Milestone
A milestone is a dated, verifiable checkpoint that marks a production phase as complete.
What this is about
Film projects drift in silence and fail in public. Milestones prevent the silent part: treatment approval, casting locked, shoot wrapped, first cut, final delivery — each with a date and an owner. Tie payment tranches to them and the cash flow follows progress instead of trailing it. The discipline lies in making each milestone verifiable: a phase is done when a named artifact exists and is approved, not when everyone vaguely agrees it feels done.
A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.
What runs differently here
Where this differs from the general case:
- A verifiable milestone names an artifact and an approval, not a feeling of progress
- Payment tranches tied to milestones keep cash flow aligned with work done
- A slipped milestone moves every dependent date — say so the day it slips
With TillyGen
TillyGen lays milestones onto the production timeline automatically, so approval points and payment triggers sit in the plan from day one.
Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.
Frequently asked
How many milestones does a corporate film project need?
As many as there are decisions that block further work — typically treatment approval, pre-production lock, shoot wrap, rough cut and final delivery. More than that dilutes attention.
How long does it take to get started with TillyGen?
A first project takes under an hour to set up. There is no configuration phase in which templates and fields have to be defined before the tool produces anything.
Can the results be exported?
Yes — as PDF for the crew, CSV for downstream systems and through the API for anything automated. The plan stays the source; the exports are views of it.