Storyboarding in Extended Reality: leveraging real-world elements in storyboard creation

Recent technological innovations, especially in extended reality (XR) and artificial intelligence (AI), redefine storytelling approaches. These innovations are expanding creative possibilities for filmmakers while transforming how audiences engage with and experience films and other entertainment products. Despite technological advancements, the pre-production phase depends primarily on traditional planning and visualization methods. This research proposes a novel paradigm to create storyboards in XR, leveraging the capabilities of object-detection and pose-estimation systems to benefit the storyboarding phase. An application has been designed and developed to create 3D storyboards on a real scale within a physical environment and all its furniture. Wearing a head-mounted display for XR, users can move in the physical space, enrich it with virtual elements and characters, and frame the environment to obtain storyboard panels that mix real and virtual elements. The proposed system has been tested to assess its usability, and initial findings indicate that users have appreciated this application.