Every storyboard frame answers one question: what does the camera see? Shot types are the shared vocabulary for that answer. Learn them and your boards become instructions a crew can follow; skip them and every frame becomes a conversation. Below are the shot sizes, angles, framings, and moves you will use most, with the abbreviations that appear in the notes on most professional boards.
Shot sizes
Shot size describes how much of the subject fills the frame. It is the single biggest lever on how close the audience feels to a character.
- Extreme wide shot (EWS) — the subject is tiny in a vast space. Establishes geography and scale: a lone figure on a salt flat, a city skyline before we go inside.
- Wide shot (WS) — the whole subject and a good part of their surroundings. Shows where everyone is relative to each other; often the first shot of a scene.
- Full shot (FS) — head to toe, filling the frame height. Good for body language, costume, and physical action.
- Medium shot (MS) — roughly from the waist up. The workhorse of dialogue scenes: close enough for expression, wide enough for gesture.
- Medium close-up (MCU) — chest and shoulders up. More intimate than a medium; common for interviews and talking-head video.
- Close-up (CU) — the face fills most of the frame. Reserved for moments where a reaction matters.
- Extreme close-up (ECU) — a detail: eyes, a trigger finger, a ringing phone. Creates intensity or points the audience at something they must notice.
Framings: OTS, POV, two-shots, and inserts
- Over the shoulder (OTS) — framed from behind one character, looking at another. The standard way to cover a conversation and keep both people in the audience's mind.
- Point of view (POV) — what a character sees. Usually sandwiched between a shot of the character looking and a shot of their reaction.
- Two shot (2S) — two subjects in one frame, which emphasizes their relationship.
- Insert (INS) — a cutaway to an object or detail: the letter on the table, the clock on the wall.
Camera angles
Angle is where the camera sits relative to the subject. An eye-level shot feels neutral. A low angle, looking up, makes a subject loom larger and more powerful; a high angle, looking down, makes them smaller or more vulnerable. A bird's-eye view straight down turns a scene into a map, and a Dutch angle — the camera tilted on its axis — signals unease. On a board, draw the angle honestly: if the camera is low, show the ceiling.
Camera moves
- Pan — the camera pivots left or right on a fixed point. Tilt — it pivots up or down.
- Push in / pull out — the camera physically moves toward or away from the subject (a dolly move). It builds or releases intensity.
- Zoom — the lens changes focal length while the camera stays put. It looks different from a push in: the background flattens instead of shifting, so note which one you mean.
- Truck — the camera slides sideways, parallel to the subject. Tracking follows a moving subject.
- Crane / jib — the camera rises or descends, often to reveal a location or end a scene.
- Handheld — deliberately unsteady, for urgency or documentary realism. A whip pan is a pan so fast it blurs, often used as a transition.
How to note shots on a board
Draw movement as arrows: arrows inside the frame for subject movement, and arrows outside or across the frame edge for camera movement. For a push in, draw a smaller frame inside the first one with arrows pointing toward it — the end framing of the move. Then write the shot size and move in the notes in abbreviated form, like MS · Push in · 3s.
In Striply's storyboard maker, every frame's header has a shot-type and camera-move picker using these same abbreviations, plus a duration field, so the notes read consistently across the whole board. If you also make comics, the same thinking shapes panels — see panel composition and pacing.