July 2, 2025 • 18 mins
In this episode, Jeff Deverett dives deep into the essentials of script scheduling and shooting schedules for indie filmmakers. He shares valuable insights on how to break down your script effectively to create a realistic shooting schedule. Learn how to plan your filming days to maximize efficiency, save time, and reduce costs. Jeff emphasizes the importance of proper planning to avoid rescheduling and ensure your indie film stays on track.Jeff also discusses the potential downsides of having to reschedule filming days, such as dealing with bad weather, an actor falling sick, or other unforeseen circumstances. He explains how rescheduling can impact your indie film's finances and budget, leading to increased costs, delays, and potential strain on resources. Jeff provides strategies to mitigate these risks and keep your production on course.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is super important to stay on time and on
budget when you are shooting a low budget indie film.
The key document to doing that is the shooting schedule.
You need to know how to properly set up and
manage your shooting schedule. If you want to be a
successful indie filmmaker, you need to know a lot about
(00:20):
not just the production of movies, but the business. We
are going to tell you the truth and reality of
what really happens in the indie film business. Okay, welcome back. Today.
We're going to be talking about what we call script
breakdown and creating a shooting schedule. So you have a script,
(00:42):
you know what your movie is going to be about.
You've got the script. Now what you've got to do
is you've got to figure out how long it's going
to take you to shoot the movie. So the way
that happens is you're going to take the movie. And
movies aren't shot in sequential order most movies. Okay, once
in a while, somebody is artistic they shoot the movie
from scene one through scene eighty or whatever sequentially, but
(01:02):
it's not usually done that way. It's usually shot out
of order for good reason, because it's not cost effective
to shoot sequentially. Let's say, for instance, I'll give you
an example. Let's say there's five scenes that take place
in this boardroom, and they take place at different times
in the movie. So say seen five, Seen fifteen, Seen
twenty five, Scene thirty five, Seen forty five, Right, so
they're not sequential. It doesn't make sense for us to
(01:25):
set up all the cameras, equipment, do everything like that,
shoot scene five, then rip it all down, go shoot
scene six somewhere else, and then you know, ten scenes later,
come back here to shoot scene fifteen and set it
all up again. So what you do is you basically
schedule all those scenes five, fifteen, twenty five, thirty five.
You schedule them all on the same shooting day. You
set up your equipment, and you shoot them all back
to back. And even though there may be different days
(01:46):
in the script and the scene is me talking, I
just changed my clothes. I'd rarely change my clothes, but
in this movie, I would change my clothes, and you
change the lighting a little bit, make it look like
a different day, but you're set up, you shoot it.
The whole process of doing a script break down in
a shooting schedule is to figure that out which scene
should be grouped together to make it super cost effective
(02:06):
to shoot the movie properly. Here's how that happens, right.
The first thing that happens is you go basically through
your script. You look at each scene separately, and you're
going to put them onto what we call a strip board,
otherwise known as a shooting schedule. It's an Excel program.
A strip is a row in an Excel spreadsheet. All right,
then you've got columns, all right. Now, the strip boards
(02:27):
used to be actually magnetic or velcro boards, where each
scene would be a strip, and you could actually put
the strip on the velcrore of the magnet and take
it off and move it so you can put them. So,
imagine you have an eighty scene script, so you'd have
eighty strips. Each scene is a strip. So now what
you got to do is you got to sort those
strips out to make it efficient and cost effective and
(02:48):
logical to shoot the movie out of order. So let's
go back to my example of say five scenes in
this boardroom of me talking and there are different places,
so there's five strips there, So we would take those
five strips. Probably this is a rudimentary example and we
would group them together and we'd say these scenes should
all be shot on the same day, back to back,
(03:08):
so all those strips would go together. And let's say
it's the second shooting day. We decide, okay, we can
book this location on day two whatever that happens to be,
and the actors are available and everything like that. So
on day two we're going to see you know, Seeing five, fifteen,
twenty five, thirty five, forty five. Now it might not
actually be in that order. It might be that we
(03:30):
shoot Seen thirty five first, Seen twenty five seconds, Seen
five third. There's reasons why you would shoot certain things
in certain orders, and that's for an ad and a
director to decide what makes sense to shoot. And there's
so many examples and reasons that I could get into
the details. But the core thing is that you're going
to shoot those five scenes together. So how do you
determine that? So what you do is you go through
(03:52):
your script and the first thing is called a breakdown.
