DEV Community: Uni66

Storyboard shot types reference: WS, MS, CU, OTS, POV explained

Uni66 — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:22:46 +0000

A storyboard panel without a shot-type annotation is half a document. The drawing communicates composition; the annotation communicates intent and craft direction.

Crew read storyboards in a specific order: scene number first, shot number second, shot type third, then they look at the drawing. The shot type tells the DP what lens to load and the gaffer what lighting setup to prep — often before they ever see the panel.

Here is the complete reference.

Wide Shot (WS / EWS / LS)

Establishing the geography. Wide shots show where the action happens.

EWS (extreme wide shot) — landscape, cityscape, full environment
LS (long shot) — frames a character within a recognizable environment

When to use: scene openings, location reveals, isolation beats, scale moments.

Medium Shot (MS / MLS / MCU)

Showing character action. Medium shots frame from waist or chest up.

MLS (medium long shot) — extends to roughly knee level
MCU (medium close-up) — tightens to mid-chest

When to use: dialogue scenes, action without facial emphasis, two-character conversations at standing distance.

Close-Up (CU / ECU)

Reading emotion. A close-up fills the frame with the head and shoulders. An extreme close-up (ECU) fills the frame with eyes, a hand, an object detail.

When to use: emotional reveals, decisive beats, key prop emphasis, suspense moments before a cut.

Over the Shoulder (OTS)

Anchoring the conversation. OTS frames one character past the shoulder of another. Standard coverage for dialogue scenes — pairs with reverse OTS to cut a conversation.

When to use: every two-person dialogue scene, interrogation beats, confrontation framing.

Point of View (POV)

Putting the audience inside a character. POV frames what a specific character is looking at, from their literal eyeline.

When to use: suspense, mystery, character-aligned reveals, action sequences where audience identification matters.

Two-Shot (2S)

Holding two characters in one frame. Used heavily in dialogue to avoid over-cutting OTS pairs.

When to use: rhythmic dialogue scenes, character chemistry beats, comedy timing.

Insert (INS)

Isolating an object or detail. Inserts frame a hand, an object, a screen, a piece of evidence — anything where the audience needs to read the detail clearly.

When to use: revealing a clue, emphasizing a prop, transitioning between scenes.

Camera movement annotations

Beyond shot type, every panel can carry a movement note:

PUSH — camera moves toward subject
PULL — moves away
PAN — rotate horizontally
TILT — rotate vertically
DOLLY — camera body moves on tracks
CRANE — vertical movement
HANDHELD — intentional unsteadiness
STATIC — locked-off tripod

Movement notes go on the panel either as text or as arrows drawn directly over the frame.

Putting it together

A complete storyboard panel annotation might look like:

Scene 4 · Shot 4A · MS PUSH
"Land her decision — push lands on close-up of hands"
MARIA: "I'm going."

That single line tells the DP the lens, the gaffer the lighting prep, the AD the timing, and the editor the cut intent.

If you write scripts but cannot draw storyboards yourself, STORYLINER generates production-ready boards from a screenplay in under 2 minutes, with character consistency across every frame. Free tier, no card required.

Full reference with examples: storyliner.online/learn/shot-types

How to storyboard a script (when you can't draw)

Uni66 — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:21:34 +0000

Storyboards are the thing that turns a screenplay into a shootable plan. They unblock decisions, communicate vision, and expose problems early. They are also famously hard to make if you cannot draw.

Here is the workflow that works whether you draw by hand, hire an artist, or use AI tools like STORYLINER.

Step 1: Break the script into scenes

Start at the slug line. Every INT./EXT. break is a scene. For a feature, expect 40–80 scenes. For a 30-second spot, expect 3–5. For a music video, expect one scene per visual idea — usually 8–15.

Number the scenes. This is your scene list. Every panel in the storyboard will reference back to a scene number, so a producer can flip between deck and script in one move.

Read each scene twice. First read: what happens. Second read: what is the emotional unit. The emotional unit is what dictates shot choice. A scene about loneliness gets wide shots. A scene about confrontation gets close-ups.

Step 2: Decide shots per scene

A short action scene might be 8 shots. A long dialogue scene might be 4. The rule of thumb: one shot per camera setup.

