【Production Log】 Designing Episode 5’s Storyboard

Facts

For Episode 5, I started with a simple core idea: Marikun hits his head hard, imagines a terrible bruise the next day, then checks and finds he’s perfectly fine — shiny and uninjured.

My first storyboard draft looked like this:

• Marikun makes coffee
• He reaches for sugar on the shelf above him
• He hits his head on the corner of the shelf
• He checks to make sure there’s no bleeding
• Just in case, he puts on a bandage and goes to sleep
• The next day, he imagines a severe bruise
• He looks in the mirror and is shiny (uninjured)

In that draft, several beats leaned toward confirmation and procedure (e.g., “checking for bleeding,” “sleeping to show time passing”), which can easily turn into explanatory steps rather than punchy visual beats.

After that, I revised the plan under short-form constraints: pace first, remove explanatory cuts, and strengthen the opening.

Decisions

I fixed the episode’s core as “pain → certainty → no damage.” Everything else would be kept only if it directly supported that core.

I decided to remove confirmation actions like “checking for bleeding,” because they’re hard to communicate instantly on screen and tend to slow the tempo in a way that increases swipe-away risk.

Rather than carefully depicting “the next day,” I prioritized an order that the audience can understand instantly, and treated time passing as something to compress through editing and staging if needed.

For the opening, I chose to avoid starting with explanation and instead prioritize a beginning where the incident happens immediately and is understood at a glance.

Fixed

• The episode core is the contrast: hard impact → imagining things got worse → checking reveals “shiny and uninjured.”
• As a default short-form rule, remove purely procedural beats (e.g., “checking for bleeding,” “sleeping only to explain time passing”) unless they directly strengthen the core.
• Tempo is the priority: the storyboard should work with the minimum number of cuts necessary.
• Design the opening under the assumption that it must be strong on first contact (instant comprehension, no warm-up).
• Use this standard workflow: draft first → cut for short-form requirements → converge to the final shape.

Final Storyboard (Locked Cut List)

Cut 1 — BONK (Incident Lock-in)

Visual: Kitchen. The exact moment Marikun’s head hits the cabinet door (a readable contact frame) → instant blackout. Intent: Lock in the incident (hard impact) within 0.5 seconds and stop the scroll. DaVinci recovery: 2–4 frames of full black + “bonk” SFX + 2 frames of silence to make the impact undeniable.

Cut 2 — Pain (Externalized)

Visual: Freeze → one action only: Marikun holds the top of his head (or forehead). Intent: Confirm “that really hurt” without facial acting.

Cut 3 — Theory Card (The Question)

Visual: Theory card centered; white text with shadow; minimal design. Line 1: “Serious injury?” Line 2: “Or… totally fine?” Intent: Convert the incident into a binary outcome and pull the viewer toward the verdict.

Cut 4 — Imagination Bubble (Certainty Made Visible)

Visual: In front of the bathroom sink. Medium shot from a rear 3/4 angle; only the edge of the mirror is visible. A thought bubble (no text) shows an illustration of a severe bruise/bump for 0.4–0.6 seconds. Intent: Lock in “It HAS to look awful” as an external, instantly readable assumption (setup for the verdict). Editing: Composite a bubble PNG + bruise illustration PNG.

Cut 5 — Peel the Bandage (The Switch)

Visual: Close-up. Marikun peels off the bandage — only that action. Cut while it’s still peeling, or right before the peel is fully complete. Intent: Make “Next comes the verdict” inevitable. Don’t reveal the result too early in this cut.

Cut 6 — Mirror = Shiny and Uninjured (Verdict / Punchline)

Visual: Bathroom. In the mirror, Marikun’s head is perfectly fine and shiny (no bandage). Intent: Deliver the verdict in one glance and complete the core contrast.