Travel itinerary template

What this is about

Travel is where a production loses time it never budgeted for. A grip leaves at 04:00 with the truck, the DP flies in at noon, and the lead actor arrives the evening before with a driver — three different documents' worth of information that has to live in one place, sorted by person. The itinerary also carries the rest period: eleven hours between wrap and the next call, with the drive back to the hotel counted inside them, not treated as free time. Get that wrong on paper and the following shooting day starts late by design.

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:

• One row per person and leg, because the truck, the flight and the cast pickup are three different movements that only share a destination
• Departure and arrival times with booking reference, seat or coach number, and the transfer that connects each leg to the next
• Accommodation with street address, check-in window, room allocation and the reception phone number rather than a booking-portal link
• Ground transport on location: which vehicle, who drives, where it parks overnight, and how the equipment moves between hotel and set
• A rest-period line per person that shows wrap, travel time and the next call together, so the eleven hours are visible instead of assumed

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Take the location moves out of the shooting schedule first: every change of town or country is one travel block that needs its own day treatment.
2. List who has to be where before the first call of each block, then work backwards through transfer, main leg and departure.
3. Book the equipment movement separately from the people movement and give the truck its own timings, loading window and driver rest.
4. Fill in accommodation with room allocation agreed in advance — deciding who shares a room at 23:00 in a lobby costs goodwill you need later.
5. Add local ground transport with named drivers, and mark which vehicle carries kit so nobody plans a camera case into a compact car.
6. Check every person against the rest period, counting travel time, and move a call time rather than hoping the drive is short.
7. Distribute it with the call sheet and re-issue the whole itinerary, not a correction message, whenever one leg changes.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• A group itinerary that hides the three people whose day starts four hours earlier than everyone else's
• Rest periods measured from wrap to call without the drive, which turns eleven hours on paper into eight in the bed
• Booking references stored in someone's inbox instead of the document, so a delayed flight becomes a phone hunt at the gate
• No plan for the equipment leg, leaving a truck at a loading bay that closes before the crew arrives

With TillyGen

TillyGen reads the location moves straight out of the shooting schedule and derives who has to travel when, so the itinerary changes with the plan instead of being rebuilt after every shift.

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.