‘Berlin’, And What Filmmakers Can Learn From Graphic Novels

How Jason Lutes masters visual storytelling.

On my desk sits a framed page of storyboards from Hayao Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away.

Spin the frame around and on the other side is a print from Scott McCloud’s graphic novel The Sculptor.

They’re in the same frame to remind me that film and comics share a common ancestor.

This discovery expanded my appreciation of both art forms and thinking of myself as a Sequential Artist helps me understand the clay that I’m moulding as filmmaker.

The film and the graphic novel are related like a pop song to a poem and, just like reading or writing poetry can make your songwriting better, I think filmmakers benefit from indulging in graphic novels.

I love seeing how a good graphic novelist approaches a scene because it is almost guaranteed to be different to a film director, while still using the same clay: a sequence of images with (or sometimes without) words.

But more than that, I think graphic novelists have a more interesting understanding of…