When making my Dio-story, I had a story in my head and when I shot the scenes, I shot them with the dialogue in my head, knowing who was going to say what, and how I needed to frame the shot to keep the figures in frame as well as make room for speech bubbles. For action shots, I just shot lots of extra pictures from different angles, with close ups and far shots. I'd also shoot several pictures of scenes in case I want to add more dialogue or not have a bunch of bubbles in one frame. I've got in mind a couple short stories right now, but it'll be a bit before I can shoot them, so I may right them out.

Do you write a script?
Do you make story boards?
Do you just shoot and hope for the best?

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Some people, when trying to avoid thinking about those things that cause them pain, turn to drink, or perhaps food, or drugs... I turn not to any of those... I collect action figures, turning my mind to the hunt, so that I might find a mote of peace... Over the years, I've found that alcoholism is much more socially acceptable by far.

I start with the base of each characters personalities, then thrust them into a situation and see how they would react to it. I don't initially structure their entire character in my head, but rather let what they do define them. I base what they do next on what happened before. There's no writing and the story unfolds as I take the photos.

Of course, there're plots and such that I'd like to add to the story, so I just file that away in my mind until I can get to it without forcing it in.

Also I may have ADD. I have a hard time focusing on one thing at a time, at the very least, so at there may be more than one thing going on at a time ..

I just think of it as playing with my toys. That's how I used to do it when I was a kid anyway. The only difference is the use of a camera and actually building it, so I can share it with others.

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Basic rundown is I have a pretty clear idea of what I want up front but I never set it in stone so that I can catch that spontanious factor. sometimes something hits me at the moment that, to me, is gold.

But I firmly believe a guildline is a must and that a fully scripted sequence is too limiting and doesn't allow for that "Oh this would be cool" moments that end up being some of the best stuff overall.

The tough part is remembering those moments that came while shooting, try to remember to write them down in someway to remind yourself later.

Storyboarding, to me, seems redundant in relation to what we do. I get it for movies because lots of people need to know what is going on, but in this case it is one person (useually, sometimes two) and it seems the nessessary communication needed to be visualised is unessessary in this case. Then again I suppose it might help some conseptualize, but for me it seems like an extra step.

Shoot and hope for the best can be very rewarding but also ends up being more shooting than actually productive work. I don't think it works very well all the time, some of it will produce a sponanious element that does seem to be missing in most diostories but overdoing it will make things seem totally chaotic I think.

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I am building one currently. I got the general concept in my head then I start by putting it on story boards so I can see it on paper and how it fits together. I put dialog in there as well. I work on it a little bit here and there. It looks like a cheesy comic book right now. I plan to take the pics based on the sketches. This would be my first when its finished.

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Hogan's Heroes" (1965)

I do the same the same thing for my comic but it's the exact opposite for my JoeDios shots. The setups are spontaneous and afterwords I look at the photo and try to figure out what's happening in it. I let the photo inspire the story.

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I'd say if you've already got the short stories written down in your head, it's worthwhile having some kind of script to base your shots off, otherwise you could end up with 175 photographs of something of nothing You might get 5 really great shots to do a story you didnt intend to do. which is always kinda cool about this hobby but it wouldn't get you anywhere near close to putting the story across that you intended to do to the community

So you have a story, a base point, how many characters? Where is the threat coming from? What are they intending to do?
How many episodes, or chapters are you intending to seperate this into? It's great to leave reaction or action scenes open but i feel it's quite integral to have script in the build up to stuff.

I'd suggest either the old fashioned way with a jotter A4 pad, or use wordpad on your pc. I usually write mine down like a play? from school. That sounds daft really but probably the best method to add in directors notes. When doing your story cast yourself in the role of director, because essentially thats what you are really. Director & Cameraman.

Example from one of my recent stories. - In the beginning

In the Beginning - Lupin meets the footless time traveller, while on his adventure he is asked by the Time Traveller to keep a look out for a spare pair of feet. Lupin is to off to search for a recreated entity named 'Gold', who was created when Lupin was trapped in the duplicator machine.
Packing up his equipment he sets off on his adventure!

