The header board
The header is the key to reading every strip. A simplified header for a fictional feature:
| Row | Entry |
|---|---|
| Title | THE LONG DRIVE |
| Director / 1st AD / UPM | Names |
| 1 | MAYA |
| 2 | ROSIE |
| 3 | JOE |
| 4 | SHERIFF COLE |
| 5 | LINE COOK |
| 7 | SECURITY GUARD |
| X | Background |
| S | Stunts |
| V | Picture vehicles |
The strips are narrow and run vertically on a paper board, with a slot for each row of the header. A strip for scene 42 punches or marks "1, 3, 7" in the cast rows and has a mark in the S and V rows, so reading across a week shows at a glance which days need a stunt team.
How the board was used
On a paper board, strips slide in and out of panels, and panels fold together like a book for carrying. The AD would clear a table, open the board, and move strips by hand. When a day felt right, a black day break strip went in after it. Notes went on banner strips. Once the board worked, a coordinator typed the one-line and long-form schedules from it.
The unit production manager and line producer would look at the whole unfolded board to price the show: number of days, runs of night work, and how spread out each actor's work was.
What changed and what didn't
Software replaced the cardboard, but the layout survives almost exactly. Programs still show a header with cast IDs, still color strips by INT/EXT and day/night, and still print a day break with a page total. The words "board", "strip", and "banner" all come from the physical object.
Mistakes carried over from paper
Cast ID numbers that change mid-prep cause trouble on any board. If Joe is renumbered from 3 to 4 after a recast, every strip, breakdown sheet, and call sheet has to follow, and old printouts become misleading. Assign IDs once, by importance, and don't reuse a number when a role is cut.
Another carry-over problem: printing the board without its header. A page of strips reading "1, 3, 7" is useless to a new department head who doesn't have the cast list. Always attach the header, or use the stripboard template, which puts cast IDs at the top.