Shooting schedule template

What this is about

Time is the one budget line every department spends simultaneously. A schedule earns its keep by making that spending visible: each block states which scenes, which setup, which cast, and what happens if it overruns. Location and light dictate the order more than story ever does — exteriors chase the sun, company moves eat an hour before anyone touches a case. The plan the client approved and the plan taped to the camera cart have to be the same file, or neither of them governs anything.

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:

• Time blocks that name scene, setup and cast together, so a glance shows who is working and who is waiting at any hour
• Company moves entered as their own blocks with packing time included, never as invisible white space between locations
• Fixed meal breaks the day is built around, because a break that floats disappears and takes crew concentration with it
• Buffer placed directly before the shots that cannot fail — daylight-critical or cast-critical — instead of decorating the end of the day

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Group all scenes by location first, because every move you avoid returns a full hour to the shooting day.
2. Order the groups by light: fix the sunrise and sunset anchors, then let interior work fill the flexible middle.
3. Assign realistic minutes per setup from the shot list estimate, and resist rounding down to make the day appear to fit.
4. Enter company moves with load, drive and unload as one visible block, then place the meal breaks the day will hold.
5. Add buffer before the critical shots and check cast working hours, including the rest period before the next call.
6. Review the draft with the first AD and department heads, adjust, then lock it — every later change goes through one owner with a version note.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Scheduling in story order and paying for the nostalgia with three avoidable relights
• Booking company moves at zero minutes, as if equipment teleported between addresses
• Placing the one golden-hour shot in the middle of the afternoon because the timeline looked tidier that way

With TillyGen

TillyGen assembles the schedule from the shot list with setups already grouped, and when you drag a scene to another day the call sheet and dispositions update with 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.