Shooting Schedule: What It Is and How to Build One

Three documents that all get called "the schedule"

When someone in the office asks for the schedule, they could mean any of three things, and all three come out of the same board.

The shooting schedule (the long form) goes day by day in shooting order. Under each scene it lists the cast by number, background counts, props, wardrobe notes, vehicles, special equipment, and anything else a department has to have ready. It can run 30 or 40 pages on a feature, and it usually gets handed out at the final production meeting so every department can check its own lines.

The one-line schedule has the same scenes in the same order with one line each: scene number, set, day or night, page count, and cast numbers. It's what people keep in their back pocket. When it's shown as colored strips on a board, it's a stripboard.

The day out of days turns the schedule sideways. Cast run down the left, shoot days across the top, and each cell says whether that actor starts, works, holds, or finishes. It's how casting and the accountant see what the schedule costs in actor days.

Build the board carefully and the other two documents follow from it, which is why most of this guide is about the board.

What you need before you place a single strip

A schedule is only as good as the information behind it. Before you start moving scenes around, get these on paper.

A finished script breakdown. Every scene needs its number, INT or EXT, set name, day or night, page count in eighths, cast, background, and special elements. If the breakdown says scene 38 is two actors in a kitchen and it actually has a dog and a practical fire on the stove, the day that scene lands on is already wrong.

Page counts you trust. They drive how much you put in a day, so measure them properly. The page count guide covers the eighths.

Cast availability. Which actors have hard windows? A name actor available for 8 consecutive days, a kid who can only work certain hours, a supporting actor shooting another job in week two. These are fixed points you'll build around.

Location availability. The restaurant that's free Mondays and Tuesdays only, the school you can have on weekends, the house where the owners leave town for ten days in October. Permit windows count too.

The number of days you can afford. The budget sets a target shoot length. The board tells you whether the script fits in it.

Daylight. For exteriors, look up sunrise, sunset, and civil twilight for your location and dates. The sunrise and sunset planner gives you the times so a dusk scene doesn't end up scheduled after dark.

How to build a shooting schedule, step by step

These steps follow the order most ADs work in. You'll loop back through them several times before the board settles.

1. Put every scene on a strip

One scene, one strip, with the set, INT or EXT, day or night, pages, and cast IDs. Keep scene numbers exactly as they appear in the script, including A scenes like 42A. Cast get numbers in order of importance or number of scenes, and those numbers stay the same on every document for the rest of the show.

Before you start, check that your strips add up to the script. If the script is 92 4/8 pages, the strips should total 92 4/8. Anything short means a scene is missing.

2. Set the calendar and the length of a day

Decide the shoot dates, which days are off, and how long a shooting day is. A 12-hour day and a 10-hour day hold very different amounts of work. Mark holidays and any dark days as banner strips so they're visible.

3. Place the fixed points

Start with things you can't move. If your lead's agent has said she's available only from day 1 to day 9, every one of her scenes has to land in those nine days. If the diner is only available on days 4 and 5, its scenes go there. Hard permit dates, a borrowed crane, a river that's only at the right level in one week: all of these get placed first.

4. Group by location, then by cast

Pull all scenes at the same location together so you set up there once and leave once. Every company move costs you time you'd otherwise spend shooting, so avoid more than one a day where you can. A company move might be a few blocks or an hour's drive; either way the trucks have to pack, travel, park, and unload.

Inside each location block, arrange scenes so each actor's work is as continuous as possible. An actor who works day 2 and then day 9 is usually on the payroll for the days in between.

5. Separate day from night

Keep night work together. Flipping the crew from a day schedule to nights and back again makes for tired people and turnaround trouble. The common approach is to put a run of nights at the end of a week so the weekend helps reset everyone's sleep.

Within a day, order scenes so the light works. An EXT. DAY scene that needs sun should go before a series of interiors, not after them in fading light.

6. Put the hard days in the right place

Most ADs avoid scheduling the most complicated day of the show on day one. The crew hasn't worked together yet and the camera and sound departments are still finding their rhythm. Stunts, big background days, and emotionally heavy scenes usually go later, once the company is running well. Some directors ask for their biggest dramatic scenes near the end of a location block so the actors have lived in the space. That's a conversation to have with the director, since it's their call.

7. Check each day's load

Total the pages for each day and look at what's in them. Four pages of two people talking at a table and four pages with a car chase are not the same day. Count setups, not just pages, for anything with action, stunts, effects, kids, animals, or large background.

8. Check turnaround

Wrap time on one day sets the earliest call on the next. SAG-AFTRA theatrical performers in the studio zone get a 12-hour rest from dismissal to their next call, with some exceptions on location (SAG-AFTRA). Crew rest depends on the agreement or the deal memo. If Friday is a night exterior that wraps at 4:00A, Saturday can't have a 6:00A call. The turnaround calculator and turnaround rules compared cover the details.

9. Run the day out of days and fix the holds

Generate the DOOD and look at every H. An H between an actor's first and last work day is usually a paid day. If moving a single strip shortens someone's run, try it. For a long gap, look at a drop and pickup: under SAG-AFTRA's theatrical rules, a day performer given a firm pickup date more than 10 calendar days after their initial employment ends doesn't need to be paid for the gap, and only one such break is allowed per production (SAG-AFTRA). The day out of days guide walks through this in detail.

