What Is a Day Out of Days? (DOOD Explained)

A day out of days (DOOD) is a grid of cast members against shoot days. Each cell shows whether that actor starts, works, is on hold, or finishes that day. It is built from the shooting schedule, and its job is to show you, before anyone signs a contract, how many days you are paying each actor for, and how many of those days they are not actually working.

What is a day out of days?

Take the shooting schedule, which is organized by day, and flip it so it is organized by actor. That is the DOOD. Down the left, every cast member, numbered as they are on the breakdown. Across the top, every shoot day. In each cell, a two-letter code saying what that actor is doing that day.

The report exists because actors are not paid per scene. They are contracted for a run of days between their first and last call, and on most contracts the days in between count whether the actor is on set or at home. The schedule hides that. The DOOD shows it.

How do you read the codes?

Five codes cover almost everything. Two more come up occasionally.

The one that matters most is H. A hold is a day the actor is yours but you are not using them. Under most union and many non-union agreements, that day is paid at the daily rate. Three holds for a lead is three day rates for nothing on screen.

A worked example

Here is the DOOD for the first three days of Nightfall, built from the same schedule used across our templates.

That is the whole use of the report: it turns a schedule into a cast cost, and shows which move saves money.

How do you build a day out of days?

From the schedule, never from the script. The script tells you who is in each scene; the schedule tells you which day each scene is shot. The DOOD needs the second.

1. List the cast down the left, by number, largest role first.
2. List the shoot days across the top with their dates.
3. For each scene on each day, mark every cast member in that scene with a W on that day.
4. Change each actor's first W to SW and last W to WF. A single W becomes SWF.
5. Every empty cell between an actor's SW and WF becomes an H.
6. Total the work days, hold days, and total days per row. The hold column is the one to stare at.

Our free DOOD template has the grid, the codes tab, and the totals set up:

What is the day out of days used for?

Four things, in rough order of how often they come up.

• Booking actors. The DOOD is what you send to an agent: “we need her from the 12th to the 14th, working the 12th and 14th.” The contract is written from it.
• Costing the cast. Total days × day rate, per actor. It is the only accurate way to get the cast line of the budget, because it includes the holds.
• Fixing the schedule. Every H is a question: can this actor's scenes be grouped so the hold disappears? Scheduling around your most expensive cast is normal and correct.
• Spotting fragile days. A column with every lead in it is a day that can't slip without a chain reaction. Plan a cover set for it.

Drop and pick up

Some agreements allow a drop-and-pickup: if an actor has a long enough gap between work days (often ten or more), you can end their contract and re-hire them later instead of paying the holds. Typically you get one drop per actor per production. On the DOOD, mark the drop with WF and the pickup with a new SW, and note it. Whether it is allowed, and for how long a gap, depends on the contract, so check before you plan around it.

Common mistakes

What comes next

The DOOD is only as good as the schedule under it. If yours is showing a lot of holds, the fix is upstream: our guide to creating a shooting schedule covers grouping by location and cast, and the schedule template uses the same Nightfall days you saw above.