We basically look at each scene separately and put them
onto a strip. The information is how long is the scene,
like how many pages of shooting or dialogue? And usually
I break it down into quarter pages. In most of
the people in the industry break it down to eighth
of pages. So is it a page, is it two pages,
(04:12):
a you know, page and a half or whatever. Then
is it day or night? Where does it take place?
What's sort of the description of the action? Who are
the characters in the scene. Are there any special props
or wardrobe or needs that we would have to identify
that would make it unique, Any special equipment needs that
type of thing. So it's basically a breakdown of the
information of what's going on in the scene and what's
(04:34):
required to shoot the scene. That's what sort of goes
on the strip. Obviously I'm talking quickly because it's so detailed,
there's so much to talk about here. But anyways, that's
what goes on. So now we have an idea of
what we need to do to shoot that scene. Now
we can group like scenes together. You know, I use
an example based on location. So my primary sort of
sorting criteria is where is the scene going to take place?
(04:57):
Because generally the most expensive thing in shooting a movie
is moving equipment and doing what we call a unit move,
picking up your crew and your equipment and moving it elsewhere.
So if you can group locations together. That's the kind
of the highest priority. But sometimes maybe you have a
special piece of equipment, like a steady camp that you
can't afford. You can get it for one day, and
maybe you have you know, four scenes that require steady camp,
(05:17):
but they're in four different locations. I mean, does it
make sense to maybe shoot those on the same day
based on an expensive piece of equipment and an operator
as opposed to a location. These are decisions that you
have to make. That's what creating a shooting schedule is
all about. It's sort of prioritizing and deciding what makes
the most sense based on the resources that you have.
(05:38):
So ultimately you're going to build this schedule. The reason
the strips are either like in a digital format and
an Excel spreadsheet. Obviously you can move them easily. But
the reason you know when it was done manually is
you can take them off a velcral border, a magnetic
board and move them is because it's constantly changing. You're
constantly reconfiguring and saying, maybe it makes more sense to
shoot these scenes together, Maybe we should sho these, maybe
(06:00):
we should shoot these on this day because this actor
is available, or maybe we should shoot these on this
day because this location is available. So it's all this
criteria and parameters that you build into deciding what makes
the most sense. Now, once you've built it and you
have sort of like say, the first draft of it,
this is constantly changing the shooting schedule based on things
(06:22):
that happen. That doesn't have to change if you're lucky,
but things generally do happen, like, for instance, a locational
call and say, hey, you know we told you that day,
Well we can't do it anymore. You got to switch days.
Or you know that actor who is available, they're not
available anyway that day, so now you got to switch things.
So this is you're constantly juggling. Remember this is low
budget INDI filmmaking, and you got to go with the flow.
(06:43):
It's not like you're a studio with a one hundred
million dollar feature that says, hey, give us that location
or else we're not coming there. We're not paying you
the two hundred thousand we're told you're going to pay.
In low budget any filmmaking, you kind of have to
go with the flow and adjust as problems arise, you've
got to come up with solutions. So you are constantly
juggling this schedule. Once you have sort of the first
(07:03):
draft of the schedule and you say this, this looks good,
this is going to work. That's the foundation for creating
a budget, because the most expensive thing in shooting a
movie in terms of a budget is how many days
you're going to shoot, which kind of makes sense because
you have to have your whole crew there every single day.
You have to have your actors. So let's say it
(07:23):
costs you, on a low budget in the feature, say
twenty thousand dollars a day to shoot. There's a big
difference between shooting ten days for two hundred thousand dollars
and shooting fifteen days for three hundred thousand dollars and
twenty thousand dollars a day. This is why it's so
important to schedule properly, so that you have sort of
the foundation as to know how many days you're going
to shoot, and it gives you sort of the framework
(07:44):
to build a more accurate budget, and also you know
to book locations and book actors and actually plan everything.
It's really hard to plan anything unless you know exactly
when you're shooting and what you're shooting on certain days.
So this, this strip board slash shootings schedule is really
the foundation of the planning of the whole shoot. Everything
(08:05):
depends on this. Your budget, your locations, your actors, everything
comes from this. So it's really important to do this
well and as efficiently as you can in order to
you know, shoot your film properly and on time and
on budget. As I say, you're constantly juggling it. So
it's really important to do this properly in order to
you know, have the information at hand. Now, how do
(08:28):
you do this me? I like to do it on
an Excel spreadsheet for various reasons. Number one, I'm really
good on Excel. You know, it can be Excel can
be one of the other spreadsheet formats, you know, Google
sheets or something like that. It doesn't really matter that
I use Excel. The reason I like Excel it gives
me a ton of flexibility and especially if you're sort
of high level user on Excel, to be able to sort,
(08:49):
to change, to pivot, to do all kinds of stuff
that Excel allows you to do. So because I'm juggling
a lot of different priorities actor availability, location, availability, equipment
and available all these kind of stuff, and we're constantly
moving things around. I have the ability to make very
quick changes, very accurately when I have it set up
on an Excel format, just because I'm so comfortable with that.
