Tips On How to Schedule a Film Shoot.

If you have an experienced First Assistant Director, they will take care of doing a shoot schedule that will be the most efficient and cost-effective. If you don’t and have never scheduled a film shoot, here are some of the major rules in scheduling a film shoot. Note that even if you use a scheduling program like Movie Magic Scheduling, it gives you format but you still need to know the principles behind it.

Maximize Usage of your Most Expensive Asset: For many indie films, this will be locations. So if your main set is say a mansion that you had to rent for 5 days then you want to shoot those days first. It might be cheaper to rent it for a week versus say going back 5 days over 3 weeks. Also every time you change locations, there is an effective cost from a time perspective. For example, if you are shooting at this mansion for 5 days, you can leave your equipment there overnight so that each day, you don’t have to load in and load out. Time is money .

Balance Cast With Locations: Cast is often the other major expense to consider so you need to balance the cost of an actor versus the cost of a location. If your cast includes an expensive star actor that is only shooting 4 days, it might turn out that it will be cheaper to change locations 2-3 times because you can then only pay for one week of this expensive name actor’s time. The savings from this might outweigh the inconvenience of changing locations. Also for this type of actor, this might be the only time to get him/her in your film because there was a window of one week that he/she was available. In a more normal scenario, after you maximize the locations, you then maximize the use of your lead & featured actors so that they can each get done as quick as possible. Ideally you don’t want any actor to be used sporadically over the entire shoot if there is a schedule that can allow them to be done sooner. This is beneficial to the production from a cost perspective but it is also better for an actor’s process because one week of shooting is better than shooting 5 days over a 3 week shoot.

Outdoor Locations Early On: Ideally you want to shoot outdoor scenes earlier in the shoot because if weather becomes a problem, you can re-schedule or re-shoot at a later date. If you schedule outdoor shoots towards the end of the shoot, re-scheduling becomes more challenging because you have less days to work with. If you wind up needing to extend the shoot, then you will incur additional cost but also you might encounter scheduling issues with the actors if they have other jobs scheduled. In general, try to have a “cover set” ready when you have an outdoor shoot scheduled so that if it rains, you can automatically switch to this cover set, which is an indoor day. In the perfect world, your outdoor scene had Joe, Bob, Susan and Ann shooting and since it is raining, your cover set was a scene with the same 4 actors/actresses and it is in an apartment you have access to that week.

Timing of your Most Important Scenes: Your highly emotional scenes, the finale, etc. are scenes you want to schedule later in the shoot because ideally you want your actors to get more comfortable with each other. Film is shot on a non-linear basis but for these key scenes, there is a benefit to giving the actors time to get used to working with each other. Furthermore, it also takes a day or two for the crew to get used to working with each other.

Maximize Special Needs: There might be special needs that you need to account for. For example you might need a crane for 3 days, which might be cheaper if you rent it for a long weekend versus renting it 3 different days.

Overall Hours in General: A shoot day is typically going to run 12-14 hours and shooting a six day week is not uncommon so when you schedule, think about ways to give your cast and especially crew rest. If you can slot a shorter day or days in during a week where you know there are two very long days, that will help. Balance tough locations to shoot in with ones which are more pleasant (i.e. cramped hot apartments versus indoor well air conditioned offices). Look at the entire shoot so that you can get it comfortably done without burning out the crew. Always assume you will need 1-2 additional days for re-shoots and budget for it.

Scheduling a Shoot is a juggling act to minimize cost and maximize use. For most indie shoots, locations is usually maximized first followed by cast. Then the rest of the needs such as outdoor days, special equipment days, etc. is weaved in. In each case, you will be balancing efficiency, availability and cost.

Contributed by paul.

Experienced or knowledgeable in film scheduling? Drop your comments below for others to learn.