Film Directing 106: Introduction to Schematics

LEVEL 100 blogs are for film students and first-time directors taking on the directing role for a short film. The series is designed to help and guide new filmmakers through the director’s prep duties, pre-production activities, and principle photography dynamics.

Blocking strategies and schematics for the beginning director

Every director goes through their own process for planning the visual story that they want to tell – before they arrive on set to shoot it.

The director’s pre-production work informs the schedule for shooting the film. The schedule is bound by the budget. Ultimately, the amount of money and time available for you to shoot a scene will dictate the limitations you need to work within.

The goal of generating ideas for a scene in pre-production is to exercise your visual storytelling muscles. You can tell a lean, mean story – or you can craft an opus. But remember, the cost of people, equipment, and locations can add up fast. Figuring out the blocking and creating schematics doesn’t need to cost anything.

Schematics are a very helpful tool for all directors. They’re valuable because they’re not precious.

You may develop your own strategies and approaches, but your co-creators are going to ask you to be specific.

Your blocking plan is about building your story on paper so you can tell other people about it. The director needs to have answers. How many shots? What type of shots? What do we see? Can you do it in 3 hours?

You need to develop motivated movement for each character. The actors may have questions and suggestions to consider. This may cause your plan to change. It happens.

You also need to develop a visual style for the camera. There will be plenty of decisions to be made with the director of photography. Will you be using a static camera? A hand-held camera? Do you need a zoom lens?

We’re going to start with the basic schematic notation ideas here. These have been around for a long time. We’ll add on to it later.

The idea for drawing schematics is to keep it fast and flexible. Things will change. And hand-drawn schematics are a tool that will allow you to revise a scene very quickly if you need to.

A student director can easily create their own perfectly workable schematics with a pencil and pad of paper. Simple notation to represent the actors, the actor movements, the camera, and the camera movements are rudimentary. Common sense will serve you well.

Schematics are drawn from a birds-eye view. You are looking down on the action.

• A character is noted as a circle – “O”

• A character move can be drawn as a line with an arrow – “---->” to their next position

• A camera is a 2-sided triangle – “V”

• A camera move can be a dotted line – “…….>” to it’s next position

• More than 1 character? Put an initial in the “O” – or use a different colour.

One of the challenges for pre-visualizing a scene is that you often don’t have a location secured when you are building your plan. You have to figure out motivated movement and build potential frames in an imaginary location. When you finally do get a location, you can draw up a rough floor plan and quickly sketch up some new schematics if you need to.

The script is the starting place for your written plan. Your script analysis is vital.

Let's start with one actor:

Character A enters a kitchen, crosses to the fridge, and looks in to see a jug of water and some limp celery sticks. They cross to sit at the kitchen table to hastily write a shopping list, and then leaves with a shopping bag.

This simple scene has physical requirements: an entrance, an exit, opening a fridge door, sitting at a table, writing a note, and grabbing a bag.

As the director, you may want to shoot the entire scene as one static shot. There would be no other choices in the editing room other than picking the take you wanted to use. Ideally the performance, the pacing, the framing and the focus all work.

For one static shot, the camera placement or the camera movement will be important. A wide static shot that shows most of the kitchen, including the fridge and the table, could be a good choice. You would draw your camera in the chosen spot, and you could indicate if it’s at a high or low height just by writing that beside the camera symbol.

A moving camera that follows the character doing the action in one shot could be another choice. You need to note where the camera starts and stops, and the direction it’s moving. Every camera stop would then be a ‘key frame’ that the director of photography would set up for focus marks and the best lighting.

You may want to have a shot ‘over the shoulder’ as they investigate the fridge. If so, you would note a camera behind the actor on the schematic plan.

You may also want to be close on the shopping list. This is called an insert. That’s another camera to note.

If there’s a strong emotional moment for the actor at the table, you may want to get a close-up shot of the performance. Mark in another camera symbol.

Whatever you think is best for the scene, build it on paper.

You can start anywhere in a scene to develop a blocking plan with schematics. You can start with an entrance, or you can find the character already in the scene with a camera move.

To draw up detailed schematics you need to have the accurate floorplan and measurements of the set or location. The size of the space makes a big difference when you start to bring the camera, sound, and lighting gear.

The floorplan is like an architectural blueprint that shows where the door opens, where the windows are, the fridge, the stove, and the table (which could move, depending on the shot).

With a floor plan of the set, you can begin to place your characters and move them around with more accuracy using the notations. Likewise with your camera.

If the scene was 2 pages longer, with dialogue and more action, the schematics might get crowded and confusing with arrows and lines. We’ll talk about this later and add some further ideas on how to manage any visual clutter or confusion.

Developing ideas for how to tell the story cinematically and planning the images that are needed to tell the emotional arc of the characters is the director's territory.

When it comes to ideas in pre-production, it’s better to have more than less.

Schematics are just preliminary ideas. Don’t make them too precious.

When you get on set in the directing role you’ll face limitations with the location, the lighting equipment, the camera, and so on. There can be a multitude of things that need to be solved.

Adjustments are usually necessary. Patience and confidence are required.

Planning the schematics for one or two actors in a short scene allows the beginning director to better understand the director's role and the importance of pre-visualizing and creating a written plan in pre-production.

Keep it simple and grasp the basics.