Shot Generator Case Study: Symbiotic

5:30 AM, David Irvine and Joseph Capalbi are putting the finishing touches on directing a scene for their upcoming sci-fi film "Symbiotic". They'd been working all night, staging action, telling actors what to do, and placing cameras – yet they aren't even in the same state.

David and Joseph have been friends for 20 years. They share an intense love for film and have written a few feature scripts together, focusing on the future of sci-fi. They got tired of just writing scripts, they wanted to start making their stories into reality, and decided to move into production on Symbiotic themselves. They wanted to produce it themselves not only to make a great piece of art, but also to learn specifically what it means to be a producer.

Just a day prior, David saw a video demonstration of a new feature of a software tool called Storyboarder. It's a simple tool that allows you to create shots by adding characters in a scene, posing them, setting up cameras and inserting shots into a storyboard sequence. They thought it would be a good way to make scenes for their upcoming film.

David lives in Miami. Joseph lives in Brooklyn. They talked over Discord, with David sharing his screen, both of them collaboratively using Storyboarder to direct the scene. This was their first time using the Shot Generator feature so there was a little bit of a learning curve, but once they got into it, they were able to make shots a lot faster, and their sequence took about 8 hours to fully board.

"For low budget indie films, it's impossibly hard to get storyboards done. They're incredibly expensive. Storyboarder lets us make our own boards. This put us forward about 3 months."

Joseph has a background in film, having worked at Miramax and Focus. He says that one of the biggest roadblocks for creatives is not being able to pre-produce a production effectively for a shoot. "A tool like this will let people to do their own pre-production. They can budget properly. They know exactly the shots they need, the talent they need, and the crew they need. They will save tons of money by using this."

Joseph Capalbi, David Irvine, and Huong Phan have formed a production company and are raising money through indigogo to finance "Symbiotic". To learn more about it, click here.