{"course":{"slug":"visual-storytelling","title":"Making It Say Something","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling","level":"beginner","track":"create"},"lesson":{"slug":"ugly-boxes","title":"Draw ugly boxes now or pay for it later","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/ugly-boxes","position":25,"of":64,"minutes":8,"answer":"Plan in throwaway frames while changes still cost thirty seconds, and get consent in writing before the camera comes out, not after.","keyIdea":"Plan in throwaway frames while changes still cost thirty seconds, and get consent in writing before the camera comes out, not after."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## The step everyone skips\n\nSix boxes on a sheet of A4. Stick figures. Arrows for camera moves. Handwriting you would not show anyone. Twenty minutes, and nobody ever sees it.\n\nThat is a storyboard, and skipping it is the most expensive habit in this course, because the cost does not appear until later and it always appears as something else: a reshoot, a client argument, a piece that never quite works and nobody can say why.\n\nThe reason is arithmetic. A change on paper costs thirty seconds. The same change after the shoot costs a reshoot. After the edit it costs a re-edit and possibly a reshoot you can no longer get, because the location has closed, the light has changed, or the person in shot three has left the company. Every hour of planning is buying options that expire.\n\n> Figure: The same change, priced by when you notice it. Timeline: On paper, Thirty seconds and a new box; On location, One more setup before you pack up; That evening, A phone call and a second visit; In the edit, A rewrite, or a reshoot nobody is paying for; Weeks later, The light has changed and the shop has closed. Nothing about the change gets harder. What expires is the option to make it, which is what an hour of planning actually buys.\n\n## What the boxes catch\n\nThings you cannot see in your head, and can see immediately in six ugly frames:\n\n- You have no shot of the actual product. You have four shots of atmosphere.\n- Shots three and five are the same angle at the same distance, so the cut between them will look like a mistake.\n- The story needs an aerial shot of a rooftop you do not have access to.\n- Everything is a medium shot. Nothing is close enough to feel and nothing is wide enough to establish.\n- You have twelve seconds of setup for an eight-second idea.\n\nUnder each box write one line of what happens and one line of what is said or on screen. That is the whole method.\n\n### The shot list\n\nThe storyboard is the picture; the shot list is the plan. Five columns, on paper or in any text file:\n\n- Shot number\n- Size: wide, medium, close, extreme close\n- What happens\n- Sound or on-screen text\n- Roughly how many seconds\n\nA thirty-second reel usually runs to six to ten shots. If your list has three, it will feel static. If it has twenty-five, it will feel frantic and you will not have time to light any of them.\n\nThe shot list is also the thing that tells you whether the shoot is possible. Add up the seconds; add up the locations; look at how many setups need the same light. Most one-day shoots that overrun do so because nobody counted the setups.\n\n### Thumbnails, the same tool for static work\n\nA poster gets the identical treatment under a different name. Twelve small boxes on one sheet, twenty minutes, before opening any software. Not decorative: just where the mass sits, where the big word goes, where the eye enters.\n\nThe mechanism is worth understanding, because \"just start in the software\" feels faster. Once you have a layout on screen with real type and a real photograph, changing it is expensive: you have invested effort, undoing feels like loss, and you start nudging instead of exploring. Twelve throwaway boxes cost nothing to abandon, so you actually consider the option where the image bleeds off the top, which you would never have tried after forty minutes in Photopea.\n\n## Doing it free, including on a phone\n\n- **Paper.** Still the fastest. A pencil and a sheet folded into six.\n- **Slides.** Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress, one slide per shot, a text box underneath. Reorderable, shareable with a client, and works on a phone.\n- **Photoboard.** Go to the actual location with your phone and take one still per planned shot. This is better than drawing for anything shot in a real place, because it tells you the truth about the light and the background clutter.\n- **Krita** or any free sketching app if you would rather draw. None of this needs to look good.\n\nClient-facing tip: show a rough board rather than a finished draft. Clients give braver feedback on something visibly unfinished, and reserve their politeness for things that look done. A polished draft gets \"lovely\" and then gets rejected at the end.\n\n## Two things planning is for\n\n### Consent, before the camera comes out\n\nThe moment your board includes a real person (an employee, a customer, a child, a bystander in the background) permission belongs at the planning stage, in writing, before the camera comes out. This is not paperwork for its own sake. Before the shoot you have a conversation; after the shoot you have a piece you cannot use unless they agree, and your leverage is zero. That applies with more force to anyone whose likeness or voice you intend to reuse, alter or synthesise later.\n\nA one-paragraph release, signed and photographed on a phone, is enough for most small jobs. What counts as valid varies by country and by whether children are involved, so a lawyer where you live is the person who answers that for your case. The habit (ask first, in writing, name what it will be used for) is the same everywhere.\n\n### Knowing when not to board\n\nOver-boarding kills observational work. If you are filming a market, a wedding or a real conversation, a locked twelve-frame board makes you chase your drawings instead of watching what is in front of you, and the best moment of the day happens while you are setting up shot seven.\n\nFor that kind of work, board the *structure* (the beats from the previous lesson, and a short list of shots you must not leave without) and keep the frames open. Planning what has to exist is different from planning what it looks like.