For each shot, write three lines:

Shot type (WS, MS, CU, ECU, OTS, POV)
Camera movement (static, push, pull, pan, dolly)
Intent ("feel her isolation", "land the punchline", "reveal the gun")

If you cannot write the intent line, the shot probably is not necessary. Cut it before you board it.

Step 3: Choose frames worth drawing

Not every shot needs a storyboard panel. Standard convention: board the key frame of each shot — the moment that defines what the audience sees. For a push-in, board the start frame and the end frame. For a long dolly, board start, mid, end.

A 40-shot scene might be 20–25 boards. A 6-shot commercial might be 8–10 boards (some shots get two panels).

Step 4: Maintain character continuity

Characters must look like themselves from frame 1 to frame 80. This is the single biggest failure mode of both human-drawn and AI-generated storyboards.

If you are drawing by hand, build a model sheet first — front, profile, three-quarter, basic wardrobe. Reference it on every panel.

If you are using AI, the tool must solve the character-drift problem. STORYLINER's Character Memory engine encodes a character once and conditions every subsequent frame on that encoding. Generic AI image tools (Midjourney, DALL-E) do not have this — every frame produces a different person.

Step 5: Annotate every panel

Each panel needs four annotations: scene number, shot number (1A, 1B, 1C if multiple per scene), shot type, and a one-line intent. Optional: dialogue line, sound cue, camera-movement arrows drawn directly on the panel.

A panel without notes is decoration. A panel with notes is a directive.

Step 6: Choose your style

Internal blocking discussion: sketch or simple
Client deck: lineart or classic
Brand sell-through: realism
Genre-styled pitch: pen art

Most teams maintain two styles per project — rough for internal iteration, polished for sign-off.

Step 7: Export and version

Standard deliverables: PDF (universal), PPT (agency-friendly), PNG (per-panel for online review tools). Version numbers matter: V1, V2, V3. Date every export.

When the script changes — and it always does — re-board only the affected scenes. With AI, this is minutes. With a human artist, this is days.

The AI shortcut

If you cannot draw and don't want to wait 3-7 days for a storyboard artist:

STORYLINER generates 30-frame storyboards from a script in under 2 minutes. Free tier, no credit card. 6 art styles. Direct Final Draft / Celtx / Fountain import. Character consistency across every frame.

Full guide with examples: storyliner.online/learn/how-to-storyboard

The 7 best AI storyboard generators in 2026 — honest comparison

Uni66 — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:15:53 +0000

Every six months a new wave of AI storyboard tools launches. Some are genuinely good. Most are GPT-4 wrappers with a storyboard skin. None of them tell you, honestly, when their tool is the wrong choice.

This guide is what I wish existed when researching AI storyboard tools — a head-to-head of every serious tool, tested on the same script, with the same brief.

The test

I took a 12-page short-film script (dystopian thriller, two leads, six scenes). Fed it identically to every tool. Asked for a 24-frame lineart storyboard. Rated on five axes: generation time, character consistency, composition variety, line quality, total cost.

Mid-tier paid plans tested (the realistic choice for a working director).

1. STORYLINER — $39/mo Starter

Generation time: ~2 minutes
Character consistency: high. Character Memory held both leads across all 24 frames
7 distinct shot types in the output
Free tier: 30 frames, no credit card required

Where it loses: highly stylized prompts ("a clock melting like a Dali painting") render literally rather than surreally on default settings.

2. Katalist — $79/mo

Generation time: ~2.5 minutes
Character consistency: high
8 shot types
Free trial: limited, credit card required

Where it wins: slightly more compositional variety. Where it loses: twice the price of equivalent STORYLINER tier; no pay-as-you-go option.

3. Boords — $44–89/mo per seat

Not really an AI storyboard tool. Manual storyboarding platform that added AI as a 2024 feature.

Generation time (AI mode): 4+ minutes
Character consistency: limited — drifts across frames
Best for: traditional storyboard artist teams that want AI as an option

4. LTX Studio — full platform pricing

Genuinely impressive but NOT a storyboard tool. It's a full video production platform with storyboarding as one step.

Generation time for storyboard alone: 6+ minutes (engine geared toward animatic)
Character consistency: high
Best for: AI-forward video studios building full short films end-to-end

5. FrameForge — $399 one-time

Desktop 3D pre-visualization software, not AI-driven. Build scenes by placing 3D characters and cameras.

