Scheduling

• Line the script. For this step, you literally mark up a physical script, or use specialized scheduling software, to call out key elements you will need to account for in your schedule: locations, actors, extras, vehicles, animals, makeup, props, costumes, visual effects, and so on. Pay attention to script notes about time of day and setting, and instructions about whether scenes must be interior (INT) or exterior (EXT)—and notice that we used the word must. As you go through the script, you need to calculate places where you might be able to change an interior to an exterior, night to day, or vice versa, in order to make the best use of your limited shooting days. Maintain the script instruction when the story needs you to, but when there is wiggle room, decide what is best for the schedule and resources and base your decision on those factors. Along the way, as we discuss in Chapter 4, these notations will indicate where and when you think a stage can replace a location, when one location can double for two or more locations, when you can use a visual effect or a simple camera or an optical technique to avoid a location or complicated set, and so on. This kind of thinking is crucial in schedule building.
• Fill-in breakdown sheets. Transfer the information you have broken out when you lined the script on a scene-by-scene basis to individual
  breakdown sheets, representing each scene in the movie. A professional breakdown sheet (such as the one here) features spreadsheet-style category boxes for each element, so that the data you port over from elements you flagged when you lined the script will ideally flow into appropriate categories—“cars” will end up listed under “vehicles,” and “guns” will end up under “props,” and so on. Depending on the software you use and your degree of sophistication, you can assign unique numbers for characters, scenes, props, and locations and then cross-reference them to make it easy for you to find elements and determine the frequency with which they appear in the story as you set out to budget for them. This provides you with the equivalent of a database that delineates elements for every scene, which you will need to take into consideration when creating a schedule.

  Once you have breakdown sheets for every scene, you can easily calculate how many elements different scenes share in common, so that when you are ready to build your shooting schedule, you can make plans to shoot similar pieces of different scenes involving the same location, actors, props, or other elements at the same time, to make the best use of your resources. To be most efficient, assign headers to each breakdown sheet that include, at a minimum, the script page; the scene number or name; the number of pages; the location; and whether it is a day, night, interior, or exterior scene.

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  Create lists or boards. This step involves sorting the information on the breakdown sheets to provide a visual representation of the different categories of elements so that an actual shooting schedule can begin to take shape. In the pre-digital era, this tool was known as the production board: a graphical display of breakdown-sheet information on a series of thin, color-coded cardboard charts, often called production strips, that the production manager would manually sort and mount on a large production board for the entire production management team to see and use, moving the strips around to form a rudimentary schedule. In some low-budget situations, independent filmmakers have even been known to use index cards. Today, scheduling software, such as affordable tools like Movie Magic Scheduling, have largely replaced physical boards or strips, but the idea is the same—to identify and arrange elements in such a way as to be able to build a shooting schedule. One of the beneficial things about today’s online world is that you can easily create and inexpensively share simple spreadsheets and other documents online using Google Docs and other similar tools.

  Out of your breakdown sheets, especially if you use the right spreadsheet or scheduling software, it is fairly easy to sort and generate accurate and handy lists of related items, typically sorted in order of their expected cost. On professional productions, the most important lists are typically people and locations, since movie stars usually eat up the most money, and the availability of locations can frequently impact many aspects of your entire schedule. As a student filmmaker, you can evaluate which list will be most crucial and compile your lists according to your priorities. In any case, you will typically generate prop lists, wardrobe lists, vehicle lists, equipment lists, and other specialized lists, such as a list of visual or practical effects. These lists can be as detailed as you want or need them to be, and are a handy tool to help you both budget for particular items and, later, keep track of, and procure, those items. Essentially, you will be sorting out lists based on your project’s needs. In a student production, virtually everyone will likely be volunteering his or her time. Therefore, although they might not be costing you much money, figuring out whom you will need—cast, crew, and support—and when, will be your biggest scheduling challenge. After all, in addition to scheduling around your project’s needs, you will need to schedule around your cast and crew’s limited availability, as well.

• Schedule so that you can capture what you absolutely must capture to complete your movie. Note that this is a far different thing than capturing everything you might want to capture. In other words: prioritize and make hard and often difficult choices along the way.
• Be as efficient and flexible as possible.
• Be as realistic as possible—don’t attempt things that simply lie outside your resource capabilities.
• Always prepare as many backup options as you possibly can (see Action Steps: Be Prepared, below).

• If your project’s schedule allows formal rehearsal days during production, schedule them at the beginning of the week and start shooting on Wednesday, so that everyone comes into the first day of shooting fully prepared, and you leave yourself the following weekend to make changes if they are required.
• It is rarely a good idea to film your movie in linear script order, particularly at the low-budget level. You need to schedule your shoots around access to your locations, actors, and other resources; you can put it all together in the editing phase.
• If particular actors are only available on certain days, use your scheduling software to print out what is called a day-out-of-days schedule for that individual, and try to select days when you can shoot all material involving that actor, even if it is from different scenes.
• We suggested in Chapter 4 that there are many advantages to shooting in places you have access to. Among these advantages is the possibility of increased scheduling flexibility. If you have a family member or dear friend with a house on the beach that they will permit you to use, change scenes that take place in the country to the beach unless there is a strong creative reason that would prevent it. For student films in particular, much of a typical story can be told by shooting in places you already have access to and are quite familiar with. Working in places you know, or in places you have been given access to by people you know, will frequently mean you can get more time there, or at least be able to work more efficiently there, thus adding more options to your schedule.
• Schedule as much of the shoot to take place in one location, or in locations close to each other, as possible. The fewer moves there are between locations, the shorter time shooting will take, and the more you will be able to accomplish. If you have found a great old mansion in the country to shoot at, try to arrange to use the yard or surrounding grounds for your exterior work.
• Apply what you learned during location scouting (see Chapter 4). Learn everything you possibly can about where you are going and what typically goes on there at the time of day you will be there. For instance, if you have permission to shoot in the bleachers at a high school football field, and the bleachers are adjacent to a parking lot, know what time the parking lot starts filling up with noisy cars. If people start arriving at 9 a.m., schedule filming on the bleachers first thing, at 8 a.m., so that you can have a quieter environment and better sound for that scene before you move on to your scenes on the football field.
• Any time you can combine tasks, you will be ahead of the game. Be alert to identifying days when you can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak—shooting scenes you had initially pondered taking care of later in your schedule because you will have extra cameras available for other scenes on different days, or will already be at a comparable location. Plan sequences to be captured on particular days based on logistics and feasibility.
• Have a list of alternative shots or sequences or establishing material you could shoot at the same location, or other tasks you could take care of, if setup for a particularly complicated scene is taking too long—things you can get done while you are waiting to get other things done.