A Production Schedule is usually done pior to  budgeting, in order to determine the length of the shoot as this impacts the budget directly more than any other element. In other words, the more days and weeks you need to complete the film the higher the budget.

To arrive at a schedule the Line Producer or UPM (budget preparer) must first “breakdown” all the elements of the script as best he can with the information that is in the script, such as Props, Vehicles, FX etc. The most important breakdown is the CAST. This is called the “CAST Day Out Of Days” (DOOD) and shows how many days or weeks out of the total shoot days that each “character” (actor) will be required to work. From this the budget preparer can determine the total cost of the cast. Once the breakdown is done the preparer will then arrange the scenes into a schedule that will give the least amount of work weeks required for the most expensive cast members and also how many days it will take to film the script.

This is actually a longer process than budgeting a movie and in the end will generate a full shooting schedule in addition to dozens of other accompanying documents that will be needed at some point.

My suggestion to any Writer or Producer needing a budget is to hire me also to do a Full Schedule if they consider that the movie will cost over $3,000,000. Reason being is that anything under $3M can only buy a certain number of weeks of shooting anyway, but up from that number then many more weeks will be needed and to complete a proper budget that number needs to be known and it affects ALL costs from Wardrobe to Cast to Locations etc.

Once you contact me we can discuss whether this a schedule is needed and of course the rate will be determined by the length of the script since every page will be broken down.

Scheduling Services will include:
Full Schedule
One Liner
Strip Board (colored)
all DOODs
Cast List
Location List
MASTER Shooting Script
(also Scene numbering the script, if not done & breaking scenes out of scenes as part of the overall procedure – thus giving you a MASTER Shooting Script)

hope to hear from you soon and please feel free to call me with any questions

Gary A. Lowe