Production Timeline

What this is about

Most delivery dates die in the gaps between phases, not in the phases themselves: the treatment waits a week for approval, casting waits for the treatment, the shoot waits for casting. A working timeline therefore plans the waiting — every client approval is a dated task with an owner, not an assumption. Build backwards from the delivery date, keep buffer where experience says things slip, and version the timeline so everyone argues about the same document.

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

In planning terms, that means:

• Client approval time is production time — plan it as dated tasks with owners
• Build backwards from the delivery date; forwards planning hides the crunch until it arrives
• One versioned timeline for client and crew, or two realities will diverge

With TillyGen

TillyGen generates the production timeline from the brief and keeps schedule, shotlist and budget moving together when a date shifts.

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.