Production handbook template

What this is about

Where a call sheet describes one day and a contact sheet lists people, the handbook describes how the project works for its whole duration. It is written once at the start and is worth the effort on any production long enough that new people keep joining: a runner starting in week three should be able to find the expenses rule, the data handover routine and the person who signs off overtime without interrupting anyone. Its real function is decision routing. Most delays on a set are not caused by a missing answer but by nobody knowing who is allowed to give it.

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:

• A decision map: which role signs off spending, overtime, schedule changes and creative deviations, and who deputises when that person is unreachable
• Communication rules per channel — what belongs in the group chat, what has to be email, and what is only valid on the call sheet
• Deadlines for paperwork: when timesheets, receipts, releases and reports are due, and to whom they physically go
• The money rules everyone asks about: expenses, per diems, travel bookings, what needs pre-approval and how receipts are submitted
• Standing safety, data and conduct rules that apply on every shooting day regardless of location, including who to contact for an incident

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Collect the questions the production office answered by phone on the last project — that list is the table of contents you actually need.
2. Write the decision map first and have it confirmed by the people named in it, because an unconfirmed authority is worse than none.
3. Set one rule per channel and keep it short enough to be remembered: the rule that needs a paragraph will be broken by the second week.
4. Add the paperwork deadlines with the name of the recipient, not the department, so nothing lands in a shared inbox nobody owns.
5. Write the money section in the words people use when they ask, and include one example of a correctly submitted receipt.
6. Hand it out at booking rather than on day one, and ask each department head to confirm the parts that concern them.
7. Keep a change log at the front and re-issue the whole document rather than sending amendments as messages.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• A handbook written for an inspection rather than for a runner, which is complete, correct and never opened
• Naming departments instead of people, so every deadline has a recipient in theory and none in practice
• Rules that contradict the call sheet, after which the crew learns to trust neither document
• No change log, leaving three versions in circulation with different expense rules

With TillyGen

The parts of a handbook that keep going out of date — contacts, dates, who is needed when — come out of the plan in TillyGen, so the written rules stay short and the moving details stay current.

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.