(09:12):
Some people are not as comfortable with Excel. So there
are many many stock programs apps that do this for you.
So I mean, I can name a few. Studio Binders,
a very popular one, Celtics obviously, Movie Magic is probably
the biggest one. There's these stock apps that you can
either get a free version of or a paid version of,
(09:34):
and they have you know, one of the modules is scheduling.
They often have other modules like script writing. You can
actually write the script within that app, and then the
script will automatically be converted into a shooting schedule. And
then they have other things budgets, call sheets, production reports,
lots of stuff, communication between teams. So these apps are
(09:55):
really really sophisticated, well thought out and work really well,
and I highly encourage you to check them out, and
probably a lot of you already use them. They're good.
I used to use studio Binder and it's great. I
love it, so Studio Binder people, if you're watching, I
think it's a great app. I just can do more
on an Excel spreadsheet because I have the ability to
(10:15):
sort quicker and do more parameters in criteria. I tend
to move really really quickly when I'm on set, and
I make very quick decisions, and I having my spreadsheet
in front of me and being able to juggle something
involves making super super quick decisions on the shooting schedule.
So I'll give you one example. And I can't do
(10:36):
that as quickly on an app, maybe because I don't
know how to use the apps as well, But in
some cases, I don't think the apps can change all
of that criteria as quickly as I'm able to do
it on the spreadsheet that I set up. Plus I
put a lot more information into my spreadsheets than generally
the apps allow me to do. So I encourage people
who know how to use Excel to do it that way,
and if not, find the right app that works for you.
(10:58):
But let me give you an example of what I'm
talking about. Very often, on a low budget indie shoot,
you're gonna be on set and you're gonna have a
weather problem. Okay, you're shooting. It's supposed to be a
nice day. You get there, it starts raining. What do
you do do you cancel the shoot? Do you try
to reschedule it? Do you put it in a try
to get an indoor location? I mean you got to
make a decision. Now. Remember, let's say you have fifteen
(11:21):
days of shooting that you've scheduled and you're gonna lose
a half a day because it starts raining. Are you
gonna try to reschedule? How are you going to reschedule it?
Because it costs money to reschedule because you got to
hire your crew for another day and your actors and
get another location. Do you have the ability to do that?
Do you have access to more financing? Chances are you don't.
(11:41):
I mean, on a big budget shoot, you're gonna have it.
You're gonna phone in the studio and say, hey, we
need rain, we need another day. They're gonna say him
and hobbit, they're gonna give you the money. On a
low budget indie shoot, you're probably not gonna get that money.
So now you got to juggle. You got to go
onto your shooting schedule and you got to say, Okay,
what could I do to use this other four or
five our span of time that I have. I've got
(12:02):
my crew here, I've got this location. You've got to
have to look at your scenes and you're gonna have
to And I've got these actors, and what can I
do to rejuggle, reformat to keep the show going so
that I can get some productivity out of this afternoon
that I would have otherwise had to cancel because I
can't juggle. Having a good productive shooting schedule that you
(12:23):
can manage can allow you to do a lot of juggling.
So I could go on and I can say, hey,
even though we were supposed to shoot, you know, seeing
fifteen and twenty two, three days from now, I could
probably rejig it because it's the same actors. I speak
to the wardrobe, Do you have their wardrobe? Can we
change it a little bit? Production design? Can we make
this look like this even though we're not in the
(12:45):
right location. Can we juggle a little bit, pull off
what we need to do and make it happen. Do
we want to do that? No, of course we don't
want to do that. Does it change the movie? Yes,
of course it changes the movie. But here's the here's
the tradeoff. If you don't do that, you're you're not
going to be able to finish your movie, because you're
not going to have enough money to reschedule for another
shooting day. So that you know, a lot of directors
(13:06):
say to me, Jeff, you can't do that. You can't
change your scene on the fly. You don't have the
right location, you're not prepared, nobody's planned for it. And
I say, it's either that or have no scene. And
if you have no scene, can you finish your movie?
We'll have to find more money. I say, no, No,
you don't understand. You're a director, you never produced, put
on your producer's hat, and you've got to understand you're
not going to find any more money. We're tapped out.
