions that comes up is whether it at all helps in production to have an already existing comic book. To my way of thinking, you already had one version of the scene as a starting reference point, so you are better able to look for ways to improve and plan your shots better.
It would seem to me that the money savings from having to do fewer re-shoots since you had better planning going in will make the comic book a free commodity because it helped save money in the production of the movie.
But then, I don't really know a lot about cinematography. So I wanted some feedback from this forum.
Do you mean a storyboard?
Most re-shoots come from story changes, recasting, technical errors or general lack of planning. But many very cohesive things are shot without even a storyboard, sometimes without a shot list- not that planning does not happen. Creative teams work different ways, but suffice it I have shot projects with detailed storyboards that were a mess, and others that were very well designed and executed because people were on the same page.
There are also look-books, video clip references, design renderings for wardrobe and sets, all of which should help departments plan their movie as a joint effort to one cohesive piece.
If you actually mean a literal comic book / graphic novel, this is a thing that many people have started to create as a companion piece or POC to a pending original web series/ film / whatever.
I just worked on one like that. The comic book was great. But very little coordination was realized in making the filmed trailer, and it mostly looks like it... despite very experienced pro team, went way over budget and the creator was quite unhappy.
Which sort of points to my belief that money or intentional process (or lack thereof) do not matter.
All that matters is good people are on the same journey together and making the same movie.. and that is actually extremely challenging for anything ambitious.
I meant an actual comic book.
The comic book idea makes sense to me you have the main idea of the story which saves time deciding what to write about. How do you make it evolve without being so halting and develop the plot without going out of bounds is what you have to work on.
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It's an interesting theory, but I don’t think it’ll hold. I won’t go so far as to say it will never work, but so far I don’t think it has. Even the most loyal adaptations (Sin City, Scott Pilgrim, Logan, 300) will almost always use storyboard and concept artists to create production materials, same as any other film. I actually did concept art on Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter, and Robert Valley did the storyboards, and that was based on a comic jam packed with 9 panel grids over 12 full issues of source material.
The big problem with trying to use comics as storyboards and/or concept art its that it’s a different visual language that really doesn’t translate all that well to film. When filmmakers move into comics to try and sell film pitches (and there are plenty) they’re almost always garbage. They use a storyboard approach, and thus ignore everything that actually works in comics because they don’t understand comics. It just doesn’t works.
On occasion, you’ll see a comparison shot of a comic panel and the finished film that seems to match up exactly. However, those tend to be ‘key moments’ where the director wants to capture that certain look, or pay homage to the comic. If you reference the comic as the full film plays out, those match points are actually quite rare.
There are just too many differences in the mediums that complicate trying to use the comics as storyboards and/or concept art. Comics are isolated images, static information, iconography, keyframes, combined with text, sound effects, and balloons. When we move to the next frame, we create an entirely new image because our story flow is mostly about page design, or more specifically, how things move down the page to build our stories. Every single image is different, otherwise, it’s redundant. They’re all meant to create a series of snapshots that eventually tell a larger story. In comics, we can (and usually do) pick a new camera angle and design for every single panel drawn, because again, static images are what we're all about.
Trust me, the kind of jumping around we do in comics would drive a film audience absolutely insane because one is static chunks, and the other is continuous motion. I think everyone in the audience would get motion sickness if comics were ACTUALLY used as storyboards for films.
Although a ton of us in comics also draw storyboards for film and animation, storyboards are quite different. They’re designed to imply continuous movement and flow from one frame of film to the next because our job is to mimic camera placement and movement. We do our absolute best to create transitions and offer smooth break points for editing because it’s essential for great filmmaking. The cuts are better when they’re invisible. The ‘panel borders’ in film are deliberately hidden with editing and smooth transitions. But in comics, panel borders are our bread and butter, it’s where the story lives, and we fully embrace the jumps.
The pace is also ver different. Film is frames-per-second, and if you're the viewer you'd better keep up. With that, filmmakers present information in a way that everyone (or most people) can keep up. It’s essential, so the entire process is built around that premise. In comics, our readers can linger on a panel for as long as they'd like. They control the pace of the story.
Film is motion, Comics are static.
But again, if you can make it work, I say go for it.
No because you still need to do a screenplay, break it down into shots, assign those shots numbers, assign those numbers to shoot days. This is how it has worked for almost 100 years of film making. A comic book can be a good reference to design, story and overall art direction, but it’s not a broken down script.