Storyboard Vs Animatic

As I am now planning out my continuity task, I thought I should compare planning methods. As I also did this last year I believe I have a good understanding of what is asked of me. Last year, we produced a storyboard and an animatic to plan our preliminary task so I thought these examples would be the perfect way to show the advantages and disadvantages.

The animatic is good for later planning once you know what you are producing and have already produced a storyboard and script. This allows you to show the length of shots and see if any parts last too long and need slight edition. Producing this does mean you already need a detailed plan of the film to produce and as I am in a small group, we all have similar ideas as to how it will come out. This means a visual representation may be unnecessary.

The storyboard for me is the bare minimum when planning a film's camera and composition. This means you can choose which shots to use where early on in the planning of the piece and discourages improvising. This does not however show any indication of editing etc and only detailed ones will have sound plans to accompany them.

So in my experience, I have found the storyboard most useful and the most convenient as you have to produce a storyboard, sound plan and script for an animatic. By then, I feel that you have a fair understanding of how everything is going to be edited and the time you spend divising that, you could be filming. I also feel that you rarely find a shot lasts too long or not long enough when you get this far in the planning stages.