(13:28):
That's it. So we're gonna have a movie that is
ninety percent finished and we don't. We're missing three scenes
because we got to range shower that day and we
couldn't juggle it. As I said, this is the truth
and reality of what actually goes on. Is it good news? No,
it's bad news. Do you want to do it? No,
you don't want to do it, but you gotta do it.
You've got to be able to juggle otherwise. So many
(13:49):
low budgeting films don't get finished for that reason. I mean,
I could tell you tons of other stories, like how
about you have equipment failure, how about one of your
actors get sick and doesn't show up. I mean, the
list goes on and on and on, and you need
to be able to juggle quickly and make very quick
changes and decisions. And the shooting schedule. I keep pointing
(14:11):
out my computer because it's a shooting schedule open in
front of me. Here. The shooting schedule is the master
document that controls all that and kind of gives you
the idea of what you can and can't do, and
you know what things are even doable. So here's what
I say to producers, You got to find a solution.
Just assume there's always going to be problems. That's not
(14:33):
call them problems challenges. That's what part of indie, low
budget indie filmmaking is. It's just trying to figure out
solutions to your challenges. The trick is is sometimes the
solutions aren't obvious, and sometimes they're very difficult to figure out,
but you got to do it all right. The trick
is to find the best solution in the moment. Sometimes
the best solution isn't even a good solution. It's a
(14:54):
bad solution, but it's better than all the other choices,
one of the choices being canceled and don't shoot, but
maybe risk not finishing your movie. All right, So you've
got to make a decision based on the information you
have at the moment and looking at your shooting schedule,
what is the best solution to this challenge at this moment,
looking at the overall big picture of making your movie
(15:17):
on time and on budget and finishing it. And that
is why you have to be you know, it doesn't
have to be you. It could be maybe your first
ad could be your line producer, whoever is really really
good at sort of managing the shooting schedule. They need
to be in on it. They need to move quickly.
Then you've got to prioritize and you got to say
what's important, What can we compromise, what can we do
to solve this challenge and come up with a solution,
(15:40):
and the document the shooting schedule is the place you're
going to go. Everything's going to feed off of that.
I mean, look at there could be other criteria obviously, right,
you know, depending on the situation, But for the most part,
that's what this is all about so setting up your
shooting schedule the right way to start with and being
able to maneuver and change it and adjust it is
(16:02):
the secret to staying on time and on budget on
an indie shoot. And so I like to do it
a certain way obviously, all right, you know, Just as
I said before, I'm good with spreadsheets, and I'm a
bit of a control freak. I admit that I can
handle a lot of balls in the air, and I
like to prioritize certain things in certain situations. So there
(16:23):
might be a situation while I'll prioritize an actor, there
might be a situation while to prioritize location or piece
of equipment. Depends on the situation. But I need to
have information in front of me quickly so that I
can maneuver and manipulate super quickly. And that's why I
do it on an Excel spreadsheet. Whatever you decide to do,
just make sure as an indie filmmaker that you number one,
(16:45):
can juggle, can stay flexible, can deal with issues, and
have the information at hand that you need. So whether
you're doing it on say a stock program, which is fine,
make sure you or somebody else around you and your
team knows how to use that program really well and
knows how to manipulate it or adjust it accordingly at
(17:05):
the speed that you would need to do it. If
you can do that, then you will be able to
stay on time and on budget, which is the secret
to finishing low budget indie films. It's also going to
hopefully make your investors happy that you stayed on time
and on budget. But the alternative is risk not finishing
your movie. And I've said it before, I can't tell
you it's a heartbreaking shame how many low budget indie
(17:28):
films do not actually get finished because of this reason.
Because people can't juggle and change and adjust in the
moment they panic, they lose a half a shooting day
or whatever the case may be, and they never get
it back, and they never get the money to get
it back. And it's a shame because the film otherwise
(17:49):
probably would have been great, but they just didn't have
the ability to juggle. Again. I could go on and
on and on about how to build a proper shooting schedule,
and how to do the script break down accurately, how
to set it up so that you have complete control,
and there's tons and tons of details but this isn't
this podcast. We're not going to go into those details,
(18:10):
so you have to take a masterclass. I would have
to put up all the documents and show you how
we do things and that type of thing. But I
think this was a good sort of overview of setting
up a shooting schedule and the importance of doing it
properly and being able to adjust it. So good luck,
it's not that overwhelming. It sounds a bit overwhelming. Good luck,
have fun with it. I'm sure you're going to be
great at it. I encourage all of my listeners to
(18:32):
send me questions if they're curious about certain topics or
they want more information on things that I've spoken about.
