Micro Project: Compression

Now that the principles are proposed, it's time to give them a whirl. This post will concern itself with the Storyboard principle: Compression.

Embellishing upon a story is part and parcel of the creative process behind any sequential narrative project. Scenes and sequences can be added and fleshed out through Storyboarding. The danger however is losing sight of the narrative essence, leading to over-bloated sequences that never seem to know where to end. What happens when? Which moments are absolutely key? How many frames does it take to communicate the arc of a sequence? Hopefully, with the principle of Compression, the answers to the above will be clear.

Writer Ernest Hemingway once answered a bet from his colleagues to write a six word story: ''For sale: Baby shoes, never used.'' This demonstrated how a story could be distilled to its bare bones, allowing the 'reader' to fill in the gaps of the hows and why's. Translating this to illustrative narration is nothing new, original newspaper comic strips such as The Yellow Kid demonstrated concise economy of narration in as few panels as possible. Below is a notable example.

But what about storyboards? This kind of economy is an artist's best tool when visualizing a story. Beat boards traditionally aim to pinpoint the specific moments of a story, but the general amount of 'beats' are seldom specified; rather, the story dictates the number. But let's say we could apply a fixed principle, a golden rule of sorts. Like the three-act structure in most screenplays: Beginning, Middle and End, could we identify these as three indispensable frames, without which, the remaining frames are rendered incoherent? Could we distil any narrative arc into three fundamental moments? Let's give it a try.

Let's check out this classic climax to Back To The Future.

So now it's time to reverse-engineer that sequence. We now know the scenario; we know the dramatic moments, we know the who's, the why's, the where's and the when's. Below is my diagram breaking down this sequence in to 25 frames, which (in my opinion) retains the essence of the overall sequence. It shows the building tension of Doc's success and Marty's momentum; the brewing storm; the complication with the line; and ultimately, the achieving of Marty's time travel back to 1985.

Now let's compress this down to 10 key frames. We retain the visual information of the DeLorean building speed; the complication with the line (the fallen tree branch); Doc's further complication of the sockets coming apart; his descent to the ground; attempted removal of the branch; the lightning strike; and Marty being sent back to 1985.

We're still not there. Let's halve this to five key moments: The Delorean; the lightning strike; Doc's attaching the cable; the DeLorean connecting with the electrified line; and Marty being sent to 1985. We've now omitted the general drama of Doc trying to connect the cable upon the clock tower, yet we haven't lost the essence of the entire sequence. We're getting close to the distillation.

Now let's see if we can whittle this down to our three indispensable moments. I have identified them as: the lightning striking the clock tower; the DeLorean making contact with the electrified line; his success in being sent back to the future. We've now omitted Doc's presence entirely, and the subsequent drama that surrounded the act of connecting the line. However, we haven't lost the essence of the sequence!

This demonstrates the fundamental three moments in our sequence that the remaining frames are reliant upon. In this way our 'beginning' is merely the first key moment: the lightning strike (the cause); our 'middle' becomes the DeLorean's contact with the line; and our 'end' becomes the time-travelling (the effect). Looking back to the original scene, and we can see that the surrounding frames and drama are all subservient to these three key moments.

As a small experiment, I developed a ten panel storyboard visualizing the egg story. The first ten frames are the entire narrative span.

By stepping backwards in the same manner, I reduced this to five frames. Now identified as Secondary Frames we can see the crux of the story is intact.

And a further reduction distils us to our Three Pillars.

As a bonus example, this frame below could be proposed as the catalyst of the entire narrative; that ability to communicate all of the above in a single image.

So the methodology becomes an easy process of elimination. In any Storyboard planning, either with a scene, a gag, or a sequence started from scratch, you can select and decide which three moments could be equated to the Beginning, Middle and End. Once done, they become your Pillars to hold up your story. Then, like an animator creates his in-between s with each key frame, we can create our Secondary frames. These concern themselves with the sub-drama, or more simply the how's to your why's.

Here's a breakdown of the methodology.