Free 1:1 square storyboard template
A printable square storyboard template for feed posts and carousels. Six true 1:1 frames a page with ruled space underneath, so the square crop gets decided before the shoot rather than after it.
What’s inside
Square boxes at the shape the post appears in, which is rarely the shape the film was shot in.
A ruled band under every box, which on a square board is where the crop you are protecting gets written down.
Landscape A4 with the margins inside the page, clear enough to punch. It prints on US Letter scaled to fit.
What 1:1 means
A square frame with equal width and height.
Where square is still the placement
Square is a feed shape and feeds have moved on. Portrait 4:5 and full-screen vertical carry a lot of what square used to, so check what the buy actually calls for.
The post gets judged against the posts either side of it. Where the deliverable is a set of cards rather than a film, one box per card with the caption on the ruled lines is the whole board.
Some ad placements crop to square whatever gets uploaded. Boarding square is how you find out which shots survive it before the shoot.
Two people talking, anything with landscape in it, anything going full screen. A square inside a full-screen player leaves bars top and bottom.
Framing square when the master is wide
Where the square is a cutdown of a wider film, the crop is the thing to settle on paper.
- A square taken out of a 16:9 frame keeps about 56 percent of the width, so everything at the sides has gone and a two shot becomes a single. Rule the square on the wide board before the shoot and whoever is operating knows what has to stay in the middle.
- 4:5 sits between the two, taller than a square and narrower than the wide frame. Board the square with the extra height marked and you have both.
The sheet's grid
Six square frames, three across and two down, on A4 landscape. A square fits either orientation equally, so the sequence decides rather than the frame: three across and two down reads as an edit, a portrait column reads as a list.
Square boxes are the tallest on any sheet here, so there is less blank paper between the two rows than on the widescreen sheets, and the ruled lines are the same two every sheet here has. The file is A4, 210 by 297mm, margins inside the page, no crop marks. US Letter prints at about 94 percent under Fit to page, and the boxes stay genuinely square because the sheet scales as one thing.
Filling it in
Shot, action, sound and timing on the two ruled lines, and on a square board the composition note earns its space.
A mug set down on a table between two people. A folded note pushed across the table. A hand takes it.
- Shot
- Top-down, square. Locked off on a rig.
- Action
- A mug lands centre frame. Two pairs of hands, one either side.
- Sound
- Mug on wood. Room chatter, low.
- Timing
- 2 sec
- Shot
- Same top-down. Held.
- Action
- A folded note slides in from the bottom edge and stops beside the mug.
- Sound
- Paper on wood. Chatter drops.
- Timing
- 3 sec
- Shot
- Cut in, square, tighter on the note.
- Action
- The other hand takes it. The mug stays in shot at the edge of frame.
- Sound
- Paper lifting. Track starts.
- Timing
- 2 sec
- Square frames pull everything towards the middle, and the board is where you notice three centred shots in a row. Write the composition down: centre, bottom third, corner.
- Note anything that has to survive a 4:5 version, because 4:5 takes the sides off.
Build your storyboard in Storybrdr
The same six boxes on a screen. Boards share by link, export as a PDF, and open on a phone on the day.
The crop note stays attached to the shot rather than living in a separate document, so it is still there when the shot reaches the floor. Export at 4, 6 or 9 frames a page.
The exported PDF is printed by the same engine that printed the blank sheet at the top of this page, which is why the two are the same document.
More on what that looks like: the features tour.