Storyboards By Ranft

An older but excellent post from Temple of the Seven Golden Camels.

... [T]his old handout by Disney/Pixar legend Joe Ranft [is] about how to pitch storyboards. It's from an old manual about how to do story at Disney. ... I really want people to remember Joe and what a great, fantastic board artist and teacher he was. ...

We don't pitch like this anymore because we don't really board on paper anymore. So we don't really have to stand in front of an audience while pitching, we get to sit in the back of the room while our boards are projected onto a big screen. Those days of standing in front of a big group, pitching drawings you weren't happy about, and bombing in front of an audience are over forever, it seems. It's still nerve-wracking to me every time I pitch though. Some things never change. ...

Almost all of Joe's advice is still very relevant to pitching in the digital age. The main point of pitching boards is to give a sense of what the sequence will feel like when it's turned into a film, and that means not slowing down to over-explain anything or get off-track from communicating the story and characters to the audience. ...

Joe Ranft was one of the warmest, funniest human beings going. Talented board artist. Talented writer. Screamingly funny voice actor.

Joe had a fabulous career in animated features that was cut short by an early death. But his golden touch can be felt in both Disney and Pixar features.