# Stripboard

Source: https://storiara.com/glossary/stripboard
Last updated: 2026-09-14
Author: Spencer Kaufman, Storiara

> A stripboard is a scheduling board made of one thin strip per scene, color coded by interior or exterior and day or night, with cast IDs and page counts on each strip. The 1st AD reorders the strips into shoot days separated by day breaks until the schedule works.

## Reading the colors

Each scene is one [strip](https://storiara.com/glossary/strip), and the color tells you at a glance what kind of work it is. Most boards use this key:

| Color | Scene type |
| --- | --- |
| White | INT. day |
| Yellow | EXT. day |
| Blue | INT. night |
| Green | EXT. night |
| Black | Day break (end of a shoot day) |
| Other (often orange, red, or gray) | Banner strips for notes, moves, holidays |

A week with a long run of green strips tells you right away it is a night exterior week and that turnaround will need attention. The [stripboard color legend](https://storiara.com/tools/stripboard-color-legend) covers the variations you will see on different shows.

## How a board gets built and shuffled

The 1st AD starts with strips in script order and then sorts. A typical first pass groups everything by location, then by day or night within each location, then by cast. Say the fictional feature THE LONG DRIVE has 14 scenes at Rosie's Diner totaling 11 4/8 pages. At roughly 4 to 5 pages a day, that is three shoot days at the diner. The AD then checks those three days against the actor playing Joe, who is only available Tuesday through Thursday of week 2, and moves strips until his days line up.

A [day break](https://storiara.com/glossary/day-break) strip goes between days and carries the day number and total pages. A [banner strip](https://storiara.com/glossary/banner-strip) marks things like "COMPANY MOVE TO STAGE 4" or "WEEKEND".

## Common confusions

"Stripboard" and "[production board](https://storiara.com/glossary/production-board)" get used interchangeably. Strictly, the production board is the physical frame that held the strips plus the header listing cast and element numbers. People also mix up the stripboard and the [shooting schedule](https://storiara.com/glossary/shooting-schedule): the board is the working tool, the schedule is the printed output.

A frequent mistake on a first board is ignoring what the colors are telling you. If a day has a yellow strip scheduled after three blue ones, you are asking for exterior daylight after a night interior, which doesn't work unless a [split day](https://storiara.com/glossary/split-day) is planned.

## What reads from it

The one-liner, the long-form shooting schedule, and the [day out of days](https://storiara.com/glossary/day-out-of-days) are all generated from the board, so a change to one strip flows to all three. Our [stripboard template](https://storiara.com/templates/stripboard) follows the same layout for spreadsheet users, and the blog walks through [how to read a stripboard](https://storiara.com/blog/how-to-read-a-stripboard) line by line.

Storiara's schedule has a stripboard view where you drag scenes or shots into shoot days. Grouping scenes by location is up to you as you place them.

## Frequently asked questions

### What do the colors on a stripboard mean?

The most common convention is white for interior day, yellow for exterior day, blue for interior night, and green for exterior night. Day breaks are usually black and banners take another color. Productions sometimes change the key, so check the legend on the board.

### Do people still use physical stripboards?

Very few productions use cardboard strips now. The term survives because scheduling software still shows the schedule as a board of colored strips you drag around, and the printouts still follow the same layout.

### Who owns the stripboard?

The 1st AD. The UPM and line producer review it for cost, and the 2nd AD works from it to build call sheets, but changes to the board should go through the 1st AD so there is one current version.