10. Mark cover sets

For every day that depends on weather, name an interior you could shoot instead, with the cast and set ready. A cover set that needs an actor who isn't on call that day isn't really cover.

11. Circulate, take notes, lock

Send a draft to the director, producers, and department heads. Wardrobe will tell you that a period costume change takes 90 minutes, not 20. The location manager will tell you the church needs you out by 3:00P on Sunday. Adjust, then issue the locked version with a date. After that, every change goes out as a dated revision.

A worked week: LOW WATER

LOW WATER is a fictional 92 4/8-page indie feature scheduled for 20 shoot days, five days a week. That averages 92.5 ÷ 20 = 4.625 pages, or about 4 5/8 pages a day. Here's week one after a few passes:

Week one totals 21 4/8 pages, a little over the 4 5/8 average times five (23 1/8). That gap is intentional: the river days carry a boat, water safety, and background, so they get fewer pages, and the house days make up some of it. The remaining 71 pages have to fit into 15 days, about 4 6/8 a day. If week two has a stunt and a school location with 40 background, the AD knows now that the math is getting tight.

Notice what the grouping did. Actors 1 and 2 are in the house for three straight days. Actor 3 starts day 3 and works day 4 without a hold. The first company move of the show doesn't come until day 4, and it happens overnight, not in the middle of a shooting day.

How much fits in a day

There's no single right number of pages per day. It depends on the budget, how many setups the director plans, the number of actors, whether there's action, and how long each company move is. Television episodes usually cover more pages per day than features, because the schedule per episode is short and the coverage style is built for it. A low-budget feature often shoots faster than a studio feature for the same reason: fewer days and fewer setups.

Use your own director's shot list and past pace if you have them. If you don't, start conservative, look at the first two days of the shoot, and adjust the rest of the board. How many script pages can you shoot in a day goes through the factors.

Scheduling mistakes that cost days

Cramming pages. A schedule that looks good on paper with 7 pages every day falls apart once the actual setups are counted. The shortfall carries over, and by day four you're a scene behind.

Ignoring the company move. Two locations in a day means packing, driving, parking, lighting a new set, and possibly a new sound problem. Budget the time as if it were a scene.

Building before the breakdown is done. You'll end up rebuilding the board every time someone discovers a stunt or a vehicle.

Mixing nights into a day week. One night exterior on a Wednesday throws off turnaround for Thursday and Friday.

Forgetting prep and non-shooting days. Rehearsals, fittings, camera tests, and travel days still cost money. They don't go on the board as shooting days, but they belong on the calendar and in the DOOD where they apply.

Scheduling around people who aren't cast yet. Until an actor is signed, their availability is a guess. Build the board on known constraints and flag the ones you're assuming.

More on each of these in shooting schedule mistakes.

Where the schedule meets the budget

The schedule and the budget depend on the same numbers. Crew are paid by the day or week, equipment rents by the day or week, locations charge per day, and catering is priced per head per day. Every day added to the board adds all of those costs; every day taken off removes them.

Here's an example with made-up figures from a small indie. If crew payroll with fringes runs $18,000 a day, equipment $3,500, the location $1,500, and catering and craft for 40 people $1,200, one shoot day costs about $24,200 before anything else. If rearranging the board lets you finish in 19 days instead of 20, that's roughly $24,200 back, assuming you don't have to add overtime to do it. On a weekly equipment deal the equipment savings may be zero, which is why the line producer should check any change like this before you promise it.

This works in reverse too. When a producer wants to add a scene, the question is which day it goes on and what that day then loses. The production budget guide covers how days turn into line items.

Keeping the schedule current

Once shooting starts, the schedule changes. An actor gets sick, a location falls through, rain washes out an exterior, the director adds a scene. The ADs handle it the same way each time: change the board, re-run the DOOD, check turnaround and company moves, then issue a dated revision. Many productions color their schedule revisions the way they color script revisions so that a blue schedule is obviously newer than a white one.

A few habits help:

• One person owns the board, usually the 1st AD, so there is only one current version.
• Every revision says what changed at the top, like "Sc. 60 moved from Day 11 to Day 4 (weather cover)."
• The call sheet is always built from the latest version. The 2nd AD should check the revision date before starting tomorrow's sheet.
• Tell casting and the accountant when an actor's start or finish date moves, since it changes what they're paid.

Building the board in Storiara

In Storiara, you upload a script as a PDF, Word, or Final Draft file, and the app splits it into scenes from the headings and uses AI to pull out characters, locations, props, wardrobe, and music and effects. Page counts in eighths come from the PDF layout and can be edited. You then drag scenes and day breaks around a stripboard yourself; the app doesn't pick the order for you. It blocks drops that would push a day past the length you set and shows cast, crew, and location availability for the day you're working on. The Day Out of Days view fills in cast codes from the schedule, and call sheets are built from each scheduled day. See scheduling in Storiara for more.