Glossary · Storytelling
Storyboard
A storyboard is a series of pictures that shows a video scene by scene before it is made, with notes on what happens, what is said and how the camera moves.
Why it matters
It is the cheapest place to fix a story. Changing a picture on a board takes minutes; changing a finished moving shot means making it again.
Each frame of a storyboard answers a few plain questions: what is in the picture, what moves, what the camera does, what the viewer hears, and roughly how long it lasts. Read in order, the frames show whether the story makes sense before any footage exists.
Storyboards come from animation and film, where they let a whole team agree on one plan. The pictures don't need to be polished. Rough sketches work, as long as each one is clear about what the shot is for.
When a video is made with AI, the storyboard does extra work. Each approved picture can become the starting frame of a moving shot, so the board decides not only the plan but how the finished video looks.
A 50-second short about the invention of the shipping container is boarded as nine frames. Frame 3 reads: "Close on a dockworker carrying one sack up a gangplank. Narrator: before containers, cargo was loaded piece by piece. 5 seconds."
How we use it
Every video is storyboarded before anything moves: one picture for each scene, and a person approves the board before any motion is made.
Last reviewed 15 October 2026.