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Interviews
creative consultant he has worked with Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia/ TriStar, IBM and many others. Through joint ventures with various production companies and ad agencies he has helped develop promotional projects and media launches for the syndicated releases of the television series Mad About You, The Nanny, ER, and Friends as well as promos for Fox Football, the X-Files, and various Disney projects. As an LA-based storyboard artist, Josh shares a close working relationship with many of the top directors in the industry, such as Lasse Hallstrom, Scott Hicks, Francois Girard, Rob Reiner, Michael Bay, Kinka Usher, Kevin Smith, Simon West, Jonathan Darby, Gary Fleder, Tommy Schlamme, Paris Barclay, Leslie Dektor, Jonathan David, and even Joe Pitka (once). Over the past 12 years he’s storyboarded more than 2,500 commercials for clients such as Intel, Budweiser, Levis, Coke, Lexus, MasterCard, Ford, AT&T, Nike, Jack in the Box, Kellogg’s, and American Express. He has also boarded numerous music videos and television shows, including episodes of Clubhouse, The Bernie Mac Show, The West Wing, The X-Files, ER, Saving Grace, and Mad TV and two full seasons of the ABC Superman series Lois and Clark. He has worked on films such as Alex and Emma, Slow Burn, Cats and Dogs, Kiss the Girls, and Hush. Josh’s storyboard work is represented by Storyboards, Inc., who introduced us for this interview. MS: What kind of storyboards do you normally do? JH: I work mostly on commercials, but I’ve also done five studio features and numerous television series. MS: You’ve done a couple of hot television series too, like Lois and Clark. JH: That’s where I started, with Lois and Clark. Most TV shows don’t need storyboards, but if they’re using special effects or big action sequences then they’ll lower themselves to doing so. MS: How did you get started doing storyboards? JH: I moved out to L.A. and I was an illustrator and graphic designer. I had my own studio in Boston, but I fell in love with a woman who was coming out here, a woman I’m still married to, and I didn’t know exactly what to do. I had done some agency boards before, but I got hooked up on a movie called Manasaurus as an actor. I auditioned for a part as
an actor but had on my acting resume that I did storyboards. They asked if I want to storyboard a movie, and I said OK. I worked on it for two months, got all the books I could find at the time on storyboarding, which in 1993 were not very many. Shot by Shot was the only book that really told me anything. It’s a great book. I basically figured it out on my own. I worked two months for free, and they used the money to get some financing for the film, and I used it to get an agent. So that’s how I got my first start in the business. MS: When you are working, do you have a preference of styles? Some people start with blue-line, others like black line and lightbox. How do you like to work? JH: I always work in either non-repro blue or purple. I did purple for a while because it was easier to see, but then it’s harder to erase, so I went back to blue. So I start blue-lining and then I go work in pen and ink primarily. I do pencil occasionally, but mostly pen and ink. White-out is my friend. MS: Do you do much work in Photoshop? JH: Because everything is pretty much done over the Internet now, I scan everything and doctor things in Photoshop. I do all of my cutting and pasting now electronically, and any modifications I need to make I’ll do in Photoshop. MS: What about coloring? Do you scan your marker colors, or do you use Photoshop or some combo? JH: I’m a recent convert to Photoshop. I’ve done color in Illustrator before and traditional with markers. In the last couple of months I’ve been completely going Photoshop. MS: I find it slower than marker. What about you? JH: It’s a lot slower than marker. One of the first questions someone who doesn’t know storyboarding will ask is “Aren’t you going to be replaced by a computer?” And I say, “Not right away,” because I can easily crank out a couple of spots a day or an action sequence in a day and I can add in, based on reference photos, the specific vehicles they need and the location that they’re doing. And when you see something computer generated it seems a little more finished, and I think people get a little more nervous about that than a sketch. A sketch still leaves possibilities. But it would take weeks to program that into a computer. The advantage of the computer,