Reading the Timeline

TL;DR — Strip times are computed from your first shot time. Lunch, company moves, and wrap are inserted automatically. Solar markers and Day for Night badges help you catch lighting conflicts.

Strip Times

Each strip shows its estimated start time on the right side. Time is computed from the day’s first shot time plus accumulated durations — each eighth of a page takes about 20 minutes to shoot.

Automatic Events

The timeline auto-inserts three types of events. You can’t move or delete these — they recalculate as you rearrange strips.

Lunch (green bar)

Inserted after 4 hours of shooting. 1-hour duration. Appears automatically between strips when the running time crosses the threshold.

Company Move (orange bar)

Inserted between strips at different locations. 30-minute estimate. Shows the “from → to” locations so you can see where the crew is traveling.

Wrap (purple bar)

Marks the end of the day with the computed wrap time. Useful for checking if your day runs too long.

Solar Markers

When a day has a date set, a column on the left shows dawn, sunrise, golden hour, sunset, and dusk times for that date and your project’s location. These help you see if your exterior shots line up with the right light.

Day for Night / Night for Day

The schedule flags timing conflicts between when a scene is written to take place and when it’s actually scheduled to shoot:

DAY FOR NIGHT rose badge

An exterior night scene scheduled during daylight hours. You’ll need ND filters and controlled lighting to sell the nighttime look.

NIGHT FOR DAY sky badge

An interior day scene scheduled after dark. You’ll need lighting rigs to simulate daylight through windows.

These badges only appear when the day has a date set, so solar times can be computed. Interior scenes don’t get DFN flags; exterior day scenes don’t get NFD flags.