\n\n## Do this today\n\nTake a video you plan to make and draw six boxes for it, badly, in under fifteen minutes. Then count how many of the six are the same shot size. If more than three are, you have found something that would have shown up only in the edit."},"check":{"question":"A designer skips thumbnail sketching and starts a poster directly in Photopea. Four hours later the layout is competent but they cannot see any alternative to it. What best explains the narrowed thinking?","options":[{"text":"The software's default artboard and grid settings pushed the composition toward a conventional layout from the start.","correct":false,"tempting":"Blames tool defaults for a constraint that comes from the cost of abandoning invested work."},{"text":"Four hours is not long enough to explore alternatives in detail, so the fix is more time in the same file.","correct":false,"tempting":"Assumes exploration scales with time spent rather than with how cheap it is to discard an option."},{"text":"Once real type and images are placed, abandoning the layout feels like losing invested work, so exploration turns into nudging what already exists.","correct":true},{"text":"Working on screen at full artboard size hides how the poster will look small, which is what limits the range of layouts considered.","correct":false,"tempting":"Confuses a viewing-size problem with the reason no alternative layouts were generated at all."}]},"prev":{"slug":"the-ending-problem","title":"Endings, and the four asks that cancel each other out","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/the-ending-problem"},"next":{"slug":"interviewing-for-usable-answers","title":"Most interview footage is unusable, and the question is why","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/interviewing-for-usable-answers"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'Draw ugly boxes now or pay for it later', in Making It Say Something. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/ugly-boxes (Accessed: 31 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"Draw ugly boxes now or pay for it later","courseTitle":"Making It Say Something","module":{"index":4,"slug":"getting-the-material","title":"Getting the material"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Plan in throwaway frames while changes still cost thirty seconds, and get consent in writing before the camera comes out, not after.","hero":{"kind":"figure","figure":{"t":"figure","label":"Figure 4.1","figure":{"type":"timeline","title":"The same change, priced by when you notice it","events":[{"when":"On paper","what":"Thirty seconds and a new box"},{"when":"On location","what":"One more setup before you pack up"},{"when":"That evening","what":"A phone call and a second visit"},{"when":"In the edit","what":"A rewrite, or a reshoot nobody is paying for"},{"when":"Weeks later","what":"The light has changed and the shop has closed"}],"caption":"Nothing about the change gets harder. What expires is the option to make it, which is what an hour of planning actually buys."},"alt":"Figure: The same change, priced by when you notice it. Timeline: On paper, Thirty seconds and a new box; On location, One more setup before you pack up; That evening, A phone call and a second visit; In the edit, A rewrite, or a reshoot nobody is paying for; Weeks later, The light has changed and the shop has closed. Nothing about the change gets harder. What expires is the option to make it, which is what an hour of planning actually buys."}},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"the-step-everyone-skips","runs":[{"text":"The step everyone skips"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Six boxes on a sheet of A4. Stick figures. Arrows for camera moves. Handwriting you would not show anyone. Twenty minutes, and nobody ever sees it."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"That is a storyboard, and skipping it is the most expensive habit in this course, because the cost does not appear until later and it always appears as something else: a reshoot, a client argument, a piece that never quite works and nobody can say why."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The reason is arithmetic. A change on paper costs thirty seconds. The same change after the shoot costs a reshoot. After the edit it costs a re-edit and possibly a reshoot you can no longer get, because the location has closed, the light has changed, or the person in shot three has left the company. Every hour of planning is buying options that expire."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"what-the-boxes-catch","runs":[{"text":"What the boxes catch"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Things you cannot see in your head, and can see immediately in six ugly frames:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"You have no shot of the actual product. You have four shots of atmosphere."}],[{"text":"Shots three and five are the same angle at the same distance, so the cut between them will look like a mistake."}],[{"text":"The story needs an aerial shot of a rooftop you do not have access to."}],[{"text":"Everything is a medium shot. Nothing is close enough to feel and nothing is wide enough to establish."}],[{"text":"You have twelve seconds of setup for an eight-second idea."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Under each box write one line of what happens and one line of what is said or on screen. That is the whole method."}]},{"t":"h3","id":"the-shot-list","runs":[{"text":"The shot list"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The storyboard is the picture; the shot list is the plan. Five columns, on paper or in any text file:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Shot number"}],[{"text":"Size: wide, medium, close, extreme close"}],[{"text":"What happens"}],[{"text":"Sound or on-screen text"}],[{"text":"Roughly how many seconds"}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A thirty-second reel usually runs to six to ten shots. If your list has three, it will feel static. If it has twenty-five, it will feel frantic and you will not have time to light any of them."