The paperwork is not bureaucracy. It is the difference between a crew that knows where to be and a crew standing in a car park at 7am texting each other.
The minimum viable paperwork
For a weekend short, you need exactly five documents. Everything else is optional.
- Script breakdown — every scene listed with its cast, props, wardrobe, locations, and special requirements.
- Schedule — scenes grouped by location and by actor availability, not by script order.
- Call sheet — one per day, sent the night before.
- Budget — even if it is a single spreadsheet page.
- Signed releases — performers, locations, and anyone recognisable on camera.
What goes on a call sheet
Missing any of these produces a phone call at 6am:
- Date, day number, and general crew call time
- Location address that works in a mapping app, plus parking instructions and what to do when you arrive
- Nearest hospital address
- Weather and sunrise/sunset times
- Scene numbers shooting, in order, with page counts
- Cast list with individual call times, and who is picking whom up
- Crew list with call times and phone numbers
- Meal time
- Safety notes specific to the day
- Who to call if you are lost or late
Send it the night before. A call sheet delivered the morning of is not a call sheet.
Scheduling that survives contact with reality
- Group by location first, then by actor. Every company move costs you an hour minimum, usually two.
- Shoot the hardest scene when the crew is fresh, not at the end of the day when everyone is tired and the light is gone.
- Schedule 60–70% of what you think you can shoot. Every experienced producer plans this way and every first-timer refuses to.
- Identify the one scene the film cannot exist without, and shoot it first.
- Build in a contingency half-day. You will use it.
- Know your out time and honour it. A crew that trusts your schedule comes back.
Tools
Free
- A spreadsheet. Genuinely sufficient for a short. A shared spreadsheet plus a shared folder handles breakdown, schedule, budget, and contacts without a subscription.
- Celtx free tier — celtx.com — script plus basic breakdown.
- Shared cloud storage for releases, scanned and named by person.
Paid
- StudioBinder — studiobinder.com — breakdown, scheduling, call sheets, and shot lists in one place; call-sheet distribution and confirmation tracking is the genuinely time-saving feature.
Pricing changes; check the vendor page.
Data management on the day
This is where productions lose work permanently.
- Never format a card until the footage is verified in two places. Copy, verify by checksum where you can, then copy again.
- The 3-2-1 rule, adapted: three copies, two different drives, one that leaves the location with a different person.
- Label everything at the moment of capture. Card number, date, scene. Not later.
- Log as you go. A rough note of which takes were good, made on set, saves the editor days.
- Take a continuity photo at the end of every setup you might return to.
Post handoff
Give the editor: the footage, the audio, the sound report, the script, the shot log, and a list of anything that did not get shot. Give them the last item honestly and early — an editor who discovers a missing scene in week three has already cut around it wrong.
See Post-Production.
Templates in this repository
Production legal templates live under productionLegal/contracts/, organised by subject: labor/, location/, nudity/, and talent/. Ohio permit material is under productionLegal/permits/ohio/, including county-level packets. These are drafting starting points for attorney review.
Related
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