Drawing FAST LIVE storyboards - secrets revealed
Finally! I'm used to working on exciting, secret projects but this is one I've been really looking forward to sharing. To be honest I can't believe that it's actually made it all this way. And that Universal and Brand Events have backed Rowland French's grand vision of bringing all the biggest moments from the Fast & Furious movie franchise to life in quite likely the biggest live arena show of modern times.
It's been 4 years since I first sat down at Brand Events' offices in West London and listened to Rowland describe his whopping great big vision. His other story artist had upped pencils at short notice to go work on a feature, and he had a need of some drawings. Of cars. Doing stunts. Cool cars. Lots of stunts.
I was relatively new to storyboarding for film and tv, and had secured the gig with a good word from an old school friend with high token in the world of Cars and Gears. I didn't really recognise any of the cars that rolled off Rowland's lips that afternoon, but I smiled and nodded and "Yes" I lied. "Yes. I am a petrol head".
That's the first secret of being a good storyboard artist. Always say "Yes". And never forget that anyone can become an expert. It just takes a little research. At that stage there were 5 films with the 6th on the way so I spent a weekend with a Fast & Furious box set, and a day googling and oogling all the cars, tanks, skidoos etc. that we were going to feature; building up a library of all the vehicles, from every angle possible.
Suitably armed, it was time to kick off storyboarding the sequences that Rowland had dreamed up, and for the first draft we spent 3 days locked in a room, him with his big black book of scribbles, me with my blank storyboard templates and a little pile of diecast cars spread across the table. For these initial briefings I like to work on 16:9 thumbnails (about 1" wide) printed out on regular A4 printer paper, and use a mechanical pencil with a nice, soft 3B lead. Small is fast, and while I might later try out 2 or 3 angles of the same shot, I typically end up tracing a blown up copy of these very first, intuitive marks.
And that's how we worked. Most of the time the sequences were well established in Rowland's head, imagined and informed from his role as Creative Director of Top Gear Live, and my job was to get them down on paper so that other people could see them too. Sometimes they were just the seed of the idea, the key moment he wanted to get to and together we had to figure out how to get there, in a way that was exciting, with strong narrative, and true to the famous movie franchise.
I'd then head home with my thumbnails and notes to guide me, and over the next few days I worked them up, larger and with more detail. I rigged up a cardboard mock of an arena to better understand the initial staging and basic choreography that we were proposing, and this helped refine some of the raw ideas from the initial briefing into a set of drawings that Rowland could properly review and provide feedback on.
There are always changes at this stage in the game, but it was testament to Rowland's vision that for this first iteration they were minimal, and so I was straight into preparing a clean set of digital boards (using Storyboard Pro) for Very Important Hollywood eyes. In little over 2 weeks the first draft of Fast Live was ready for a flight to LA and a meeting with Universal.
And boom!
They got it. They liked it. Time to bring in the lawyers...
And time for us to think about the second draft. But of course these things take a very long time, and the reality is it's hard to believe it's ever actually going to be made. And even if it does, you know it'll get diluted and few of the best ideas will ever see light of day.
Yet something strange happened along the way. Or rather didn't happen. The people that decide these things kept saying 'yes', not 'no'. The big stunts stayed in. Bigger ones got added. The cool stuff got cooler. And I got to draw pretty pictures of pretty much all of it.
So from the initial pitch boards, to the 3rd, 4th rework, from the downs of the lost scenes, to the ups of the new scenes ( what's that Rowly..? a nuclear submarine..? cooool...!! ) and even all the way through the rather annoying fiddly little costume changes it went from just enjoying playing at 'what could be' for this epic production to ok, this is serious now.. and it still blows my mind to see how much of Rowland's original vision will make it through to the grand opening at London's O2 in Jan'18.
All in all I drew about 900 frames, including at least one complete rework. There were of course creative challenges, late nights and last minute printing hell, but I was able to draw on my Product Design background to ensure that our heroes (the cars) were 'on model', while enjoying the freedom of a camera-free arena to chose the best shots to explain (and sell) the dramatic stunts.
And while I'm bound by confidentiality agreements until this handsome beast of a stunt spectacular is officially 'Live' ( and thanks Universal for letting me share some storyboards when the time is right) I can reveal that yes, we really did figure out most of it with dinky little toy cars.
As for me. Well I have come out of it with a bit of a thing for Dodge Chargers (actually I want one). And in the meanwhile my next secret storyboarding project began with the question "can you draw horses?"..
Horses? I love horses..
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