You can use a shooting schedule template in the management of a film or video production project where you use it to monitor the various aspects of the process in an organized way. This document is an in-depth project plan that contains all of the essential information involved in the production of a movie or film.
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Shooting Schedule Templates
What is a film shooting schedule?
A film schedule template is often prepared by the assistant director. This is one of the most significant documents in the film industry business as it keeps the whole crew informed of the project and its details.
A well-organized shooting schedule template includes details about the cast and crew involved in the project, special effects, locations, and everything else associated with the production. This means that the document plays a crucial role in the success of the project, especially when you wish to finish a shooting project on time.
You can prepare this document prior to the start of your project then revise it during the course of your project. When you’re done with the whole project, then you will create a post-production schedule template too.
Film Schedule Templates
What is a production schedule in media?
Producing a video or a film mainly involves footage filmed using a camera. For the members of the crew, it is important for them to know beforehand what they will film before showing up at the shooting locations – and you can use a shooting schedule template to share this information.
To prevent any issues from happening, the team must first all agree to work from a production schedule document. This schedule contains all of the details of your project and as such, will leave no confusion or room for miscommunication. Here are some of the most important elements found in a shooting schedule example:
- Equipment Security
- Jewelry and Clothing
- Key Contacts
- Models, Actors, and Interviewees
- Parking
- Prohibited Footage
- Security
- Scripts
- Shot list and timings
Shooting Schedule Examples
How do you write a shooting schedule?
Getting involved in the filming industry can be an exciting, overwhelming, and confusing experience. Fortunately, you can use a procedure to lessen the number of decisions from the onset of the project.
This procedure involves steps that build on each other to make the creation of your shooting schedule template that will make everything easier and more efficient. Following are the steps you can use as a guide to making an effective shooting schedule template:
- Start with the scene chronology
The first thing that you must do is to arrange all of the scenes in chronological order based on the script. Doing this can provides a great visual overview of your story. Moreover, a chronological shooting sequence can enormously help your creative team as their characters will proceed in a logical and coherent way. - List down all of the locations for filming
Your schedule should identify all of the filming locations too. With this information, you can place all of the scenes shot on the same locations together in a block and as such, you will maintain the scene’s chronological sequence within the blocks.
You can also put together scenes that might occur in various locations but can get scheduled in a single location. The main objective here is to keep the number of scenes between locations as low as possible. - Think about the workload
The next step involves the forming of workloads based on the locations then figuring out how many scenes you can shoot within the span of a day. If you can sort by location, it’s easier to identify filming locations that constitute one day of shooting and as such, don’t require more attention.
It’s also a good idea to combine filming locations with less than one-day of shooting. Just make sure that any necessary set changes cause minimal time loss and additional costs. Making combinations involve combining actors, extras, and technical resources cleverly. - Manage your resources
For locations that require more than a day of shooting, you must divide these into individual shoots. Before proceeding, you have to be as cost-effective as possible by making sure you combine resources skillfully.
Shooting can get very complicated depending on how big your shoot is in various locations. This is one good reason why you have to divide everything up to make it easier to go through the shooting days while having an overview of how long your filming will take for the whole project. - Create a production calendar
Why should you do this step this late? Strange as it may seem, there is an advantage to this delay because you already get a sense of how you can arrange everything based on your scheduled shooting days.
With this information on-hand, you can now decide which days you want or need to change locations on, which days you need to take a break, and which days you can distribute your shooting schedules on any available openings in your calendar.
At this point in your project, it can be a common decision to change calendar dates to ensure a more effective shooting schedule. Among all the stages of planning this schedule, the distribution of scenes generally consumes the most time.
When you get the feeling that all of your scheduled shooting days are sufficiently realistic, this means that you’re done. But if you still have a feeling that some of your shooting days will only work on paper, then you need to find a better schedule. This is where you may have to practice some flexibility. - Remain open to different options
You now have all the scenes distributed, all of the shooting days seem possible, and you have considered the required flexibility for your key scenes. But you aren’t done yet. You still have to check your schedule to find out if you can further improve it in terms of imponderables. - Think about worst-case scenarios too
It is always a good idea to place elaborate sequences in the schedule but in such a way that they remain flexible. Doing this helps you avoid incurring unexpected costs which can consequently upset your film’s production.
The important thing here is that you have anticipated everything that might happen. Always remember that in a shooting process, nothing is more uncomfortable than realizing that you’re not prepared when unexpected things happen.
