Casting sheet template

What this is about

By the second week of a search, forty tapes have arrived through five channels and three people hold opinions in three formats. The sheet collects the chaos: one row per candidate, agency contact, tape link, availability against the actual shooting dates, fee expectation, sizes for wardrobe, callback status, decision notes. Its discipline pays at the end — when the favorite declines, the sheet answers who was second and why, instead of restarting the debate. Personal data on it falls under data protection: keep access small and delete after the project.

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

In planning terms, that means:

• One row per candidate with agency, contact and tape link, so nobody searches four inboxes for the good tape
• Availability checked against the real shooting and fitting dates, with the date of the check noted — availability ages fast
• Fee expectation and sizes captured at first contact, because both are awkward to ask twice
• A status column from suggested through callback to offer, plus a decision-notes field that records reasons, not just outcomes

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Set up the sheet when the brief goes out, with columns agreed before the first tape arrives.
2. Enter every suggestion on arrival with source and date, and park duplicates immediately — two agencies will send the same person.
3. Collect the viewing opinions in the sheet itself, short and attributed, instead of in parallel chat threads.
4. Shortlist against the brief, verify availability again on the shortlist, and note the verification date.
5. Run callbacks, record results in the status column, and write the reason next to every no.
6. After the offer is accepted, inform the runners-up, then reduce the sheet to what the production must keep and delete the rest.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Opinions living in chats, so the final debate reconstructs three weeks of scattered reactions
• Availability checked once at suggestion and never again before the offer
• The sheet with personal data shared wide and kept forever, which data protection explicitly frowns on

With TillyGen

The shooting days a candidate must be available for come straight from TillyGen's schedule, so the availability column checks against real dates instead of a rough week.

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.