Story Tips from John Nevarez

STORY MOMENTS:

When doing story moments for your portfolio, treat them like a trailer for a movie. In 5-8 beats, showcase your story in images with progression and contrast. For example:

1. Introduction - show our hero in their world and show when and where we are and what the rules and technology of the world is ("In a world....),

2. Inciting Incident - The event or thing that rocks our hero's world. For a monster movie, the [monster] attacks the village, for a love story, when the two players 'lock eyes', first glance, love at first sight....

3. Progressive Complications/Challenges - The events and obstacles and/or situations that make it harder for our hero to get their world back or get what he/she wants or needs

4. Climax/The Big Battle/Moment of Truth - the moment when our hero has the big fight with their foe. For a love story, the moment if our couple will make love work or stay together, etc.
(NOTE: don't show the resolution in your portfolio)

Look at Trailers and study them. Many follow this simple structure, which is actually based on Classic Film Structure, to quickly introduce the story and want/need of the hero at hand and what they may encounter. The key is NOT TO SHOW the RESOLUTION or ending. The purpose of a trailer is to get the audience to PAY to see the ending. The Purpose of your story moments in your portfolio is to invite the viewer to want to see what happens.

Progression with intensity to provide an experience, all in VISUAL terms. What's best is to show not just one, but many moments throughout your story, so as to showcase contrast and range in your skillset as a storyteller and designer. This is Visual storytelling, this is Visual Development.

NB -I should have clarified in my post that this was intended toward visual development, BUT it's nice as well to showcase your strength as a storyboarder in abbreviating a story in the most economic terms to showcase this skillset.

Via Facebook.