Start with the average, then stop trusting it
FERRY SEASON is a fictional indie feature: 96 3/8 pages, 21 shoot days, most of it on a working car ferry and in the harbor town around it. The first number every producer asks for is pages per day, so do that math in eighths to avoid decimal mistakes.
96 pages is 768 eighths. Add the 3 and you have 771 eighths. Divide by 21 days and you get 36.7 eighths, a hair under 37. Thirty-seven eighths is 4 5/8 pages. So the plan averages about 4 5/8 pages a day.
That number is useful for one thing: telling you whether the script and the number of days are in the same neighborhood. It tells you nothing about any single day. Look at two scenes from the same script:
| Sc. | Set | D/N | Pgs | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | INT. WHEELHOUSE | D | 2 | Dale and Rena argue about selling the boat |
| 58 | EXT. FERRY DECK | N | 2/8 | Dale goes over the rail in the storm |
Scene 12 is two actors, one small set, and dialogue. Scene 58 is a stunt performer, a rain rig, a safety meeting, and a night exterior on water. On a board sorted by page count, 58 looks like the easier scene by a factor of eight.
Count the minutes you actually have on camera
A shoot day isn't twelve hours of photography. Take a standard FERRY SEASON day:
| Time | What's happening |
|---|---|
| 7:00A | Crew call |
| 7:00A to 8:15A | Block, light, rehearse the first setup |
| 8:15A | First shot |
| 1:00P to 1:30P | Lunch (30 minutes) |
| 1:30P to 1:45P | Back to set, relight check |
| 7:00P | Camera wrap |
| 7:30P | Crew wrap out |
Morning photography runs 8:15A to 1:00P, which is 285 minutes. Afternoon photography runs 1:45P to 7:00P, which is 315 minutes. That's 600 camera minutes in a day people describe as twelve hours. Your numbers will differ with the call, the meal type, and the size of the first setup, but do this arithmetic once for your production and write the result at the top of the board.
Convert scenes into setups
The shot list is where pages turn into work. For each scene, count the setups: every time the camera moves to a new position and the lighting changes enough that the crew has to reset. Then ask the DP and gaffer how long a typical setup takes in that set. A reverse on the same lighting is faster than a full relight into a new direction.
Here is Day 4 of FERRY SEASON, using the pace the DP estimated for the wheelhouse and galley sets:
| Sc. | Set | Pgs | Setups | Min per setup | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | INT. WHEELHOUSE - DAY | 2 | 6 | 30 | 180 |
| 14 | INT. WHEELHOUSE - DAY | 1 1/8 | 3 | 30 | 90 |
| 15 | INT. GALLEY - DAY | 1 4/8 | 5 | 35 | 175 |
| 16 | INT. GALLEY - DAY | 5/8 | 2 | 35 | 70 |
| Set move, wheelhouse to galley | 30 | ||||
| Day total | 5 2/8 | 16 | 545 |
The page total: whole pages 2 + 1 + 1 = 4, eighths 1 + 4 + 5 = 10, which is 1 2/8. So 5 2/8 pages. The minutes come to 545 out of 600, leaving 55 minutes for the things that always happen: a boat horn in the middle of a take, a hair touch-up, a lens change. That day works, and it's above the average.
Now Day 15, the storm:
| Sc. | Set | Pgs | Setups | Min per setup | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 58 | EXT. FERRY DECK - NIGHT | 2/8 | 8 | 45 | 360 |
| 59 | EXT. HARBOR WATER - NIGHT | 3/8 | 4 | 50 | 200 |
| Day total | 5/8 | 12 | 560 |
Five eighths of a page fills the day. If the first draft of the board had also given Day 15 scene 60 (a 2-page dialogue scene in the ferry cabin) because the day "looked light," the board would have been wrong by roughly half a day, and nobody would have seen it from the page count.
What moves the number up or down
Every script has its own mix, so treat this as a list of questions to ask about each day rather than a formula.
| On the day | Why it changes the pace | What to do on the board |
|---|---|---|
| Two or three actors, one room, dialogue | Few relights, coverage is predictable | These days can carry more pages than average |
| Stunts or special effects | Rehearsals, safety meeting, resets between takes | Schedule by setups; give them lighter days |
| Background actors | Holding, wardrobe, placing and resetting a crowd | Put crowd scenes early, when the extras are fresh and on the clock |
| Minors | State limits on work hours | See scheduling around child actors |
| Car work or process trailers | Rigging, towing, repeating the drive | Count each run and each rig change as setups |
| Night exteriors | Bigger lighting and a fixed dark window | Check the window with the sunrise sunset planner |
| A company move | Wrap, drive, park, set up again | Subtract the move time before you fill the rest of the day |
| Animals | Handler rules and unpredictable takes | Budget extra takes per setup |
Stunt, effects, and vehicle scenes are often the shortest on the page, which is why breaking down stunts, SFX, and VFX matters before you trust any page number.
Checking a draft board, day by day
Once you have a first pass on the stripboard, run each day through the same check:
- Total the day in page eighths. The page count calculator does the adding if your spreadsheet keeps turning 1 3/8 into a date.
- List setups per scene from the shot list. If the director hasn't finished the shot list, use a conservative count and mark the day as an estimate.
- Multiply setups by the pace for that set and type of work.
- Add move time, rehearsal time for stunts, and anything else that takes the camera away.
- Compare with your camera minutes. Decide on a margin you're comfortable with, such as 45 or 60 minutes, and flag any day that eats into it.
- After the first two or three shoot days, replace the estimated pace with the real one. Divide camera minutes by setups completed on the daily production report, and re-run the check for the rest of the schedule.
Step 6 is the one people skip. A crew that's averaging 42 minutes a setup when you planned 30 will fall about a setup behind every two hours, and it shows up on Day 9, not Day 2.
When the script doesn't fit the days
Add up the estimated minutes for the whole script and divide by camera minutes per day. If FERRY SEASON's shot list totals 13,250 minutes, that's 13,250 / 600 = 22.08 days against a 21-day schedule. You're about a day over. The shoot days estimator gives you a quick first read on the same question from page count and scene mix.
The ways out are familiar, and each has a cost:
- Cut setups. A scene planned for six setups might play in a oner and two inserts. That's a conversation with the director, and the savings are real minutes.
- Move inserts and cutaways to a splinter unit or second unit with a smaller crew.
- Combine sets. If the galley and the cabin can be the same room dressed two ways, you lose a set move.
- Add a day. The line producer prices one more day of crew, gear, and location against the other options.
- Take pages out of the script. Sometimes the right answer.
Don't solve it by pushing more pages into days that already look full. That turns into overtime on the daily production report and a schedule that slips a scene a day until someone calls a meeting.
Why other productions quote different numbers
You'll hear that television moves faster than features, or that a studio film shot fewer pages a day than your indie. Both can be true for the same reason: the number of setups the director plans for each page. An episodic drama with a set visual style and standing sets can plan more pages per day. A feature director who wants every scene covered from four angles and a dolly move will plan fewer. Neither number transfers to your film, so plan from your own shot list and your crew's measured pace.
Some scheduling programs will insert day breaks automatically by page eighths. Movie Magic Scheduling, for example, can insert day breaks by page eighths, shoot time, or screen time. A page-based split is a reasonable way to see how many days a script might need. Breaking by shoot time is closer to how the day actually works, as long as someone has entered honest shoot times per scene.
Doing this in Storiara
Storiara reads page counts in eighths from the uploaded script, and on the schedule you can give scenes and shots durations inside shoot days with a start and end time. The board checks each drop against the maximum day length you set and flags overtime. It won't count setups or estimate a crew's pace, so the shot list math above still happens with you and the DP.