by Suzanna Cermak
On Thursday, Feb 28, the Grade 12 Film class welcomed special guest and storyboard artist Sam Hudecki. Sam’s storyboarding credits include work for the Denis Villeneuve films Arrival (2016), Bladerunner 2049 (2017), and most recently Dune (2021). Dune was recently nominated for multiple Oscar awards.
Sam’s advice to anyone who wants to make films is to get out and do it. He began his career filming nature documentary footage. He spoke about filming a squirrel for weeks and then finding the drama in the footage to edit together a good story.
Watching Sam’s presentation, we saw many of his storyboard sketches side by side with final shots from the films. We were hit with how much pre-thinking goes into a film long before actors or a set are part of the project. Sam talked about his work with director Denis Villeneuve as “bringing dreams to life.” We learned that sometimes his sketches form the basis for sets and costume pieces for films.
To give you an idea of how many sketches he does, any film might contain 140 scenes, and each scene usually has over 200 panels. That’s a lot of sketches! Read more about Sam here: Sam Hudecki · Kickass Canadians
