Create a call sheet

What this is about

Everyone reads the call sheet, and most of them read it standing up, in the dark, on a small screen. That sets the format: one page per shoot day, the critical facts above the fold, no prose. It carries the times, the addresses with parking and entrance, the running order, sunset and forecast, and the two or three numbers that matter when something goes wrong. It also becomes the informal record of when people were called and when they were released, which is exactly what any later discussion about hours and rest periods refers back to.

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

Where this differs from the general case:

• One sheet per shoot day. A combined multi-day sheet gets misread on day two, when somebody opens yesterday's file.
• Individual call times beat a blanket crew call: makeup, camera and cast almost never need the same start.
• Addresses need parking, entrance and a map link — the postal address regularly points at the wrong side of the building.
• Sunrise, sunset and the forecast belong on the sheet even for interiors, because they drive the wrap conversation.
• The safety block — nearest hospital, first aider, site contact — is the part nobody reads until the moment they must.

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Build the sheet from the confirmed schedule rather than the shot list. It shows the running order of one day: what shoots when, where, and with whom.
2. Set a general crew call, then override it per department. Camera prepping before makeup arrives, or cast landing after the lighting setup, saves whole groups standing around.
3. Write each location as address, parking instruction, entrance and map link, plus the name and mobile number of the person who unlocks the door.
4. Add sunrise, sunset and the forecast, then mark which blocks depend on daylight. That one line prevents the classic afternoon panic about losing the exterior.
5. List cast separately with pickup, makeup, on-set and expected wrap times, and mark who is on standby rather than actually called.
6. Put safety on the front page: nearest hospital with address, the first aider, site-specific hazards, and the number to ring before anybody rings the office.
7. State the weather cover in one sentence so the decision already exists when the sky changes and nobody has to convene a meeting on a wet pavement.
8. Send it the evening before as a PDF to crew, cast and client — and issue any change as a new numbered version, never as a message in a chat thread.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Sending the call sheet on the morning of the shoot, when half the crew is already driving towards yesterday's address.
• Duplicating the previous day's sheet and missing one field — usually the location, always noticed at the gate.
• Leaving out the expected wrap, so the working-hours conversation happens on set instead of in the schedule.

With TillyGen

TillyGen writes the call sheet from the same plan that produced the schedule and shot list, so times, locations and scene order stay in step whenever the plan moves.

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.