Storyboards are a series of shot-by-shot visual renderings of each scene of the film. Based on the script, the storyboard attempts to approximate the visual flow of the narrative, giving everyone involved in the project an opportunity to visualize the film, before exposing a single frame.
Peter Mitchel Rubin provided the digitized Storyboard panels that you will see here, several of which were rendered from original drawings by Simon Murton and Darek Gogol.
Historically, storyboard panels were laboriously produced by hand. More recently, digital technology has enabled artists to greatly improve their range and complexity, producing tightly controlled and efficiently rendered visual environments. Check out Peter Mitchell Rubin in the "Interviews" for a more detailed insider explanation.
The film industry has developed a complex and often bewildering array of special terms and acronyms to describe its own work. The following list presents some of these terms, culled from the storyboard section:
CU: Close-up, describes the position of a subject within the frame
MCU: Medium close-up
ECU: Extreme close-up
RACK: Racking a visual frame describes a change of focus from one subject to another (i.e., from the foreground to the background)
PAN: Panning describes the movement of the camera as it tracks a visual frame from one side to another
FOLLOW: Like panning, the camera moves from one side to another, but also remains focused on a particular subject
