Storyboard template, six 16:9 frames, A4

What this sheet is

Six frames at 16:9 on A4, 210 mm by 297. Under each frame are two ruled lines to write on, and that is the whole of the ruling: twelve lines on the sheet and nothing else drawn. Each of the six frames is printed 91 mm across and 51.2 mm down.

There is no spacing to set on this ruling and the bench does not offer the control. A storyboard sheet is not ruled to a pitch the way squared or lined paper is. It is a small number of rectangles laid into the writing area with room written under each, and the measurement that decides what they look like is the ratio of the rectangle, not a distance between lines.

The frame is sized from its ratio, not from the space

Ask for 4:3 and the sheet gives you a 4:3 rectangle. It does not give you the 16:9 rectangle with 4:3 printed underneath, which is the failure that makes a storyboard sheet useless for the format it names: anything drawn in the wrong shape has to be drawn again.

The ratio is solved first, from the width the frame has been given. Where that makes the frame too tall for its share of the page, as the square frame and the upright 9:16 frame both do, the frame is solved again from the height instead. It comes out smaller and it keeps its ratio while doing so. It is shrunk, never squashed. A frame narrower than the space it sits in is then centred there, so the slack is split either side rather than piling against one edge.

Printing it at true size

A print dialogue set to Fit to page scales the whole sheet: A4 sent to a printer holding Letter comes out at 94.1%. On this ruling the scaling hides itself better than on most, because a uniform scale preserves a ratio. A 16:9 frame is still 16:9 at 94.1%, so the sheet looks exactly right and is quietly the wrong size.

Set 100%, or Actual size, and match the paper to the sheet. The bar in the foot margin is drawn 50 mm long and says so, precisely so that it can be measured; at 94.1% it comes back at about 47 mm.

What else the bench will set

The frame ratio and the frame count are the two controls this ruling adds. The bench offers 16:9, 4:3, 1:1 and 9:16, and two, four, six or eight frames to a sheet. Fewer frames means larger ones, since the same writing area is being divided between them.

Beyond that: paper in A4, Letter, Legal or A5; upright or landscape; ink in grey, blue or black; and the extras, which add a red margin rule, name-and-date lines at the head, and the measuring bar. Turning the sheet to landscape gives each frame a wider and shallower share of the page, which suits the wide ratios and works against the upright one. The file comes out as PDF, PNG or SVG, drawn in the browser and sent nowhere.