Tweet Storyboarding?

Looking around, I find that storyboarding is first credited to the Disney studio, but I found this in American Cinematographer April 1931, and the description appears a lot like that. Hmm.

There is an exhibition devoted to storyboards touring Germany. Just now it is on at the Kinemathek in Berlin. I won't be able to see it, but I have bought the catalogue. The earliest storyboard it showcases is from Maurice Tourneur's 1929 film DAS SCHIFF DER VERLORENEN MENSCHEN.

Karl Brown in My Adventures with D.W. Griffith reports on the use of storyboarding in the 1910s.

Bob

There is an exhibition devoted to storyboards touring Germany. Just now it is on at the Kinemathek in Berlin. I won't be able to see it, but I have bought the catalogue. The earliest storyboard it showcases is from Maurice Tourneur's 1929 film DAS SCHIFF DER VERLORENEN MENSCHEN.

Ah, very interesting. I wouldn't be surprised the innovation filtered from Tourneur. It does have the storyboard as verification, while the Milestone story is contemporary with LM's use of it. In that sense, I trust both.

So, it's not the Disney studio where it started, and the first storyboarded live-action film wasn't Gone With The Wind. Ah, so much misinformation out there.

As for Karl Brown, Griffith may well have been first (he certainly was an innovator), but why not publicize same at the time of the Milestone story? Brown was a member of the ASC, I'm sure they would have let him correct the record. As you can tell, I don't place much stock in print reminisces. A lily often gets gilded to the point it's too heavy to stand on its own.

As for Karl Brown, Griffith may well have been first (he certainly was an innovator), but why not publicize same at the time of the Milestone story? Brown was a member of the ASC, I'm sure they would have let him correct the record.

Probably because he either didn't see this blurb, or didn't care.

Indeed it is possible, of course. I don't deny Brown's statement, just somewhat discount it because it was written many years later (his book was from the '70s, wasn't it?). I have an aversion to the practice of "correcting the record" to ascribe credit to another for something that in long retrospect was found important. It can be true or misremembered. Incidents get inflated or garbled over time (eyewitness testimony is being found less and less reliable and subject to manipulation). For example, a couple of sketches of big scenes could be remembered as a storyboard years later, etc.

This isn't unusual. I have found other well-accepted Hollywood stories which are at best only partially true, just by going through publications during the time they were supposed to have happened and finding a more banal story. Also, some figures in filmdom aren't exactly the most reliable narrators, either (no reflection on Brown, BTW, I was thinking of others).

I just see Brown's claim for Griffith as standing on shakier foundation than the others.