Beat Boards, Explained

Today, I'll be explaining a beat board. 

The function that a beat board serves isn't quite the same as that of a storyboard, but they are incredibly similar; they aren't for the actions that the actors take in the scene, they're only somewhat for blocking - beat boards serve the purpose of figuring out whether the shots you choose to describe the intensity or banality of a scene will work in the final sequence.

Essentially, beat boards make sure that you - the audience - will get emotionally manipulated on an almost subliminal level! Isn't that fun?

I'll be using a scene from Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang as an example, because that movie is rad as hell, and if you haven't seen it you are bad and should feel bad. Moving on:

ROLL THE CLIP, DUDES:

Aaaaand the sequence I'm going over in this here blog entry pretty much ends after Gay Perry's car pulls into traffic and Harry Lockhart is spurred into action.

Least Intense:

1 ) The first shot. It is split very evenly down the middle of the screen, with the blacked out wall adding some sort of visual interest besides the figure - our protagonist, Harry - in the centre. Other than that? Pretty boring, very sterile.

• WHY IT WORKS: It's a perfectly blank canvas. With just this, what are you expecting to happen next? If you say "corpse in the shower" without watching the full sequence, you are some sort of insane person.

2 ) The second shot, it's just Harry saying some mundane things to an off-screen love interest as he goes pee.

• WHY IT WORKS: He's the most interesting thing in the shot, the darkest figure in an otherwise pretty monochromatic bathroom, until the camera pans slightly down and to the right...

Build Me Up, Buttercup:

3 ) ...revealing and bringing into focus the corpse in the shower. He's still peeing, by the way.

• WHY IT WORKS: As a continuation of the last shot, the interest is now shifted from Harry over and onto the fact that there is a fucking corpse in the room.

4 ) Startled by SUDDENLY: CORPSE, Harry is urinating all over it! It's the same shot as the first one, but slightly zoomed in.

• WHY IT WORKS: Since it's a repeat of a previous shot, we only really notice the changes. The dark comedy here breaks up the seriousness of the situation, and takes it out of Drama territory.

5 ) Good job, Harry Lockhart. This pretty much par for the course with your life. This is a grossed out reaction shot, where he is clearly the focus of the scene...

• WHY IT WORKS: Reaction shots work, period, if you want the audience to pretty much know what a character is thinking.

6 ) Yep, it's a corpse. It's the most tilted, the most angled, and the corpse's body language is abnormal. Also, to top it all off, there's a spotlight on the dead body.

• WHY IT WORKS: This shot is the most unique, in that it's the most off-kilter and askew in the sequence. Make no mistake, folks: THIS IS WHAT WE SHOULD BE TAKING NOTE OF.

Most Intense:

7 ) Back to Harry's reaction; the horror of the situation starts to set in.

• WHY IT WORKS: In this shot, the tension builds because as he is reacting to it, he has to keep calm - otherwise Harmony, his love interest, might stumble upon this as well, causing all sorts of trouble for him.

Less Intense:

8 ) The tension breaks once Harmony leaves the hotel room. Harry's sudden fears of having to explain the bullshit of a dead person just cropping up in his hotel room have vanished.

• WHY IT WORKS: As Harry collapses and is free from restraining his surprise, he breaks the stiff equality of the shot my moving away from the centre - and the audience can let out that breath they were holding in with the main character.

9 ) We can start to relax, knowing that Harry's got Gay Perry on the line.

• WHY IT WORKS: Since this shot is so different - very dark, not as sterile as Harry's - it's a believable back and forth without having to give Perry some elaborate location.

10 ) Harry has crawled under some shelves and is staring his situation in the face. Literally!

• WHY IT WORKS: The shot is framed by the corpse, the shower curtain, the shelves - he's in a dark corner, visually boxed in by his situation.

11 ) PERRY HAS THE BEST LINES.

• WHY IT WORKS: I explained this in number 9!

12 ) A close up of Robert Downey Jr's beautiful doe-like eyes Harry's face,

• WHY IT WORKS: He is the focus, here. Right smack dab in the middle, evenly spaced, the most evident thing in the shot: everything that's happening is all on him, so the shot itself is all him.

Perry and Harry continue to go back and forth, and then the movie continues on - and continues working to be darkly hilarious.