How to storyboard a documentary (it's a paper edit, not a shot list)
Why documentary planning differs from fiction storyboarding, how to build a paper edit that maps narration to what the archive can show, and how it feeds an AI build.
Fiction is storyboarded: every shot is designed, then made. Documentaries can't be, because the shots already exist somewhere in an archive and you don't know which ones until you look. The documentary equivalent is the paper edit.
The paper edit
A two-column document:
| Narration | On screen |
|---|---|
| The fleet sailed at dawn. | Archive: harbour photograph, 1914 (LoC) · push into ships |
| Nobody came back. | Hold on the same image · music out |
| In 1914, the port was… | Map: North Sea, borders 1914, camera to the port |
Every line of narration gets an intention: an archive item if one exists, a map if it's geography, a card if it's a date or name, a generated reconstruction only if nothing real exists.
Why it's better than a storyboard
- It's honest about the archive. You discover the gaps before the edit, not during.
- It fixes structure on paper, where structure is cheap to fix.
- It tells the editor (or the AI) what each line needs, rather than what it might look like.
Building one
- Write and rewrite the narration first. See the master prompt.
- For each line, search the archive and note what you found and its licence. See how to find archive footage.
- Mark maps, cards and reconstructions.
- Mark music entries and drops, and chapter breaks.
- Read the right-hand column alone: does it tell the story without the words? If a stretch is all cards, the archive is thin there; rewrite or research.
From paper edit to AI build
Glisse effectively generates the paper edit and executes it: it matches each narration line to licensed archive results, turns places and years into maps, places cards on dates and names, and cuts everything in an editor's template. You can still write your own paper edit first and use it to guide the review: the lines where you want a specific image, hold or silence.
Tools that call themselves storyboarders
LTX Studio and similar plan generated shots with consistent characters. That's the right tool for fiction and the wrong model for factual film, where the shots are found. See LTX Studio for documentaries.
FAQ
Do documentaries use storyboards?
Rarely in the fiction sense. They use a paper edit: narration beside what the archive can show.
What is a paper edit?
A written plan of the film with narration in one column and the intended picture, map or card in the other, made before any timeline work.
Can AI plan a documentary?
Glisse matches each narration line to archive footage, maps and cards, which is the planning step, then cuts it in an editor's template.
Make documentaries with an editor's taste
Glisse turns a real editor's style into a template. Describe your topic, and AI adapts it into a finished long-form film: licensed archive footage, maps, narration and music. Editors earn every time their template is used.
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