Enhance Production Efficiency: The Power of a Call Sheet

Overview

A call sheet is one of the most important tools for filmmaking organization, and it can make or break your live stream as well. 

This resource is an informational sheet that is easily distributable to your teammates involved in running your show. In our list, you'll learn how this resource will help you improve organization, vision, efficiency, professionalism, and emergency preparedness for your production. Feel free to use this template and make it your own. Let's start off with the reasons why you might want a call sheet. 

Importance

A call sheet allows you to centralize all of the information about your shoot into one sheet, right? It's literally getting everybody on the same page. So this is a very, very powerful way to connect everybody and give them all the information they need. It's very frustrating to have multiple people ask you the same questions and try to ask you for different logistics. So a call sheet centralizes that information and makes it easy for you to share and for everybody to get the exact information that they need. 

The other great thing about a call sheet is it becomes repeatable. It's a system that you can do for every type of shoot that you have. That way people know where to look if they're looking for a specific gear note or if they're looking for the call time or if they're looking to know what time lunch might be at or if they're looking for the nearest hospital. These are all things that become repeatable and remembered by your crew so they know where to look to get the answer faster. So let's kind of work our way from the top of my call sheet down to the bottom and we'll talk about each element and what it might look like. 

Top section

So the very top insert event name. This is often the name of a show or an event. So if it's an all hands meeting, you can put the client name there. You can put the company name there. These are all things that can help beef out this top line. 

Now you'll see in the top left, I have the corporate streams logo. You can replace that with your own logo or even the company logo that you're working with or for. 

So in the blue box top left corner, we have the producer. So you can insert the name and the phone number. It's usually nice to list a phone number at the top of the call sheet. So this is usually the first person, people call when they have extra questions that may not be mentioned in the call sheet or they might need something specific answered. 

Just below that is the TD or the EIC. Now a technical director or an engineer in charge usually pertains to live show environments. This is something that we've added to the call sheet and this might need to be replaced with an assistant director or another person who has a wide range of knowledge relating to your show. So feel free to replace that with a proper title as needed or you can insert somebody's name just below that as well.

Moving to the top center box, we have appropriate logos. So this might be great if you want to put your client logos or any other sponsor logos. This is also nice to send to your sponsors because they see the sheet and they see that they're included in something cool like this.

And then in the top right we have the date of the production, the weather, sunrise and sunset. These are all things that you may think of as extraneous information but the nice thing is when you have this information that allows your crew to dress appropriately and quickly see these details.

Then we have location. So the address can be inserted here. This is very important so your crew knows where to go and your people know where to meet. And then sometimes you might have crew parking separate from your address. So if you have that you can also note that as well. If it's in the same spot you can just write the same as location.

Your call time. This is probably the most important thing. You need people to know when to show up. Some people might have individual call times and may not all be the same. But generally speaking your call time here is listed as when the majority of your crew is coming to set. Some people have a pre-call which means they come in before other people are expected to be there. But that's listed in the individual call times below.

Nearest hospital can literally save somebody's life. We want to make sure that we know what to do in an emergency situation. And that comes from my assistant directing background being on films and TV shows. So this section is very crucial for you to know how to get somebody safely to the nearest hospital especially in a dire situation where time is of the essence.

On-site contact, this on site person is someone who might usually has keys that can unlock doors or get us where we need. And then if there's any general notes for the day it'll be in that bottom center section of this first area.

Craft service is usually snacks not necessarily lunch. So we can say whether they're not provided or provided so the crew can get that heads up. And then catering is usually a full meal that's provided by the production company. I would say if you're shooting for more than six hours and you're not providing some sort of lunch that's not the best practice. I would really encourage you after six hours of work to provide some sort of meal for your team. I know on bigger productions we do what's called a walk away. An hour is offered so that way your team can have time to go find where they want to eat and then come back. This is not always feasible at each location. And frankly it's easier for you to save time on the day if you just provide the meal. So if you're able to do that I would highly encourage it.

Daily Itinerary

So moving to the middle of this blue section of the call sheet. We've relabeled this to daily itinerary. This is typically a list of scenes that you shoot on the day. It gives you the page count, the title of the scenes and the cast that are needed to be a part of that scene. We're replicating this but changing it slightly differently because instead of shooting scripts we're shooting a live event. So we've modified this for a live atmosphere and a live environment. Depending on your needs you can change this back to the way you would like to have it. But essentially this is a mini schedule of the day. 

So the start time, the description of what's happening during that time frame, the talent that's needed, the total time it might take and any notes that you might have, those can all be listed in the blue section. 

Now at the bottom you'll have to manually add up the time from start to finish. And this will tell you how long the full day is going to be based on the time that you've allotted for each section for live production. You may not have that flexibility. You might have a rigid schedule.

Talent/ VIP List

Now just below that is your talent or VIP list. This is great to list people off. Traditionally in television and film each person is given a cast number or a talent number. And this is a great shortcut for the itinerary. So instead of listing everybody's full name above we list their cast number for your talent sheet. We have their name, their role, their call time which is the time that you expect them to be there and any notes that you might have about that person. Sometimes we'll have notes about who's driving or if they're coming from out of town or if they need to remember to bring something we usually put those notes in that section. 

Departmental Notes

Then we have departmental notes. Set dressing, lighting, camera, transportation, wardrobe, audio, graphics and special calls. These are all detailed notes that are relevant to those individual parts of the whole.

Production Crew

On the edge of our list we have your production crew. So this is a list of people and their titles on who's helping with what. You'll see in our list on this call sheet we have a producer, a TD, audio technician, camera operator, prompter operator, lighting person, production assistant and a makeup artist.

Now there is one little trick that we also like to use and that is a link out to our different staff positions and our expectations for them. So you'll see on this call sheet each one of these names, producer etc. has a link to a description which talks about what those roles and responsibilities are for that person. This helps us to set up expectations for our crew and our team so that they know what we expect of them when they come on a corporate stream set. In your production crew it's helpful to have a phone number, an email: we use Discord for our instant messaging. So those are things you can consider adding here as well. 

Face Sheet

So moving our way down we have our faces sheet. So this is the name of the person and a photo of them. This is super helpful so that your makeup artists or the rest of your crew can know who is who and then that way they can put a face to a name. The crew typically isn't as familiar with your team and so having this face sheet really helps expedite that process. 

Calls

And then finally we have our calls. I discussed earlier some people will have a pre-call which means they're there before the crew to set stuff up. So those can all be listed individually as well.

Conclusion

So there you have it that is our call sheet from start to finish the different elements and why they're important to fill out. So did we miss anything? Please feel free to leave us some comments if we did and let us know how you'll be utilizing this call sheet. Having a call sheet with all the information in one spot saves a lot of time and energy and back and forth with your team. Everybody understands what you're trying to do, what the schedule of the day is going to look like and frankly how your day is going to run. Putting in the effort to make your call sheet as clear as possible will go a long way in production. It will also give your team confidence that you know what you're doing and they know what to do to help support you.