The storyboards behind the best films

"The storyboard for me is the way to visualise the entire movie in advance," says Martin Scorsese, the Oscar-winning director of The Departed (2006) and Taxi Driver (1976).

Films are labours of love for directors, producers, costumiers and engineers. This army of people follow the vision laid out on the storyboard - the plan from which everyone works and bases their ideas around.

"They show how I would imagine a scene and how it should move to the next," explains Scorsese. "My storyboards are absolutely essential for my team meetings."

The exhibition, Between Film and Art: Storyboards from Hitchcock to Spielberg - which moves to the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin this Thursday (11 August - 27 November) - examines how the storyboard has become a work of art by itself. The curators, from the Deutsche Kinemathek and Kunstehalle Emden, have drawn similarities between the storyboards and more traditional works of art which could be seen to have influenced their aesthetic or conceptual approaches.

The exhibition features storyboards, film clips and artwork from some of the most notable films, directors and artists. Storyboards and scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) are displayed alongside artwork from Tony Oursler and Ernst which bear much resemblance to the films storyboard, in style and content, with singular eyes featuring prominently in all three pieces. Boards from Apocalypse Now (1979), directed by Francis Ford Coppola are shown to be similar to sketches by Georg Baselitz drawn in 1966.

"Storyboards are not the only means of communication for what I imagine," says Scorsese, "they are the point where I begin."

Sally Ashley-Cound