Before shooting The Echo I did a lot of prep work, including storyboarding the film. Below is a small selection of storyboard frames and their comparative stills from the final film. You can see where I stuck to the storyboard and where in some cases it was necessary to alter the original concept.

The storyboard frames were created in Frameforge Studio 3D, which is a great bit of software. It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it can be a really useful tool for planning your shots out in advance. The main advantage of it is that it is photographically accurate. You can set a lens, a precise camera height etc and what you see is exactly what you would get.

I had to knock up a very basic version of the train station in order to plan the shots in Frameforge, but it didn’t take too long and since it was for me only, I didn’t worry about it being too pretty.