So my email address is Jdevererett at deveretmedia dot com.
It will be in the show notes, and feel free
to send in your questions and we will hopefully be
able to get to them and expand and give you
the answers.
It is super important to stay on time and on
budget when you are shooting a low budget indie film.
The key document to doing that is the shooting schedule.
You need to know how to properly set up and
manage your shooting schedule. If you want to be a
successful indie filmmaker, you need to know a lot about
(00:20):
not just the production of movies, but the business. We
are going to tell you the truth and reality of
what really happens in the indie film business. Okay, welcome back. Today.
We're going to be talking about what we call script
breakdown and creating a shooting schedule. So you have a script,
(00:42):
you know what your movie is going to be about.
You've got the script. Now what you've got to do
is you've got to figure out how long it's going
to take you to shoot the movie. So the way
that happens is you're going to take the movie. And
movies aren't shot in sequential order most movies. Okay, once
in a while, somebody is artistic they shoot the movie
from scene one through scene eighty or whatever sequentially, but
(01:02):
it's not usually done that way. It's usually shot out
of order for good reason, because it's not cost effective
to shoot sequentially. Let's say, for instance, I'll give you
an example. Let's say there's five scenes that take place
in this boardroom, and they take place at different times
in the movie. So say seen five, Seen fifteen, Seen
twenty five, Scene thirty five, Seen forty five, Right, so
they're not sequential. It doesn't make sense for us to
(01:25):
set up all the cameras, equipment, do everything like that,
shoot scene five, then rip it all down, go shoot
scene six somewhere else, and then you know, ten scenes later,
come back here to shoot scene fifteen and set it
all up again. So what you do is you basically
schedule all those scenes five, fifteen, twenty five, thirty five.
You schedule them all on the same shooting day. You
set up your equipment, and you shoot them all back
to back. And even though there may be different days
(01:46):
in the script and the scene is me talking, I
just changed my clothes. I'd rarely change my clothes, but
in this movie, I would change my clothes, and you
change the lighting a little bit, make it look like
a different day, but you're set up, you shoot it.
The whole process of doing a script break down in
a shooting schedule is to figure that out which scene
should be grouped together to make it super cost effective
(02:06):
to shoot the movie properly. Here's how that happens, right.
The first thing that happens is you go basically through
your script. You look at each scene separately, and you're
going to put them onto what we call a strip board,
otherwise known as a shooting schedule. It's an Excel program.
A strip is a row in an Excel spreadsheet. All right,
then you've got columns, all right. Now, the strip boards
(02:27):
used to be actually magnetic or velcro boards, where each
scene would be a strip, and you could actually put
the strip on the velcrore of the magnet and take
it off and move it so you can put them. So,
imagine you have an eighty scene script, so you'd have
eighty strips. Each scene is a strip. So now what
you got to do is you got to sort those
strips out to make it efficient and cost effective and
(02:48):
logical to shoot the movie out of order. So let's
go back to my example of say five scenes in
this boardroom of me talking and there are different places,
so there's five strips there, So we would take those
five strips. Probably this is a rudimentary example and we
would group them together and we'd say these scenes should
all be shot on the same day, back to back,
(03:08):
so all those strips would go together. And let's say
it's the second shooting day. We decide, okay, we can
book this location on day two whatever that happens to be,
and the actors are available and everything like that. So
on day two we're going to see you know, Seeing five, fifteen,
twenty five, thirty five, forty five. Now it might not
actually be in that order. It might be that we
(03:30):
shoot Seen thirty five first, Seen twenty five seconds, Seen
five third. There's reasons why you would shoot certain things
in certain orders, and that's for an ad and a
director to decide what makes sense to shoot. And there's
so many examples and reasons that I could get into
the details. But the core thing is that you're going
to shoot those five scenes together. So how do you
determine that? So what you do is you go through
(03:52):
your script and the first thing is called a breakdown.
We basically look at each scene separately and put them
onto a strip. The information is how long is the scene,
like how many pages of shooting or dialogue? And usually
I break it down into quarter pages. In most of
the people in the industry break it down to eighth
of pages. So is it a page, is it two pages,
(04:12):
a you know, page and a half or whatever. Then
is it day or night? Where does it take place?
