What replaces the script pages
A scripted schedule counts pages. A documentary counts hours of access. Before you open a calendar, sort everything you intend to film into kinds of material, because each kind is scheduled differently.
THE NET LOFT is a fictional feature documentary about a family of gillnetters in Astoria, Oregon, filmed over six weeks in May and June 2026 by a crew of four: director, DP, sound recordist, and producer. Its shoot list looks like this:
| Material | Examples | How it gets scheduled |
|---|---|---|
| Sit-down interviews | Karen and Anders Lindqvist, their son Erik, the harbor master | Booked days, a few hours each, grouped by location |
| Verité, fixed | The blessing of the fleet, Erik's daughter's graduation | Dates set by someone else. Placed first, never moved |
| Verité, routine | Net mending in the loft, a day on the boat | Follow the subject's schedule, with backup dates |
| B-roll | Harbor at dawn, the bridge at dusk, cannery ruins | Around sunrise and sunset, and on any canceled day |
| Archival | Family photos, local newspaper clippings | Office work, not shoot days, except filming prints in the house |
The documentary script breakdown covers how that list gets built from an outline or treatment. This post starts where the list is done.
Put down the things you can't move
Anchors go on the calendar first. For THE NET LOFT, that's the fleet blessing on Saturday, May 30, and the graduation on Saturday, June 6. Next come the subjects' real availability. Karen works weekday mornings until 11:00A. Erik fishes whenever the season is open, which changes with announcements he gets from the state, so his boat day needs two backup dates. The harbor master is only free Thursdays.
Then the light. The U.S. Naval Observatory's one-day sun data for Astoria gives these times:
| Date | Civil twilight begins | Sunrise | Sunset | Civil twilight ends |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tue, May 5 | 5:22A | 5:56A | 8:29P | 9:03P |
| Tue, May 12 | 5:11A | 5:46A | 8:38P | 9:13P |
| Wed, May 20 | 5:01A | 5:37A | 8:48P | 9:24P |
| Sat, June 6 | 4:47A | 5:25A | 9:04P | 9:42P |
From first light to last light on May 12 is 5:11A to 9:13P, just over sixteen hours. A crew can't shoot dawn and dusk in one working day at that time of year without an enormous break in the middle, so dawn b-roll and dusk b-roll become separate calls on separate days. The sunrise sunset planner gives the same numbers for your own dates and location.
How long an interview day really takes
A 90-minute sit-down interview takes most of a working day once lighting and pickups are counted. Here's Day 2 at the Lindqvist house, with two subjects in the same room:
| Time | Block |
|---|---|
| 8:00A | Crew call at the house, load in |
| 8:00A to 9:30A | Light a two-camera setup in the front room, place mics, kill the fridge hum |
| 9:30A | Karen to set. Mic, sound check, release signed |
| 9:45A to 11:15A | Interview: Karen |
| 11:15A to 12:00P | Pickups: hands, photo albums, room tone |
| 12:00P to 12:45P | Lunch |
| 12:45P to 1:30P | Adjust lighting and eyelines for Anders |
| 1:30P to 3:00P | Interview: Anders |
| 3:00P to 4:00P | B-roll around the house. Wrap out |
| 4:30P | Crew wrap |
Three hours of conversation took an eight-and-a-half-hour day. If Anders had been interviewed at the net loft instead, the day would have needed a second load-in and lighting setup across town, and the realistic plan becomes one interview per day. That's the documentary version of a company move, and it's the reason to group interviews by location even when it's awkward for subjects.
The same day tells you about media. Two cameras recording 180 minutes of interviews is six hours of footage, plus about an hour of b-roll. Multiply by your shoot days and you have the storage and offload plan, and the shooting ratio calculator turns that into a ratio against the planned running time.
The six-week schedule
With anchors, availability, and light in place, THE NET LOFT's board fills in:
| Day | Date | Type | Subject or material | Location | Call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tue 5/5 | B-roll | Harbor and bridge at dawn | East Mooring Basin | 4:45A |
| 2 | Wed 5/6 | Interviews | Karen, Anders | Lindqvist house | 8:00A |
| 3 | Thu 5/7 | Interview, verité | Harbor master; dock activity | Port office, docks | 9:00A |
| 4 | Mon 5/11 | Verité | Net mending, Erik and crew | Net loft | 7:00A |
| 5 | Tue 5/12 | B-roll | Bridge and river at dusk | Riverwalk | 2:00P |
| 6 | Wed 5/20 | Verité | On the boat with Erik (DP and sound only) | Dock, river mouth | 4:15A |
| 7 | Thu 5/21 | Interview | Erik, after his boat day | Net loft | 1:00P |
| HOLD | Tue 5/26, Wed 5/27 | Backup | Boat day if 5/20 is canceled | ||
| 8 | Sat 5/30 | Verité, fixed | Blessing of the fleet | Waterfront | 7:00A |
| 9 | Sat 6/6 | Verité, fixed | Graduation and family dinner | High school, house | 11:00A |
| 10 to 14 | June 8 to 12 | Floating | Held for story that comes up in the edit |
The boat day is the hardest. The call is 4:15A to be on the water before civil twilight at 5:01A, only two crew fit on the boat, and nobody knows when it ends because the fishing decides. So Day 7 is a 1:00P call. If Erik's boat came in at 3:00P on Day 6 and the crew wrapped out at 4:00P, a 1:00P call the next day gives them 21 hours. Even if the boat stays out late, there's room. Run the numbers for every early call with the turnaround calculator; small documentary crews often skip this, and it's how people end up driving home half asleep after a sixteen-hour day.
Day 5 has a 2:00P call for dusk b-roll. It isn't a big day, but it wraps after civil twilight ends at 9:13P, so the crew wraps out close to 10:00P. Don't schedule Day 6's 4:15A boat call the next morning. On this schedule there's a week between them.
Holds, backups, and the floating days
Subjects cancel, weather changes, and the story shifts, so THE NET LOFT carries slack in three forms.
Backup dates for specific material. The boat day has two, and the crew is told up front they're held. On the hold days, the DP and sound recordist know they may or may not work.
An evergreen list for canceled days. If the harbor master cancels on Day 3, the crew shoots the dock activity it would have shot anyway and adds cannery ruins and street b-roll from the list. This is the documentary version of a cover set: material that's always available and always useful.
Floating days at the end. Days 10 to 14 are held for whatever the first five weeks reveal. On a shoot like this they may become a second interview with Karen after something happens, or a pickup of an event nobody knew about in April. Put them in the budget from the start. The documentary budget template and the guide to budgeting a documentary both carry lines for them.
Paperwork that follows the schedule
Each subject needs a signed release before or at their first shoot; put "release on set" on the call sheet for Day 2 so the producer doesn't forget. The talent release form and location release form templates cover the basics, and the net loft, the port office, and the high school each need their own location permission.
The call sheet is the same document scripted shows use, trimmed down. Include the subject's arrival time next to the crew call, sunrise or sunset when b-roll depends on it, the nearest hospital, and for the boat day, the boat's name, the captain's number, and who has the life jackets. The call sheet template has space for all of it.
Using Storiara for a documentary
Storiara has an unscripted story type. With no script to extract scenes from, you add scenes by hand, one for each interview or shoot block, and place them into shoot days on the schedule with start times and durations. Crew and subject availability can be collected with the no-login availability form, and call sheets go out by email or as a shared link. The documentaries page collects the rest of the documentary planning guides.