Call sheet template

What this is about

A call sheet compresses the entire production plan into one day and twenty pockets. Every error multiplies by headcount: a wrong call time costs the production an hour per person, a missing parking note costs the whole morning. It is assembled the evening before from the locked schedule, confirmed after wrap, and sent as one clearly versioned document. When the crew learns to trust it, they stop calling the production office at 22:00 — which is exactly the point of having one.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• General crew call plus separate individual calls for cast, makeup and departments that rig earlier — the two are never the same time and must not look alike
• A location block with full address, parking instructions, load-in route and a pin link, because navigation apps fail at industrial parks and rear courtyards
• The scene overview for the day with cast per scene, so everyone can see why they are called and what falls away if time runs short
• A safety block naming the nearest hospital with address, the first aider on set, weather, sunrise and sunset — filled in, not left as placeholders

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Pull the shooting day from the schedule and list its scenes in shooting order, including the planned time block for each setup.
2. Work backwards from the first shot to set calls: rigging, makeup and wardrobe define who starts earlier than the general crew call.
3. Complete the location block with address, parking, load-in and a contact who physically opens the door in the morning.
4. Add the contact list for the day — production, first AD, location owner — with mobile numbers you have actually verified.
5. Fill the safety block: nearest hospital, first aider, weather forecast, sunrise and sunset, plus any hazard from the risk assessment.
6. Send it only after wrap of the previous day is confirmed, mark the version prominently, and declare all earlier versions invalid in the message itself.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Two versions in circulation — half the crew drives to the old location while the other half waits at the new one
• Treating the general call as the moment shooting starts, so the first shot slips before the day has begun
• Leaving hospital, parking or sunset as TBD — the fields nobody needs until they suddenly need them urgently

With TillyGen

TillyGen builds the call sheet from the shooting schedule itself: move a scene and the scene list, cast calls and timings stay consistent — you send the document instead of reconciling 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.