Martin Scorsese’s 1980 sports film Raging Bull crescendos with a knockout of a fight. In it, the titular Jake LaMotta squares off against Sugar Ray Robinson in a tense, dramatic bout, the scene made even more energetic by a restless camera and snappy editing. However spontaneous those shots appear on screen, they were diligently storyboarded by Scorsese in pencil sketches that visualized every punch and thrust, bob and weave.
“These storyboards are not the only means of communication for what I imagine,” the filmmaker told Phaidon in 2011, “but they are the point where I begin.”
Storyboard by Martin Scorsese (1979), for (1980). Martin Scorsese Collection, New York.
Scorsese’s hand-drawn storyboards for his Oscar-winning drama are now among the 800 objects on view at “A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema” at Osservatorio, an outpost of Fondazione Prada in Milan. The exhibition peeks behind the scenes of filmmaking over the past century to unpack the many creative processes behind the medium. More than 50 directors, cinematographers, graphic designers, animators, and choreographers have contributed storyboards and other material from drawings and poster designs to mood boards and photographic references.
Poster drawing by Henri Alekans, for (1987), directed by Wim Wenders. Courtesy of Wim Wenders Stiftung.
Storyboards, though, dominate most of the show. As Scorsese alluded to, these annotated visual representations of a film’s sequences help communicate a director’s vision to a crew, aiding in decisions ranging from camera angles to character development.
“Storyboarding is an integral part of the process,” said the exhibition’s curator Melissa Harris. “Visually setting a scene and then plotting out its ebbs and flows may help the film team consider relationships between characters, figure out how to advance the narrative, or realize how to convey the essence of a particular segment.”
Storyboard by Max Douy, for (1973–77), directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky (unproduced film). © Institut Jean Vigo (Fonds Max et Jacques Douy).
Directors and storyboard artists have taken diverse approaches to the medium. Scorsese’s pencil drawings join the likes of Agnes de Mille’s plain sketches for Oklahoma! (1955). But on the more detailed spectrum are Max Douy’s storyboards for Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s doomed Dune adaptation, which forefront set and character design, and Bernando Bertolucci’s highly shaded panels for Little Buddha (1993), which indicate some manner of high drama.
Storyboard by Bernando Bertolucci (1992), for (1993). Courtesy Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation and Recorded Picture Company. © Fondazione Bernardo Bertolucci and Recorded Picture Company, digitalizzazione: Progetto Bertolucci/Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.
Others take an artier approach. Agnès Varda’s storyboards for Salut les Cubains (1963) are appended with photographs that serve as source material, while Jay Clarke’s animated storyboards for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) provide meticulous detail and a sense of timing.
Storyboards by Agnès Varda (1962), for (1963). © Agnès Varda Estate – Agnès Varda Photographic Archives on long-term loan to the Institut pour la photographie.
Harris also pointed out in the press announcement how the form and identity of a film’s character might emerge from these storyboards. They could come in handy, she said, “when something does not seem quite convincing in a character or a physical interaction, or even provide visual references for the actors.”
Cases in point are Pablo Buratti’s detailed panels for Pedro Almodóvar‘s Julieta (2016), which center on the journey of its titular character; and Todd Haynes’s collaged image boards for I’m Not There (2007), which capture the many metamorphoses of its protagonist, Bob Dylan. “When you put one image next to another,” Haynes told the New York Times in 2016, “it says more than the two separately.”
Top: Storyboard by Pablo Buratti, for (2016), directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Courtesy Pablo Buratti. Bottom: Still from (2016), directed by Pedro Almodóvar, produced by El Deseo. Courtesy El Deseo D.A. S.L.U., photos by Manolo Pavón.
“A Kind of Language,” though, makes room for storyboards for films with zero narrative or character development. Or at least one of them: Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s 1929 Surrealist touchstone, Un Chien Andalou, a 16-minute silent film threaded through with dream logic. Inspired by their nighttime visions, the pair wrote the screenplay for the movie in a few days—a fevered stretch reflected in Buñuel’s hastily scribbled notes and bizarre drawings of human forms and anatomy.
Script page by Luis Buñuel for (1929), directed by Luis Buñuel. © Luis Buñuel Film Institute.
“No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind,” Buñuel reflected of the movie in his 1983 memoir, “would be accepted.” But even that, it turned out, called for some form of storyboarding.
“A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema” is on view at Osservatorio, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan, Italy, through September 8.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
