A screenplay tells a story. A shooting schedule explains how that story will be filmed. A production budget reveals what it will cost. Between those three documents lies one of the most important parts of filmmaking: pre-production. A script may describe a conversation in a crowded restaurant, a car chase through downtown streets, or a […]
The assistant director sends out a revised shooting schedule on Monday. By Tuesday morning, the producer has suggested several changes, the production manager has identified a location conflict, and the director wants to move an important scene to another day. Three people now have three slightly different versions of the same schedule. Meanwhile, the line […]
For years, film scheduling and budgeting software lived on desktop computers. Producers built budgets, assistant directors organized stripboards, and production managers generated reports using applications installed on their Mac or Windows machines. Projects were saved as files, shared when necessary, and updated by the person responsible for maintaining the schedule or budget. Today, filmmakers have […]
A shooting schedule and a film budget may look like two completely different documents, but they describe the same production from two different directions. The schedule asks: What are we shooting, when are we shooting it, and what will we need? The budget asks: What will that plan cost? That is why film scheduling and […]
Film scheduling used to be tied to a desk, a machine, and a carefully guarded file. The assistant director or producer would build the schedule, export a PDF, email it to the team, revise it, export it again, and hope everyone was looking at the latest version instead of some fossilized attachment from three revisions […]
