The creative mind at work: a century of storyboarding at Fondazione Prada

‘Somebody told me that Martin Scorsese made drawings, and of course I got curious,’ says curator Melissa Harris about the inspiration behind her new show at Fondazione Prada’s Osservatorio, A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings. The exhibition features hundreds of storyboards and other preparatory materials–mood boards, annotated scripts, photos and the like– from some of the most celebrated names in cinema working from the late 1920s up to 2024.

Those names include Scorsese, whose drawings for Raging Bull are a highlight, as well as Ingmar Bergman, Agnès Varda, Hitchcock, Hayao Miyazaki, Sophia Coppola, Hitchcock, Spielberg and more. Harris, who has collaborated with Fondazione Prada on two previous exhibitions, wanted to make a show about storyboards because its a subject that is rarely discussed (‘it’s a curators dream to do something fresh!’) and because, as she says, ‘it’s a cool challenge — to do a show about a very human process that is meant to facilitate collaboration, communication.’

For many, storyboarding is an integral aspect of filmmaking. They are documents that help film teams manifest the narrative, troubleshoot complicated shots, determine the most effective angles for lighting and shooting and more. For Harris the process of collecting and choosing what material was included in the show was ‘about diversity of sensibilities and approaches. We wanted animation and to move through the 20th century into the present. It was like a two-year treasure hunt, without knowing what the treasure was.’

On the surface, many of the pieces displayed in the exhibit might not seem like treasure at all. While some works are technically impressive, like Disney Studios’ animations for Fantasia or Almodóvar’s comic book-like boards for his 2016 film Julieta, others look exactly like what they are– messy, hastily rendered notes; documents that are made for a specific, practical function. Rather than detract from the exhibit, though, it is exactly what makes it compelling. A Kind of Language is the rare kind of exhibition that celebrates the initial idea of a project, rather than its finished product.

For many directors, the storyboard is where they realise their vision of what the film will be before the other forces of filmmaking– the costume, set, DOP and other behind-the-scenes creatives; the location; the actors; the budget– shape that vision into something else, the final product we go to the theater to see. As Scorsese himself once said, ‘drawing the storyboards is my way of visualising the entire film before I shoot it. In a sense, drawing the film as I wish to see it.’ At A Kind of Language we see Fellini’s drawings for Amarcord, an example of how the director, who was a tireless draftsman, used his sketches to realise the details that characterised his eccentric characters. There’s the storyboards for Hitchcock’s Psycho that illustrate how forty-five seconds of the scene are shot from seventy-two different camera positions; as well as Sophia’s Coppola’s rough sketches of The Virgin Suicides sequences and a page of annotated script.

The presentation of these works is heightened by the unique set design by Andrea Faraguna of the Berlin-based architecture office Sub. Each storyboard is presented on a drafting desk-like table echoing how it might look to stumble upon the workstation of a storyboard artist or director and adding to the sense that you are looking at a work in progress.

Seen all together, the documents that make up A Kind of Language present a diverse and compelling showcase of the creative mind at work. As Harris says, ‘working on this show has given me a greater appreciation for the intense and often nuanced complexities of communicating and collaborating while making a film. I love that it is ultimately a very human and visual process, and it’s this sense of joining forces to realize a vision that I hope is part of the take-away for visitors to the show (and of course I hope they enjoy and appreciate what they experience as well!).'

Fondazione Prada’s 'Osservatorio, A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings' is on until 8 September 2025

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