Call sheet

It fits on one page. The address with parking, crew call, first shot, the order of scenes, the names of the people on camera with their slot, two working phone numbers and a note about the weather. The producer assembles the call sheet at the end of pre production, once location and cast are settled. It goes out the evening before, so the camera operator and the client's marketing lead both read it in time.

Last year we filmed in a packaging plant. One line said line three shuts down at 13:00. So we shot the machine detail in the morning and kept the interviews for the afternoon. Without it we would have lost ninety minutes, and the missing shots would have cost a second shoot day. One extra day raises the price of a normal corporate job by roughly a third.

Writing it takes an hour. Gathering what goes into it takes two weeks. From you we need names and job titles exactly as they should appear in the captions, whoever lets us into the building, and a warning about anything else happening that day: an audit, a visitor, a cleaning crew. The call sheet goes out by email twelve hours ahead and into the group chat as an image, because nobody opens attachments at seven in the morning.

Where people get it wrong: they write the schedule and never update it. Monday's version with the wrong time is worse than none, because somebody will turn up by it. The opposite mistake is four pages in five minute slots. A corporate shoot will not hold that precision and the crew stops reading before lunch. For one talking head, four lines in an email is the whole thing.

Ours always carries two compulsory lines: the rain plan, and the name of the person who decides on site. The second matters more. If the chosen room turns out to be occupied, somebody has to say within three minutes where we shoot instead. With no name on the call sheet that takes half an hour. Add the line before your next shoot, it costs nothing.