*Image 1* - A profile picture of Lupin - profiling his character strengths and weaknesses by naration.
*Image 2* - A shot of Lupin, with the time traveller sat down behind him.
*Image 3* - Time Traveller looks up at Lupin.
TT: "So let me get this right, theres another copy of you somewhere, and he's stolen my crystal and feet?"
*Image 4* - Shot of Lupin turning to answer him.
L: "Right, I have this friend named Fujiko, If I could find her, I bet she could be able to help me. I will do my best to find your chest crystal"

That is the dialogue as well as image notes I prepared, here is the page I was referring to:

So. As you can see, i've used the ** symbols to state an image note and used short hand for the characters in my scene, in this case TT is the Time Traveller and L is Lupin. In more complex scenes involving more than 6 or 7 people you might only need 2 or 3 to be speaking, so its a good idea to have abbreviated or shorthand figured out 1st so you can direct who is saying what to who in whatever scene your writing/making.

As I go through each panel/page I think about the photograph, sometimes even have the figures with me to hand while acting out the scene, i've always viewed the figures as miniture actors really, with me being the director. If i have an idea I want to put that idea over the best I can.

The final tip here from me is that with wordpad you can colour up certain words or bold stuff, especially if you are setting reminders on a scene. If you need anything explaining or any how-to's I'd be happy to do a brief write up.

PM me if you need any help. Best of luck with your story. The great thing about writing the scripts in this style is that you can shorthand write them in a notepad and take them with you when you do shoot the scenes/photographs (assuming you go outdoors). I usually add them to my blackberry notes before I leave.

In friendship
Rich

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Cheese and rice Richard, that's quite involved, but I like the way you've done it. It's almost like a movie script with dialogue, camera direction and action direction. Looks good. Have you got a link to where you've got your dio-story posted? Is that the guy from Cowboy Bebop?

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Some people, when trying to avoid thinking about those things that cause them pain, turn to drink, or perhaps food, or drugs... I turn not to any of those... I collect action figures, turning my mind to the hunt, so that I might find a mote of peace... Over the years, I've found that alcoholism is much more socially acceptable by far.

Just a note, If you want to do it Movie script style, do a google search for Celtx. It is a free program for writing scripts and puts everything together quite nice. I use it for my Joelanta Movies every year. Mainly because the scribbles I make at the bar when we are writting it get worse and worse as the night goes on and I want to get it down readable before I completly forget it.

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The dio story links were posted here in the dio story section. I think it's in 4 parts

Click here to read them on my site.

They are also viewable on flickr. So no need to miss out.

As for the character, I had to google cowboy bebop, he's not from that, but i can certainly see why you'd think he was (same genre at least). Lupin is from Castle of Cagliostro animated film. see here

I guess the process is quite involved. I've got wordpad on my blackberry curve, so if i need to transfer more of the script/scenes with me i can email myself the document, and take it with me. If i'm shooting indoors it doesn't matter. Of course, even without the technology, I used A4 writing paper with a pencil and rubber to draft out scenes.

Essentially i'd like to think even in every one of us exists a good gijoe or action figure story, i think as always people do have a habit of thinking up a good scenario but struggle to piece it together. Putting myself in the 'directors' role and pretending the figures are mini-actors has always been the easiest way it worked for me. If it can work for others on here then I'm game to see what they come up with.

Below is a set of notes and symbols i use for scripts. You can sub any of them for alternative uses or meanings - just do whatever works best for you.

" " - Speech. Pretty Straight forward

* * - Image. sometimes replaced by [IMG] square brackets, I borrowed this one from seeing it on a JPEG forum code thingey

# # - Alt.Angle. Used mostly in action scenes and sometimes followed by the characters abbreviation if it is shot from behind, to the side or from his own P.O.V

One last piece of advice. Do a quick look around on google for character or script writing, even just the basic refresher tutorial helps. I know it helped me alot recently.

Good luck with your project
Rich

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I have a general idea of the story I want to do. I use Celtx to write the outline and I do script some parts of the story. I never end up sticking to my script, however, as I'm frequently thinking up other ways of telling the next part of the story. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not. I think if the story is quite complex, then scripting, to some extent, is a good idea.

My animated films, on the other hand, were all made up as I went along. You have a lot of time to think while animating