Get client signoff before the shoot

What this is about

Before that day, moving a location or dropping a scene costs a phone call. After it, the same change costs a day rate. Signoff exists to draw that line visibly. What gets approved is never 'the film' but the concrete artefacts the shoot will execute: script or question set, shot list, cast, locations, schedule, deliverables. And it has to come from the person who can genuinely decide, in writing, with a date — because the alternative is a review three weeks later, where somebody who never sat in a single meeting has firm opinions about the wardrobe.

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:

• Approval covers artefacts, not intentions: script, shot list, cast, locations, schedule and format list, each named separately.
• Silence is not approval. Written confirmation with a date is what survives a disagreement three weeks into the edit.
• The person who signs has to be the person who can decide; approval from someone without authority postpones the problem.
• A deadline is part of the request. Without one, approval arrives the day after the crew and the location were booked.

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. List what genuinely needs approval on this project, then send it as a numbered set instead of an email with attachments and an optimistic closing line.
2. Send the artefacts in the order they get executed — concept, script or questions, shot list, cast, locations, schedule — so the client approves a chain rather than a pile.
3. State what each approval commits to and what a later change will cost. Consequences move people more reliably than reminders do.
4. Set a deadline earlier than the last possible moment and name the bookings that depend on it. A date without a dependency always slips.
5. Ask for one consolidated response from one person rather than comments from four, and let the client resolve internal disagreement before replying.
6. Confirm the approval back in writing with a short summary of what is now fixed, so both sides are reading the same version of the agreement.
7. Freeze what is approved and treat anything after it as a change request with a visible price, not as a favour absorbed into the existing budget.
8. Take the approved documents to set. On the shoot day, a signed shot list is the calm answer to 'could we just also do'.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Accepting a verbal yes on a call and learning later that the person meant it as a personal opinion.
• Approving the concept but never the shot list, so the shoot day turns into a negotiation between takes.
• Chasing approval politely without ever naming what is blocked by the delay.

With TillyGen

Because TillyGen delivers shot list, storyboard and schedule as one connected set, the client approves a coherent plan — and every later change is visible against 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.