Shooting Schedule

What is a shooting schedule?

A shooting schedule is the plan that tells a production which scenes it will shoot on which day, in which order, at which location, with which actors. It is written during pre-production, after the script breakdown has tagged every scene with its elements: cast, extras, props, vehicles, stunts, effects, set.

Each scene becomes one entry (on paper, a strip) carrying the scene number, INT or EXT, day or night, the set name, a one-sentence description, the page count in eighths of a page and the cast ID numbers. The first AD then arranges those entries into shooting days, adds day breaks and company moves, and prints the full schedule and the short one-liner.

On a feature the schedule is one of the key documents of the filmmaking process: the line producer budgets from it, department heads plan prep from it, and the 2nd AD builds each day's call sheet from it.

Why are films shot out of order?

Because story order is the most expensive order there is. A script might return to the same kitchen in scenes 4, 31 and 88; shooting them on three separate weeks means lighting and dressing that room three times and paying for three company moves. Grouping them into one day costs a costume change and some continuity notes.

The scheduler weighs, roughly in this order:

• Location. Shoot everything at one place before moving. A company move eats one to three hours of a working day.
• Cast. An actor who works days 2 and 19 is often paid to hold in between. The Day Out of Days report shows those gaps so scenes can be pulled together.
• Day and night. Night work is slow and forces turnaround: cast and crew need their rest period (commonly ten to twelve hours, depending on the agreement) before the next call. Schedules move from days to nights across a week rather than flipping back and forth.
• Constraints. Child actors' limited hours, animals, stunts, weather, special effects rigs, a location that is only free on Sundays.

The cost of ignoring this is visible in The Revenant (2015). Alejandro G. Iñárritu chose to shoot largely in story order and in natural light, which stretched the schedule and, when the snow in Canada ran out, sent the production to Argentina to finish the ending. Directors sometimes pay that price for performance; most productions cannot.

How to make a shooting schedule

1. Lock and number the scenes. Otherwise every revision means starting over.
2. Break it down. One breakdown sheet per scene, every element tagged. Measure each scene in eighths of a page; a scene of one and a quarter pages is 1 2/8.
3. Make the strips. The common color code is white for INT day, yellow for EXT day, blue for INT night, green for EXT night, so the board shows the day-night rhythm at a glance.
4. Group by location, then by cast. Cluster every strip for one set, then order within the set so each actor's days are contiguous.
5. Set a pace. Decide pages per day from the budget and the style of the film. A dialogue scene in two chairs moves fast; an eighth of a page that reads "they fight across the roof" can take a full day. Estimate setups, not just pages: check the shot list for each scene.
6. Place the hard things well. Don't open on the most demanding scene; give the crew a day or two to find its rhythm. Put exteriors early in the schedule and keep an interior cover set ready for bad weather. Schedule emotional peaks when the actors are fresh, not at hour eleven.
7. Insert day breaks and check the totals. Count days, pages and cast days, compare with the budget, then cut, combine or move scenes until they agree.

The stripboard and the boneyard

Before software, a schedule lived on a stripboard: a folding frame of long cardboard strips, one per scene, color-coded and printed with scene data. Rearranging the shoot meant sliding strips around; a black strip marked the end of each shooting day. Digital schedulers still draw the same board.

The boneyard is the parking area of that board. Strips that are not yet assigned to a day go there: scenes cut from the script, scenes waiting on a location or an actor's dates, pickups that may or may not happen. Keeping them in the boneyard instead of deleting them preserves their breakdown data, so a scene can come back into the schedule without being rebuilt.

What is a one-line schedule?

The one-line schedule, or one-liner, is the condensed printout of the shooting schedule. Each scene takes a single line: scene number, set, INT or EXT, day or night, page count and cast IDs, grouped under a header for each shooting day with the day's page total.

It is the version most of the crew actually carries. The director and DP read it to see the shape of the shoot; department heads use it to spot their busy days; the 2nd AD pulls tomorrow's scenes from it. Props, extras and special equipment stay in the full schedule.

Shooting schedule vs. production timeline

A production timeline covers the life of the whole project: development, prep, shoot, post and delivery, with milestones such as picture lock and the first festival deadline. The shooting schedule covers only the shoot itself, but at the level of individual scenes and days. The timeline says "principal photography, six weeks from March 3"; the schedule says what happens on each of those thirty days.

The call sheet sits one level lower: one day of the schedule, expanded with call times, addresses and safety notes.

Planning the shoot visually

A schedule is a spreadsheet, but the choices behind it are visual: which scenes share a set, which need the same light, where the night work falls. On a FlashBoards board you can lay out storyboard frames and reference stills in columns by shooting day instead of by scene number, with notes on cast and setups under each column. When the director asks to move a scene, everyone sees what else shares that set and that light before the strip moves.

Further reading

Maureen Ryan, Producer to Producer (Michael Wiese Productions). Ralph S. Singleton, Film Scheduling (Lone Eagle).