Project Page

In this assignment, you will create a set of images to serve as a storyboard for the title sequence of a ficticious television series or TV-movie based on an existing story.

The sequence should comprise between 12 and 30 images.

You will compose the images or "shots" in Photoshop, and sequence and time them in iPhoto. You can add background music to the sequence if you like, but you will need to edit the music to fit the short timeframe of a title sequence.

An Adaptation
The story you use for the ficticious show should be taken from a published book, short story, or other non-visual narrative. You might also adapt characters from a movie to a television show, though your title sequence should not be like the film's. The composition of your title sequence should be informed by a critical understanding of the characters, plot-generating conflicts, settings, themes, and tone of the original. Note that--unlike movies, novels, and stories--the essential conflicts in a television series are never resolved.

Narrative and Montage
This one- to two-minute title sequence should be "narrative" in two senses:

1. it follows a line of action that takes a character, characters, or perhaps the viewpoint/camera itself from one place, time, or situation to another, and

2. it uses editing to make something happen to the viewer by arousing tension, anticipation, curiosity, or a sense of discovery, and then either satisfing or overturning it.

We will discuss a number of sample title sequences in class and read Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics to learn techniques of narrative and montage in visual texts.

In your sequence, avoid the impulse to tell a simple backstory. Instead, your title sequence should introduce your series/movie's essential tensions, themes, and tone using a combination of narrative and montage.

Technical Visual Criteria
As a storyboard rather than a finished product, you will not be expected to produce shots that realize exact realism in rendering human figures and other visual details. Your characters can even be represented by silhouettes. Instead, this assignment will emphasize the composition of shots, backgrounds, and the techniques of sequencing visual images for continuity and other narrative effects.

Related, Previous Works
Though this is a new assignment, the following are examples of student slide shows telling stories drawn from non-visual narratives. They are offered here as examples of how the images might be composed.

• The Raven (narrative poem)
• The Dollar (narrative song lyric)
• Rift (narrative song lyric)