Plan coverage

What this is about

Editors inherit coverage decisions made weeks earlier by people under time pressure. A scene shot as one beautiful oner is locked to that take's weakest second; a scene with a master, two sizes and honest cutaways can be rebuilt around any problem — a fluffed line, a boom shadow, a client note. Planning coverage means deciding per scene how much editability to buy and what it costs in setups. The classic rules earn their keep here: staying on one side of the axis keeps eyelines consistent, and matching sizes across characters keeps a dialogue cuttable.

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:

• Coverage is a per-scene budget decision: every additional angle costs a setup, and setups are the currency of the day.
• The 180-degree rule is about eyelines, not dogma — cross the axis deliberately with a bridging shot, never by accident.
• Interviews count too: two camera sizes on one interviewee buy the freedom to cut inside an answer.
• Cutaways are planned coverage, not leftovers shot at wrap when everyone wants to go home.

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Decide per scene what carries it: performance, information or atmosphere. That answer determines whether you need a patient master or a fast chain of specific angles.
2. Choose the covering pattern: master plus coverage for dialogue and decisions, a planned oner where rhythm matters more than repair options.
3. Draw the axis for every scene with more than one person and fix which side the camera lives on. Eyeline errors are invisible on set and loud in the edit.
4. Match sizes across characters in dialogue — a medium answering a medium — so reverse angles cut together without a bump.
5. List cutaways and inserts per scene as their own shots: hands, screens, reactions, room details. They are the edit's escape hatches and deserve schedule time.
6. For interviews, plan two sizes per person, framed for the cut, so an answer can be shortened invisibly without a jump.
7. Write the coverage decisions into the shot list with the scene's purpose noted, so on set a dropped angle is a known cost instead of a silent one.
8. Walk the plan with the editor if you can. Nobody prices missing coverage more accurately than the person who has to cut around it.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Trusting a single oner because it looked great in the third rehearsal — the edit inherits its weakest moment.
• Crossing the axis between reverse angles without a bridging shot, so eyelines flip mid-conversation.
• Shooting cutaways 'if there is time' — there never is, and the edit pays for it.

With TillyGen

TillyGen builds coverage into the shotlist it drafts: masters, reverses and cutaways appear per scene, so the editability of a day is visible before it is shot.

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.