What's sort of the description of the action? Who are
the characters in the scene. Are there any special props
or wardrobe or needs that we would have to identify
that would make it unique, Any special equipment needs that
type of thing. So it's basically a breakdown of the
information of what's going on in the scene and what's
(04:34):
required to shoot the scene. That's what sort of goes
on the strip. Obviously I'm talking quickly because it's so detailed,
there's so much to talk about here. But anyways, that's
what goes on. So now we have an idea of
what we need to do to shoot that scene. Now
we can group like scenes together. You know, I use
an example based on location. So my primary sort of
sorting criteria is where is the scene going to take place?
(04:57):
Because generally the most expensive thing in shooting a movie
is moving equipment and doing what we call a unit move,
picking up your crew and your equipment and moving it elsewhere.
So if you can group locations together. That's the kind
of the highest priority. But sometimes maybe you have a
special piece of equipment, like a steady camp that you
can't afford. You can get it for one day, and
maybe you have you know, four scenes that require steady camp,
(05:17):
but they're in four different locations. I mean, does it
make sense to maybe shoot those on the same day
based on an expensive piece of equipment and an operator
as opposed to a location. These are decisions that you
have to make. That's what creating a shooting schedule is
all about. It's sort of prioritizing and deciding what makes
the most sense based on the resources that you have.
(05:38):
So ultimately you're going to build this schedule. The reason
the strips are either like in a digital format and
an Excel spreadsheet. Obviously you can move them easily. But
the reason you know when it was done manually is
you can take them off a velcral border, a magnetic
board and move them is because it's constantly changing. You're
constantly reconfiguring and saying, maybe it makes more sense to
shoot these scenes together, Maybe we should sho these, maybe
(06:00):
we should shoot these on this day because this actor
is available, or maybe we should shoot these on this
day because this location is available. So it's all this
criteria and parameters that you build into deciding what makes
the most sense. Now, once you've built it and you
have sort of like say, the first draft of it,
this is constantly changing the shooting schedule based on things
(06:22):
that happen. That doesn't have to change if you're lucky,
but things generally do happen, like, for instance, a locational
call and say, hey, you know we told you that day,
Well we can't do it anymore. You got to switch days.
Or you know that actor who is available, they're not
available anyway that day, so now you got to switch things.
So this is you're constantly juggling. Remember this is low
budget INDI filmmaking, and you got to go with the flow.
(06:43):
It's not like you're a studio with a one hundred
million dollar feature that says, hey, give us that location
or else we're not coming there. We're not paying you
the two hundred thousand we're told you're going to pay.
In low budget any filmmaking, you kind of have to
go with the flow and adjust as problems arise, you've
got to come up with solutions. So you are constantly
juggling this schedule. Once you have sort of the first
(07:03):
draft of the schedule and you say this, this looks good,
this is going to work. That's the foundation for creating
a budget, because the most expensive thing in shooting a
movie in terms of a budget is how many days
you're going to shoot, which kind of makes sense because
you have to have your whole crew there every single day.
You have to have your actors. So let's say it
(07:23):
costs you, on a low budget in the feature, say
twenty thousand dollars a day to shoot. There's a big
difference between shooting ten days for two hundred thousand dollars
and shooting fifteen days for three hundred thousand dollars and
twenty thousand dollars a day. This is why it's so
important to schedule properly, so that you have sort of
the foundation as to know how many days you're going
to shoot, and it gives you sort of the framework
(07:44):
to build a more accurate budget, and also you know
to book locations and book actors and actually plan everything.
It's really hard to plan anything unless you know exactly
when you're shooting and what you're shooting on certain days.
So this, this strip board slash shootings schedule is really
the foundation of the planning of the whole shoot. Everything
(08:05):
depends on this. Your budget, your locations, your actors, everything
comes from this. So it's really important to do this
well and as efficiently as you can in order to
you know, shoot your film properly and on time and
on budget. As I say, you're constantly juggling it. So
it's really important to do this properly in order to
you know, have the information at hand. Now, how do
(08:28):
you do this me? I like to do it on
an Excel spreadsheet for various reasons. Number one, I'm really
good on Excel. You know, it can be Excel can
be one of the other spreadsheet formats, you know, Google
sheets or something like that. It doesn't really matter that
I use Excel. The reason I like Excel it gives
me a ton of flexibility and especially if you're sort
of high level user on Excel, to be able to sort,
(08:49):
to change, to pivot, to do all kinds of stuff
that Excel allows you to do. So because I'm juggling
a lot of different priorities actor availability, location, availability, equipment
and available all these kind of stuff, and we're constantly
moving things around. I have the ability to make very
quick changes, very accurately when I have it set up
on an Excel format, just because I'm so comfortable with that.
