Build and run a shooting day

A shooting day is the unit the production actually lives in. This is what goes on the call sheet, what the crew asks about at wrap, and what someone reconciles against hours at the end of the week.

The order is yours, not the script's

Add scenes to a day and they stay in the order you added them. Add 103, then 101, then 102, and the day reads 103, 101, 102 — it is not re-sorted into script order.

That is the whole point. A day is shot in an order decided by light, location and cast availability, and the schedule has to be able to say so.

You can change that order two ways:

• On the day card, turn on reordering and drag a scene where you want it.
• In the editor, drag the scene chips into order before saving.

Either way the order is saved on the server, not just in your browser — reload and it is still there.

Numbers, and what is on offer

A day needs a number, and numbers must be unique across the schedule: a second Day 04 is rejected with a validation error rather than silently created.

When you open the scene picker you are offered the scenes that are not yet on another day, and you can filter by scene number to find one quickly. Removing a scene from a day puts it straight back on offer.

Call and wrap

A shooting day carries a start hour and a finish hour — when the day is called and when it is expected to wrap. They sit on the day itself, alongside its number and its scenes.

These are the plan, not the record. What actually happened is the worklog below, which is why the two can disagree — and that disagreement is usually the most interesting number on the day.

Both are optional. A day with no times set still works; it simply says nothing about when it starts.

Notes

A day carries as many notes as it needs — weather, a location change, a reason today ran long. Notes can be edited and removed individually, and they stay with the day, so the reason for a decision is still there when someone asks about it three weeks later.

The worklog

The worklog records who worked and for how long, one entry per crew member per day.

• Set a start and finish time and the hours are calculated for you — 08:00 to 20:00 gives 12 hours.
• Overnight is handled properly. 22:00 to 08:00 is ten hours, not a negative number, so night shoots do not need a workaround.
• Overtime is recorded separately from the worked hours.
• One entry per member. Trying to add the same person twice is rejected — edit the existing entry instead.

The day shows its running total, so a glance tells you whether the day was a twelve or a fifteen.

Getting it out

Two exports, for two different audiences:

• The shooting day as a PDF — the scenes, in your order, with what they need.
• The worklog as a PDF — the hours, for whoever reconciles them.

Reading the day on the day

Open a day and it shows the scene rows plus chips for every character called that day. Two shortcuts worth knowing when someone is standing in front of you asking a question:

• Click a character chip and the day narrows to just that character's scenes.
• Open a scene row and preview the script for it in place, without navigating away.

Moving between days, and between people

A shooting day steps to the day before and the day after, in date order, from the buttons above the day's card or with ← and →. Prepping a week is then one page and a series of key presses rather than a return to the schedule between each day.

The character's day page — the one you reach by clicking a character chip — steps a different way on purpose. Its arrows move between the people called on that day, not between days, because that is the run a supervisor makes at the truck: everyone on today, one after another. The day itself is still one click away on its own buttons.

Marking the day off

At wrap someone has to record what actually got shot, and having to open a scene card for each one is why it often does not happen until days later. Turn on Filming Progress on the day card and every scene row carries the same three buttons the scene card does — not filmed, partly, fully — so the day is marked off in one pass, in the order you shot it. Done puts the rows back.

Each click saves on its own. There is nothing to submit at the end, and nothing is lost if you are called away halfway down the list.

Partly filmed is the state that earns its keep here. A day that ran out of light with two setups left is exactly what gets lost between wrap and the next morning, and marking that scene partly filmed is what tells the schedule something is still owed on it — see tracking scenes.

What you record here is what the rest of the app counts: the progress bar on an episode card, the one on a performer's profile, and whether a character reads as shot out.

The thing that is not obvious

Deleting a day never deletes scenes. The scenes go back to being unscheduled and stay in the production with everything attached to them intact. So the safe way to rebuild a badly planned day is to delete it and start again — you are not risking any of the work hanging off those scenes.

The same is true in reverse: taking a scene off a day removes it from the plan, not from the production.