Book a film crew

What this is about

Good freelancers are booked out weeks ahead, which makes crewing a sequencing problem: dates go out as holds early, keys get booked first, and their recommendations fill the remaining chairs with people who already work well together. The terms conversation belongs at booking, not at invoicing — day rate and its hours, overtime handling, travel, kit fees. The final ingredient is the briefing package: a crew that has read treatment, shotlist and schedule arrives as a team on day one; a crew that has only seen the call time arrives as strangers with cases.

The order matters more than the tools. Skip a step and you usually notice two steps later — by which point the fix costs several times as much.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Booking order is leverage: keys first, their networks second, the remaining gaps last.
• A hold is a courtesy with an expiry date, not a booking — only written confirmation books anyone.
• Terms fixed at booking — rate, hours, overtime, kit fees — cost a sentence; terms fixed at invoice cost the relationship.
• The pre-shoot package decides whether day one starts as a team or as a round of introductions.

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Derive the crew list from the shotlist's ambition, not from habit: what does this film need on each day, and which double-hatting stays realistic without burning people out.
2. Book the key roles first — DP and sound anchor the chain — and ask them for recommendations; networks beat cold lists on reliability every time it matters.
3. Place holds early with honest information: dates, location, likely hours, rate frame. A vague hold is the first thing released when a better offer lands.
4. Convert holds to written confirmations the moment dates firm up, and release the ones you will not use — the market remembers who blocks people carelessly.
5. Fix terms in writing at booking: day rate and the hours it covers, overtime rules, travel and accommodation, kit fees, invoicing route.
6. Send the package before the shoot: treatment, shotlist, schedule, contact list, location notes. People who know the film shoot faster than people who know only the call time.
7. Reconfirm the day before with pure logistics — call time, address, parking, weather note — and a phone number that actually answers at 06:30.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Booking juniors for every chair to save on rates, then paying the difference in extra takes and extra hours.
• Holds never converted or released, so the best people quietly drop your dates for firmer ones.
• Overtime rules invented at 19:30 on the shoot day, in front of the client.

With TillyGen

The TillyGen schedule shows who is needed on which day before anyone is booked — holds go out with real dates, and the crew list matches the plan instead of guessing at it.

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.