Storyboard Research: Apocalypse Now

Delving slightly out of the world of animation. I wanted to investigate other storyboards for other movies to see how they compare to animated features. On the whole storyboards for animated movies and storyboards for live-action features look basically the same in the level of detail for example. Then I came across the striking storyboards for the film Apocalypse Now.





These storyboards look very different to anything I've seen for an animated movie. If you've seen Apocalypse Now, particularly this iconic helicopter scene then you will understand the intesity of that movie and how difficult it would be to represent that intesity through drawings. Some how the artist has managed to accomplish that here, the drawings are incredibly sketchy, there are so many lines. There is nothing inviting or comforting about these images, the helicopters in the third image look to me more like deadly wasps.

In the second and first image you can see the emotions in these characters faces. Before looking at live-action film storyboards I had assumed it was not that important to capture character emotion in the drawings because its going to be acted, not animated. I now realise how ignorant that view is and understand that it is just as important to capture character emotion in a live action storyboard as in an animated movie storyboard.