(09:12):
Some people are not as comfortable with Excel. So there
are many many stock programs apps that do this for you.
So I mean, I can name a few. Studio Binders,
a very popular one, Celtics obviously, Movie Magic is probably
the biggest one. There's these stock apps that you can
either get a free version of or a paid version of,
(09:34):
and they have you know, one of the modules is scheduling.
They often have other modules like script writing. You can
actually write the script within that app, and then the
script will automatically be converted into a shooting schedule. And
then they have other things budgets, call sheets, production reports,
lots of stuff, communication between teams. So these apps are
(09:55):
really really sophisticated, well thought out and work really well,
and I highly encourage you to check them out, and
probably a lot of you already use them. They're good.
I used to use studio Binder and it's great. I
love it, so Studio Binder people, if you're watching, I
think it's a great app. I just can do more
on an Excel spreadsheet because I have the ability to
(10:15):
sort quicker and do more parameters in criteria. I tend
to move really really quickly when I'm on set, and
I make very quick decisions, and I having my spreadsheet
in front of me and being able to juggle something
involves making super super quick decisions on the shooting schedule.
So I'll give you one example. And I can't do
(10:36):
that as quickly on an app, maybe because I don't
know how to use the apps as well, But in
some cases, I don't think the apps can change all
of that criteria as quickly as I'm able to do
it on the spreadsheet that I set up. Plus I
put a lot more information into my spreadsheets than generally
the apps allow me to do. So I encourage people
who know how to use Excel to do it that way,
and if not, find the right app that works for you.
(10:58):
But let me give you an example of what I'm
talking about. Very often, on a low budget indie shoot,
you're gonna be on set and you're gonna have a
weather problem. Okay, you're shooting. It's supposed to be a
nice day. You get there, it starts raining. What do
you do do you cancel the shoot? Do you try
to reschedule it? Do you put it in a try
to get an indoor location? I mean you got to
make a decision. Now. Remember, let's say you have fifteen
(11:21):
days of shooting that you've scheduled and you're gonna lose
a half a day because it starts raining. Are you
gonna try to reschedule? How are you going to reschedule it?
Because it costs money to reschedule because you got to
hire your crew for another day and your actors and
get another location. Do you have the ability to do that?
Do you have access to more financing? Chances are you don't.
(11:41):
I mean, on a big budget shoot, you're gonna have it.
You're gonna phone in the studio and say, hey, we
need rain, we need another day. They're gonna say him
and hobbit, they're gonna give you the money. On a
low budget indie shoot, you're probably not gonna get that money.
So now you got to juggle. You got to go
onto your shooting schedule and you got to say, Okay,
what could I do to use this other four or
five our span of time that I have. I've got
(12:02):
my crew here, I've got this location. You've got to
have to look at your scenes and you're gonna have
to And I've got these actors, and what can I
do to rejuggle, reformat to keep the show going so
that I can get some productivity out of this afternoon
that I would have otherwise had to cancel because I
can't juggle. Having a good productive shooting schedule that you
(12:23):
can manage can allow you to do a lot of juggling.
So I could go on and I can say, hey,
even though we were supposed to shoot, you know, seeing
fifteen and twenty two, three days from now, I could
probably rejig it because it's the same actors. I speak
to the wardrobe, Do you have their wardrobe? Can we
change it a little bit? Production design? Can we make
this look like this even though we're not in the
(12:45):
right location. Can we juggle a little bit, pull off
what we need to do and make it happen. Do
we want to do that? No, of course we don't
want to do that. Does it change the movie? Yes,
of course it changes the movie. But here's the here's
the tradeoff. If you don't do that, you're you're not
going to be able to finish your movie, because you're
not going to have enough money to reschedule for another
shooting day. So that you know, a lot of directors
(13:06):
say to me, Jeff, you can't do that. You can't
change your scene on the fly. You don't have the
right location, you're not prepared, nobody's planned for it. And
I say, it's either that or have no scene. And
if you have no scene, can you finish your movie?
We'll have to find more money. I say, no, No,
you don't understand. You're a director, you never produced, put
on your producer's hat, and you've got to understand you're
not going to find any more money. We're tapped out.
(13:28):
That's it. So we're gonna have a movie that is
ninety percent finished and we don't. We're missing three scenes
because we got to range shower that day and we
couldn't juggle it. As I said, this is the truth
and reality of what actually goes on. Is it good news? No,
it's bad news. Do you want to do it? No,
you don't want to do it, but you gotta do it.
