How to Make a Call Sheet (With Example)

To make a call sheet, you take one shoot day from the schedule and turn it into a single page that tells every person where to be, at what time, and what is being shot. It has four sections: production info and logistics at the top, cast calls, crew calls, and the day's scenes in shooting order. Build it the afternoon before, get the 1st AD to sign off, and send it by early evening.

What goes on a call sheet?

Everything one person needs to turn up on time and ready, and nothing else. The test for every line is: does someone on the crew need this tomorrow morning? If yes, it goes on. If it is for the producer's records, it goes somewhere else.

Step 1: Start from the schedule, not from yesterday's sheet

Open the shooting schedule at tomorrow's day. That day's scenes, in its order, with their cast and page counts, are the spine of the sheet. Copying yesterday's call sheet and editing it is faster and is how wrong scene numbers and a cast member who wrapped last week end up on today's page.

If you broke the script down and scheduled it properly, this step is a copy. If you did not, this is the moment it catches up with you. Our scheduling guide and schedule template are the upstream fix.

Step 2: Fill in the production info and logistics

The top block. Fill it in once per shoot day. Most of it is stable (title, director, producer, 1st AD), and three things change every day: the date and day number, the location block, and the weather and light.

Three lines deserve more care than they usually get.

• Nearest hospital. Name, address, distance, drive time. Look it up for every location; do not carry it over from the last one. This is the line that matters on the worst day.
• Parking and load-in. Where the trucks go, where the crew park, where not to park. Half of the late arrivals on a shoot are people circling a block.
• Sunrise and sunset. For any exterior, the schedule is really built around these two times. Put them where the DP and the 1st AD can see them without asking.

Step 3: Set the cast calls, working backwards

Start from the shooting call, the time the first shot is planned to roll, and work backwards for each actor. Set call is when they must be on set, camera-ready. Before that comes makeup and wardrobe. Before that, pickup or arrival. The numbers go in that order on the sheet, earliest on the left.

Use cast numbers, not just names. They are the same numbers as the breakdown and the day out of days, so anyone can cross-reference without guessing which Maya you mean.

Step 4: Set the crew calls

Most of the crew shares the general call, which is typically 60 to 90 minutes before shooting call. List every department anyway, with the general call next to each, so nobody has to ask. Then mark the exceptions explicitly.

• Early calls: the gaffer and grips pre-lighting a set, the location manager opening the building, catering.
• Late calls: a sound mixer not needed until after a silent pickup, a second unit arriving at noon.
• Company moves: if the unit changes location mid-day, say when and where, and who travels with what.

Step 5: List the scenes in shooting order

Not script order. Shooting order, as the schedule has it, with scene number, INT/EXT, day/night, set, a one-line description, the cast numbers, and the page count. Total the pages at the bottom. If the total is over about six, the day is ambitious and everyone reading the sheet should know that going in.

Add an advance schedule line or two at the bottom: what is being shot the day after. It lets departments prep, and it is how the wardrobe supervisor knows to bring the grey hoodie tomorrow.

Step 6: Check it, sign it off, send it

1. Read every cast line against the scenes list. Anyone in a scene must have a call. Anyone with a call must be in a scene (or have a reason on the sheet).
2. Check the date, the day number, and the location against the schedule. These are the three fields most often copied from the wrong day.
3. Check the hospital line against the location.
4. 1st AD approves. On a small shoot, the producer reads it too.
5. Send by 18:00 as a PDF, plus a text to department heads confirming it went out. Put the date and day number in the filename.

What if something changes after it goes out?

Reissue it. Mark it clearly as a revision at the top, with the issue time and a one-line summary of what changed (“REVISED 21:10: Sc. 12A moved to Day 4, Cook released”). Then text the people affected. An email that says “see attached” at 21:10 is not a notification.

Common mistakes

• Sending it late. 18:00 is the target. 20:00 is the limit. Later than that and the call sheet is no longer planning a day, it is announcing one.
• One call time for everyone. A 06:30 general call for an actor in the 15:00 scene is a paid day of waiting and a tired performance.
• Set call that is really an arrival time. If the sheet says 08:00 and the actor walks in at 08:00, you are in makeup until 09:00.
• Last week's hospital. Copied forward from a location twelve miles away.
• No advance schedule. Departments can't prep for tomorrow if tomorrow is a surprise.

What comes next

The call sheet is the plan for the day. The daily production report is what actually happened. Read the two side by side and you know whether the schedule is real. For the blank sheet, use our free call sheet template; for the concepts, What Is a Call Sheet? walks through a finished example.