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The shot list is also the thing that tells you whether the shoot is possible. Add up the seconds; add up the locations; look at how many setups need the same light. Most one-day shoots that overrun do so because nobody counted the setups."}]},{"t":"h3","id":"thumbnails-the-same-tool-for-static-work","runs":[{"text":"Thumbnails, the same tool for static work"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A poster gets the identical treatment under a different name. Twelve small boxes on one sheet, twenty minutes, before opening any software. Not decorative: just where the mass sits, where the big word goes, where the eye enters."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The mechanism is worth understanding, because “just start in the software” feels faster. Once you have a layout on screen with real type and a real photograph, changing it is expensive: you have invested effort, undoing feels like loss, and you start nudging instead of exploring. Twelve throwaway boxes cost nothing to abandon, so you actually consider the option where the image bleeds off the top, which you would never have tried after forty minutes in Photopea."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"doing-it-free-including-on-a-phone","runs":[{"text":"Doing it free, including on a phone"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Paper.","b":true},{"text":" Still the fastest. A pencil and a sheet folded into six."}],[{"text":"Slides.","b":true},{"text":" Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress, one slide per shot, a text box underneath. Reorderable, shareable with a client, and works on a phone."}],[{"text":"Photoboard.","b":true},{"text":" Go to the actual location with your phone and take one still per planned shot. This is better than drawing for anything shot in a real place, because it tells you the truth about the light and the background clutter."}],[{"text":"Krita","b":true},{"text":" or any free sketching app if you would rather draw. None of this needs to look good."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Client-facing tip: show a rough board rather than a finished draft. Clients give braver feedback on something visibly unfinished, and reserve their politeness for things that look done. A polished draft gets “lovely” and then gets rejected at the end."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"two-things-planning-is-for","runs":[{"text":"Two things planning is for"}]},{"t":"h3","id":"consent-before-the-camera-comes-out","runs":[{"text":"Consent, before the camera comes out"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The moment your board includes a real person (an employee, a customer, a child, a bystander in the background) permission belongs at the planning stage, in writing, before the camera comes out. This is not paperwork for its own sake. Before the shoot you have a conversation; after the shoot you have a piece you cannot use unless they agree, and your leverage is zero. That applies with more force to anyone whose likeness or voice you intend to reuse, alter or synthesise later."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A one-paragraph release, signed and photographed on a phone, is enough for most small jobs. What counts as valid varies by country and by whether children are involved, so a lawyer where you live is the person who answers that for your case. The habit (ask first, in writing, name what it will be used for) is the same everywhere."}]},{"t":"h3","id":"knowing-when-not-to-board","runs":[{"text":"Knowing when not to board"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Over-boarding kills observational work. If you are filming a market, a wedding or a real conversation, a locked twelve-frame board makes you chase your drawings instead of watching what is in front of you, and the best moment of the day happens while you are setting up shot seven."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"For that kind of work, board the "},{"text":"structure","i":true},{"text":" (the beats from the previous lesson, and a short list of shots you must not leave without) and keep the frames open. Planning what has to exist is different from planning what it looks like."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"do-this-today","runs":[{"text":"Do this today"}],"role":"try"},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Take a video you plan to make and draw six boxes for it, badly, in under fifteen minutes. Then count how many of the six are the same shot size. If more than three are, you have found something that would have shown up only in the edit."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A designer skips thumbnail sketching and starts a poster directly in Photopea. Four hours later the layout is competent but they cannot see any alternative to it. What best explains the narrowed thinking?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"The software’s default artboard and grid settings pushed the composition toward a conventional layout from the start."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Blames tool defaults for a constraint that comes from the cost of abandoning invested work."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Four hours is not long enough to explore alternatives in detail, so the fix is more time in the same file."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Assumes exploration scales with time spent rather than with how cheap it is to discard an option."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Once real type and images are placed, abandoning the layout feels like losing invested work, so exploration turns into nudging what already exists."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"Working on screen at full artboard size hides how the poster will look small, which is what limits the range of layouts considered."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Confuses a viewing-size problem with the reason no alternative layouts were generated at all."}]}],"order":[1,3,2,0],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"the-ending-problem","title":"Endings, and the four asks that cancel each other out","minutes":8},"next":{"slug":"interviewing-for-usable-answers","title":"Most interview footage is unusable, and the question is why","minutes":9}}}