You've got to be able to juggle otherwise. So many
(13:49):
low budgeting films don't get finished for that reason. I mean,
I could tell you tons of other stories, like how
about you have equipment failure, how about one of your
actors get sick and doesn't show up. I mean, the
list goes on and on and on, and you need
to be able to juggle quickly and make very quick
changes and decisions. And the shooting schedule. I keep pointing
(14:11):
out my computer because it's a shooting schedule open in
front of me. Here. The shooting schedule is the master
document that controls all that and kind of gives you
the idea of what you can and can't do, and
you know what things are even doable. So here's what
I say to producers, You got to find a solution.
Just assume there's always going to be problems. That's not
(14:33):
call them problems challenges. That's what part of indie, low
budget indie filmmaking is. It's just trying to figure out
solutions to your challenges. The trick is is sometimes the
solutions aren't obvious, and sometimes they're very difficult to figure out,
but you got to do it all right. The trick
is to find the best solution in the moment. Sometimes
the best solution isn't even a good solution. It's a
(14:54):
bad solution, but it's better than all the other choices,
one of the choices being canceled and don't shoot, but
maybe risk not finishing your movie. All right, So you've
got to make a decision based on the information you
have at the moment and looking at your shooting schedule,
what is the best solution to this challenge at this moment,
looking at the overall big picture of making your movie
(15:17):
on time and on budget and finishing it. And that
is why you have to be you know, it doesn't
have to be you. It could be maybe your first
ad could be your line producer, whoever is really really
good at sort of managing the shooting schedule. They need
to be in on it. They need to move quickly.
Then you've got to prioritize and you got to say
what's important, What can we compromise, what can we do
to solve this challenge and come up with a solution,
(15:40):
and the document the shooting schedule is the place you're
going to go. Everything's going to feed off of that.
I mean, look at there could be other criteria obviously, right,
you know, depending on the situation, But for the most part,
that's what this is all about so setting up your
shooting schedule the right way to start with and being
able to maneuver and change it and adjust it is
(16:02):
the secret to staying on time and on budget on
an indie shoot. And so I like to do it
a certain way obviously, all right, you know, Just as
I said before, I'm good with spreadsheets, and I'm a
bit of a control freak. I admit that I can
handle a lot of balls in the air, and I
like to prioritize certain things in certain situations. So there
(16:23):
might be a situation while I'll prioritize an actor, there
might be a situation while to prioritize location or piece
of equipment. Depends on the situation. But I need to
have information in front of me quickly so that I
can maneuver and manipulate super quickly. And that's why I
do it on an Excel spreadsheet. Whatever you decide to do,
just make sure as an indie filmmaker that you number one,
(16:45):
can juggle, can stay flexible, can deal with issues, and
have the information at hand that you need. So whether
you're doing it on say a stock program, which is fine,
make sure you or somebody else around you and your
team knows how to use that program really well and
knows how to manipulate it or adjust it accordingly at
(17:05):
the speed that you would need to do it. If
you can do that, then you will be able to
stay on time and on budget, which is the secret
to finishing low budget indie films. It's also going to
hopefully make your investors happy that you stayed on time
and on budget. But the alternative is risk not finishing
your movie. And I've said it before, I can't tell
you it's a heartbreaking shame how many low budget indie
(17:28):
films do not actually get finished because of this reason.
Because people can't juggle and change and adjust in the
moment they panic, they lose a half a shooting day
or whatever the case may be, and they never get
it back, and they never get the money to get
it back. And it's a shame because the film otherwise
(17:49):
probably would have been great, but they just didn't have
the ability to juggle. Again. I could go on and
on and on about how to build a proper shooting schedule,
and how to do the script break down accurately, how
to set it up so that you have complete control,
and there's tons and tons of details but this isn't
this podcast. We're not going to go into those details,
(18:10):
so you have to take a masterclass. I would have
to put up all the documents and show you how
we do things and that type of thing. But I
think this was a good sort of overview of setting
up a shooting schedule and the importance of doing it
properly and being able to adjust it. So good luck,
it's not that overwhelming. It sounds a bit overwhelming. Good luck,
have fun with it. I'm sure you're going to be
great at it. I encourage all of my listeners to
(18:32):
send me questions if they're curious about certain topics or
they want more information on things that I've spoken about.
So my email address is Jdevererett at deveretmedia dot com.
It will be in the show notes, and feel free
to send in your questions and we will hopefully be
able to get to them and expand and give you
the answers.
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