Estimate shoot days

What this is about

Every estimate conversation circles the same question: how much fits into one day? The honest answer starts with setups — how often lighting and camera position genuinely change — and continues with everything that eats time invisibly: company moves, rigging, meals, talent windows, seasonal daylight. Overrun days are rarely caused by slow crews; they are caused by plans that counted shots instead of setups and treated travel between locations as free. An estimate built from the setup count can be defended line by line in front of a client, which is what separates a number from a negotiating position.

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:

• The unit is the setup, not the shot: several shots can share one lighting state and camera position, and that sharing is where time is won.
• Setups have weight: an available-light interview corner and a lit tracking shot both count as one and lie hours apart.
• The crew works far longer than the camera rolls — rig, blocking, moves and meals all live inside the same day.
• Buffer belongs where risk concentrates: weather scenes, non-actors, animals, first day at a new location — not as an abstract percentage on top.

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Count setups from the shot list: every substantial change of camera position and lighting state is one. Several shots sharing a setup is the efficiency you schedule around.
2. Rate each setup's weight honestly. A talking-head corner, a rigged car shot and a lit steadicam move are all 'one setup' and belong in different weight classes.
3. Map the whole day, not the shooting: call, rig, blocking, takes, moves, meals, wrap. The plan must show the hours the camera is not rolling.
4. Enter company moves as line items with pack, travel and re-rig time. Unpriced moves are the most common source of quiet overruns.
5. Layer in fixed constraints: talent availability windows, location access hours, and how much daylight the season actually gives you.
6. Sanity-check the count with the DP or first AD against the shot list. Experienced heads find the day that does not fit before the schedule does.
7. Place buffer where the risk sits — the weather-dependent scene, the non-actor morning — instead of spreading an abstract reserve across the board.
8. Present the estimate with its assumptions visible: setups per day, moves, hours. When scope changes, the day count answers with a delta instead of a shrug.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Counting shots instead of setups, which makes an impossible day look generous on paper.
• Treating company moves as free because they are 'only twenty minutes away' — packing and re-rigging are the cost, not the drive.
• Letting the client's budget decide the day count first and bending the shot list to fit afterwards.

With TillyGen

TillyGen counts the setups for you: briefing in, structured shotlist out, grouped by setup — so the day count can be read off the plan instead of argued from experience.

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.