A shooting schedule answers two questions: how many days the film needs, and what gets shot on each one. The first number sets most of the budget. The second decides whether an actor is paid to sit at home on hold, whether the crew gets its rest, and whether the night exterior is actually shot at night. Nobody holds all of that in their head on a first schedule, so the reading below adds one layer at a time.
Before the board
Scheduling assumes a finished breakdown with page counts in eighths. If you don't have one yet, go through the script breakdown path first. Then read Shooting schedule: what it is and how to build one from top to bottom. It separates the three documents people all call "the schedule" (the stripboard, the shooting schedule, and the one-liner), walks through building one in eleven steps, and ends with a worked week.
Reading and building a stripboard
The stripboard is where scheduling actually happens. Learn the colors before anything else. Stripboard colors explained gives the common key, white for INT. day, yellow for EXT. day, blue for INT. night, and green for EXT. night, and shows what a week of colors tells you at a glance. The stripboard color legend has a sample board you can click through. Then open the stripboard template and board a short script yourself, even a ten-page one.
Next come the documents printed from the board. The shooting schedule template post explains the day header, the scene row, and the element lines under each scene. What is a one-line schedule covers the short form most crew members actually read.
How much fits in a day
A lot of first schedules go wrong here. How many script pages can you shoot in a day argues against any fixed pages-per-day number and shows how to test each day by converting scenes into setups and setups into minutes. The shoot days estimator gives a first figure for the whole script. After that, check individual days against the shot list. For exteriors, and dusk scenes in particular, the sunrise and sunset planner tells you how much usable light the day really has.
Cast days and rest
Once scenes sit on days, run the day out of days. It shows every actor's work, hold, and travel days, and it's how you catch a supporting actor held for a week between two short scenes. The DOOD generator fills in the SW, W, H, and WF codes as you click. Then check turnaround between each wrap and the next call with the turnaround calculator. Rest periods come from the union agreements, so on a signatory show read unions and compliance before you lock anything.
Special cases
With a basic board working, take the harder problems one at a time:
- Night shoots, and why nights should be grouped into a block instead of scattered through the week
- Company moves, priced in camera minutes and in dollars
- Child actors, where the state's hour limits get placed before anything else
- Block shooting and cross-boarding for a series
- Documentary schedules, which start from events and subjects' availability because there are no script pages to count
- A short film over one weekend, with Sunday's call set by Saturday's wrap
Software
Many working ADs learned on Movie Magic Scheduling, and studio work still often expects its files. The top 10 film scheduling software review compares the current options, and Movie Magic Scheduling alternatives helps if you're choosing between a desktop program and a browser tool. Learn the method on paper or a spreadsheet first, and any of them will make sense quickly.
Where the schedule goes
The board is the input for two other paths. Film budgeting prices the days you've set, and call sheets pull each day's scene order, cast, and calls straight from it.