Best for: feature-film pre-production with complex camera setups

6. Storyboarder — Free, open-source

Free desktop tool from Wonder Unit. Manual drawing only.

Best for: indie filmmakers who actually want to draw their own storyboards

7. Plot.com — $20/mo

Lightweight storyboard SaaS focused on collaboration. Limited AI features. Strong shot-list integration.

Best for: small commercial teams that already have a storyboard artist

Generic AI image tools (Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion)

Not storyboard tools. Different person nearly every frame. Composition control: limited. Workflow: manual prompt-per-frame.

Do not use these for storyboarding. The character continuity problem is a deal-breaker.

How to choose

Cost-conscious director or solo filmmaker: STORYLINER (free tier or $39/mo)
High-volume daily user generating 2,000+ frames/month: Katalist or STORYLINER Pro ($99)
Traditional storyboard artist team: Boords or Storyboarder
AI-forward video studio building full short films: LTX Studio
Anyone needing a storyboard tonight: STORYLINER free tier, no card

The compounding cost question matters: if you generate 5 boards/year, even $39/mo subscriptions add up. Some tools (STORYLINER) offer $5 PAYG packs for this segment.

Full comparison + reviews: storyliner.online/alternatives

Why character consistency is the hardest problem in AI image generation

Uni66 — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:15:46 +0000

The character-drift problem

Take any general-purpose AI image tool — Midjourney, DALL-E, generic Stable Diffusion — and prompt "a man with red hair in a leather jacket" twice. You will get two different men. Same description, different faces.

Now apply that to a storyboard. Frame 1: your protagonist. Frame 2: a different person who happens to also have red hair and a leather jacket. Frame 3: a third person. By frame 20, you have 20 unrelated people.

This is the single biggest reason generic AI image tools cannot be used for production storyboarding. It is also the single biggest problem AI-storyboard-specific tools need to solve.

Why drift happens

Generative image models are trained on millions of images. They learn what features cluster together (red hair, leather jacket, masculine face), not who a specific person is.

When you prompt the model, it samples from that cluster. Every sample is a different point in the cluster's distribution. There is no "memory" of the previous sample — each generation is independent.

To fix this, the model needs to be told: "this is the same person as last time". That message has to be encoded in a way the model can read.

How character memory engines work

STORYLINER's Character Memory takes a different approach. Instead of relying on prompt text alone, the engine builds a character encoding — a multi-vector representation of face geometry, build, signature wardrobe — when the character first appears.

On every subsequent frame, the engine conditions the generation on that encoding. The model is no longer sampling from a generic "red-haired man" cluster; it is sampling from the specific encoded character.

The result: the same face, the same build, the same wardrobe across all 30 frames in a storyboard. And the encoding is persisted to the user's Library, so the same character can be reused in the next month's project.

What this enables

Continuity discussions become possible. A DP can look at a 24-frame board and discuss eyeline matches between frame 12 and frame 17. Without character consistency, that discussion is meaningless.

Series and anthology work becomes possible. A music video director who shoots 12 videos a year for the same artist can encode that artist once and feature them with stable visual identity across all 12 boards.

Brand work becomes possible. An ad agency working on a campaign with a specific actor can encode that actor's likeness and use the same likeness across every spot in the campaign.

What still does not work perfectly

Extreme close-ups: even with character memory, ECUs of just eyes or just hands sometimes drift because there is less character-defining geometry in the frame.
Costume changes: if the script requires the same character in a wedding dress in frame 5 and a hazmat suit in frame 12, the engine sometimes loses the underlying face. We mitigate by re-anchoring on the character's first appearance in any wardrobe.
Aging or de-aging: the engine does not yet support "this character but 20 years younger". That feature is on the roadmap.

The verdict

Character consistency is the single hardest problem in AI storyboarding. STORYLINER solves it well enough for production work. Generic AI image tools do not solve it at all.

If you are choosing an AI storyboard tool and continuity matters to your work, character consistency should be the first feature you test — not the last.

Want to see it in action? STORYLINER has a free tier with 30 frames and no credit card. It works on any screenplay file (Final Draft, Celtx, Fountain) or pasted text.