Search for “shooting schedule” and most of what comes back is built for feature films, with stripboards and scene numbers. A production company’s shoot day looks different.
It’s ten videos for one client in a single day: five modules of an online course, four vertical cuts for social, an interview with one of the client’s customers and B-roll at a second location.
When that schedule is wrong, the last blocks of the day pay for it. The B-roll gets shot in a rush at six, or becomes a second shoot day nobody budgeted for.
In short
- Estimate each video from its script: spoken words divided by about 140 words a minute.
- