What it contains
A production contact sheet is organized by who you'd be calling and why:
| Section | Example entries |
|---|---|
| Production office | Office line, production coordinator, APOC, accounting |
| Crew | By department, as on the crew list |
| Cast | Character, actor, agent or manager name and phone |
| Locations | Rosie's Diner owner (Linda Cho), on-site contact, alarm company |
| Vendors | Camera rental house, grip and electric house, honeywagon company, caterer |
| Permits and safety | Film office or permit coordinator, local police non-emergency, fire safety officer |
| Emergency | Set medic, nearest hospital, production insurance broker |
The vendor and location sections do most of the work after hours. When a generator won't start at 5:30 AM, the gaffer needs the rental house's after-hours number, not the salesperson's office line.
The photography meaning
Photographers print a whole roll of film as small frames on one page, and that page is also called a contact sheet. The unit stills photographer uses the term, and so do casting offices when they send a page of headshots. If a producer asks for "the contact sheet from the chemistry read," they mean images, not phone numbers.
How it gets built and kept current
The production coordinator usually starts it in prep from the crew list, the vendor accounts set up by accounting, and the location department's contacts for each site. New locations get added as soon as the location release is signed. Each vendor that issues or requires a certificate of insurance should have a contact listed for insurance questions.
Date the header and issue revisions, the same as the crew list. Contact sheets get forwarded widely, so decide in prep what's on the distributed version and what stays in the office.
Where contact sheets let people down
Actors' personal cell numbers on a sheet that goes to every vendor can sour the production's relationship with that actor and their representatives. A location entry with the owner's number but no on-site contact means a crew waiting outside a locked door at call. Vendors the production stopped using should come off, or a driver ends up at the old rental house for a pickup.
For the layout, start with the crew contact list template. In Storiara, location cards in the locations module hold the real address, photos, and availability dates for each script setting.