cinemasetfreeBuilding a schedule
Auto-generate a first pass, then drag strips until each day is achievable. A day's page total in eighths plus its shot estimates is what tells you whether it is.
A worked example: an 18-day shoot
42 scenes across six locations. The goal is days that are shootable, not days that look tidy.
Auto-generate the first pass
Groups scenes by location and time of day, which is 80% of scheduling and all of the boring part. It saves an hour of dragging, but it is not a schedule: cast availability, permit windows and the fact that the Roxy is only free on Tuesdays are all invisible to it.
Fix the location blocks
Company moves are the most expensive thing on a schedule. Look for days that visit two locations and ask whether they can be one. Drag strips between days until each day is one place wherever it can be.
Place the light-dependent scenes
Set each day’s date and the timeline pins dawn, sunrise, golden hour, sunset and dusk for that date at that location. A scene that needs golden hour goes where golden hour actually is, which in January is a much narrower window than you would have guessed.
Check the day totals
Each day totals its page count in eighths. Somewhere between 4 and 6 pages is a normal day for most productions; a day showing 11 is telling you something. Add the shot estimates for that day and you have a real number of hours.
Set the call times
Per day: crew call, cast call, on-set and first shot. These flow straight onto the call sheet, so entering them here means never typing them again.
Check the cast with a DOOD
DOOD gives the standard Day Out of Days matrix, Start/Work/Hold/Finish per performer, derived from the board. It’s how you spot that you’re paying an actor to sit on hold for six days because their two scenes are three weeks apart.
Page counts come from the script import and are what makes day totals meaningful. Scenes added by hand with a blank page count contribute nothing to the total, so a board full of them looks empty and isn’t.