How to build a stripboard

Storiara's stripboard is manual. You decide the order and it keeps the math straight: start times, day length, page counts, and what's still unscheduled. There's no automatic scheduling, so the thinking about company moves, cast days, and day and night splits is still yours.

You need scenes in the story and a production schedule with dates and daily hours. If the dates aren't set, the header's Shoot dates button is the way in.

Steps

1. Open Schedule and make sure Stripboard is selected, not Day Out of Days.
2. Open the Boneyard tab in the side panel. Every scene not on the board yet is waiting there.
3. Drag a scene onto the day you want it, or select several and use Move to day.
4. Use the + menu on a day row to add scenes or shots to that day without dragging, and Add in the toolbar for a day, a meal, a company move, a note, or a holiday.
5. Click a strip's length to set its minutes. Use estimated length puts it back to the derived value.
6. Drag strips by the grip to reorder within a day or move between days. Shift-click or Cmd-click to take several at once.
7. Expand a scene's shots with its chevron if you're planning shot by shot, and drag individual shot rows the same way.

Each strip reads Time, Sc., I/E, Set, D/N, Pages, Cast, and Est. Strips take their colour from the scene colour set on the Scenes page. If your crew reads a traditional board, either set scene colours to the day and night convention, or switch Colour by in the toolbar to INT/EXT. The small I/E and D/N chips carry the convention colours either way.

When a day is full

A length that would push the day past its limit is refused rather than warned about. The field names the limit and the overage, and offers two ways out: the largest length that fits, or Split across days, which makes the scene two parts reading "12 (1 of 2)" and "12 (2 of 2)", each carrying its own share of the pages and minutes. Merge parts puts them back.

If you mean to run long, Allow overage for this day on the day menu records that decision, and the day keeps showing in the warnings panel rather than disappearing from it.

Reading availability while you build

The Availability tab in the side panel shows what you've collected for cast, crew, locations, equipment, props, and wardrobe on the selected day, in 15-minute slots. It is there to read. The board won't stop you scheduling someone on a day they marked unavailable.

If it doesn't work

• A length that won't commit means the day is at its limit. Take the fitting length it offers, split the scene, or allow the overage.
• A scene you can't find in the boneyard is already on a day. Use the search in the boneyard, or Sort to bring it into view.
• Moving a scene and finding its shots left behind is intended. The strip says how many are on another day and offers Move shots with scene.

See how to set production dates to change the day length, and the Schedule guide for the rest of the page.