How to Storyboard an AI Film with 3D Previz Before You Generate

0:04The Storyboard is the cheapest place to make a mistake. A panel costs a fraction of a video, it takes seconds to generate, and it tells you right away whether a shot works. Every camera problem you fix here is a video you won't have to throw away later. In this lecture, we'll storyboard the photo and lock every camera decision before generating a single frame of video.

0:27We don't storyboard with drawings. We storyboard in 3D previs, simple grey figures in a blocked -out set like the previsualisation big studios use. Why? Because a previs frame has real perspective, a real lens and a real direction of light. It shows exactly where the camera stands and what the frame contains. In Screenweaver, every storyboard panel is a 3D blocking pass of the shot, explicitly not a drawing.

0:57Before your first panel, choose your aspect ratio, because every frame depends on it. Wide screen 16x9 for most films and YouTube, vertical 9x16 for mobile and short dramas, cinematic 2 .39 for the ultra -wide feature look, all the retro 4x3 and portrait 3x4. Change it after storyboarding and you'll be reframing everything.

1:23Then generate the first pass. In Screenweaver, the automatic storyboard generation runs in three steps. First, the missing reference sheets for your characters, places and objects in previs style. Second, the shot breakdown of every empty scene written from your script. Third, the storyboard image of every shot. You can run each step on its own or all of them at once, and it works on several jobs in parallel.

1:49Now, read every panel like a director. Is the shot size right? Is everyone where the script says? Thomas at the wheel, Emily in the passenger seat. Do the eyelines connect? Does the panel catch the decisive moment of the action, the single frame that tells the story? And does it respect screen direction from the panel before? The panel that fails one of these questions will fail as a video too.

2:14When a panel is wrong, fix it here. You can regenerate it and browse the previous versions. You can edit it with AI, paint colored strokes over the areas to change and describe the change in a prompt. You can use the camera angle tool to move the virtual camera. Zoom, tilt, rotate around the subject, or snap to a wide, medium or close preset, or crop it to a new frame. Every result is saved as a new version, so you never lose a good one.

2:45The camera angle tool deserves a moment because it changes how you work. Instead of rewriting a prompt and hoping for a better angle, you take a panel you like and move the camera around it, the way a cinematographer walks around the set. It's the difference between asking for a new picture and directing the shot you already have.

3:05Keep the panels consistent with each other. Use the continues from field for shots that share a camera setup. Mention your characters with the at sign, so each panel receives the right previous sheet, and compare neighboring panels. If a coat changes color or a seat flips sides between two panels, it will happen in the videos too.

3:26Then watch it. Press play on the sequencer, and the panels play in real time, each for its duration, while the script scrolls along beside them. That's your animatic. It's the first time you feel the rhythm of the film. A shot that drags, a cut that comes too early, a moment that needs one more beat, you'll feel it here, and fixing it costs nothing. Adjust the durations, reorder the shots, and play it again.

3:53One rule to remember, the storyboard decides the camera, never the look. The grey figures are there for framing, staging, and light direction. The final look comes from your art direction and your production sheets. When you use the storyboard panels to video pipeline, the panels are assembled into a grid that tells the model the order and the composition of the shots, and nothing else. If grey clay ever shows up in a final video, it's a failed take, regenerated.

4:21Here's the photo, side by side. On the left, the four previs panels. On the right, the four shots of the final film. Same framing, same positions, same camera moves. Every decision you see on the right was made on the left, in seconds, for a fraction of the cost.

4:44Your exercise. Choose your aspect ratio, storyboard your short in 3D previs, read every panel with the five questions, fix the weak ones, and watch your animatic until the rhythm feels right. That's the end of section four. Take the quiz, and in section five, we finally generate. Choosing the right video model, prompting like a director, and fixing what goes wrong.