Page types and storyboard pages

A small set of layouts that work, adapted to each film. The storyboard lives inside the treatment's scene pages.

The main page types [proven] where benchmarked; the others [best available, not yet validated]:

• Cover: a full-bleed 16:9 frame with the title in its quiet area, or a full-height vertical frame beside the text. Brand, deliverable, "Version N", month and year, and your name: it is on every cover, so a page in the brand's colours never reads as the brand's own.

• What you asked for: the restated brief beside a full-height frame.

• Section opener: a new composition every time.

• Statement: one sentence of 20 words or fewer beside a frame.

• Department page: the heading states the decision, beside 1–3 frames and one device drawn in code (a palette strip, a wardrobe line-up, a type specimen in the real fonts).

• List page: up to eight items of 25 words beside a full-height frame.

• Close and credits: the end line, then the director, production company, producer, month and year.

Text sits beside, above or below a frame by default [proven]. Over a frame only on full-bleed 16:9 pages, in an area the frame's own composition leaves quiet; never over faces, hands, product, label or the clue a scene depends on. If no frame has a quiet area, use a small solid card over a part that matters least (a quarter of the frame or less), or the matted page. Every frame at its own ratio: a vertical frame is never cropped into a landscape box.

The storyboard pages (decided): there is no separate storyboard section and no separate storyboard send.

• Story at a glance [proven]: one frame per scene, in order, each linked to its scene page, the end card last.

• The scene page [proven] for the layout: the scene's frames at the film's ratio, the header line ("2 · The armchair · Teta Samia's flat · Friday noon · 11 s"), the one long paragraph (up to 130 words), then the dialogue or voiceover in full, in «…». When the page fails the fit check, it becomes a spread, and no limit cuts the place, the people, the wardrobe, the actions, the turn, the product moment or the dialogue (see Writing the treatment → The scene paragraphs and voiceover). No drawings, arrows or camera paths. A camera idea is shown by two or three frames of one moment: the opening, the turn and the landing.

• The scene pair, for 16:9 and scope films [best available, not yet validated]: page A is the scene's lead frame full-bleed, with only the standard header band; page B carries the header line, the whole paragraph and the spoken lines beside the scene's second frame, at half the width or more, with its "What we see" line. On phones the pair stacks. Vertical films keep the single scene page.

• The overflow page [proven], only straight after a scene whose frames overflow: 2–4 frames, 40 words per frame and 120 per page at most.

• The framing line, once, beside the scene pages: "These frames show how each scene looks and feels. The finished film moves the camera, the people and the light. The exact cast, places and product are confirmed in the next step."

• The optional animatic [proven]: the storyboard frames, each held for its share of the scene's duration, sound only on a press, 14 MB or less. Words on screen are set on the page or laid over in code; Arabic stays on the page unless a burned-in version has been checked letter by letter. A copy with shot labels burned in is for internal review only, never the client's copy.

Counts and captions for the frames: Writing the treatment → Storyboard images.

Sources

• Caspar Newbolt on one image per page, and Alexandre Moors on sequencing images as a narrative (Filmmaker Magazine); Jason Hellerman on lookbooks (No Film School).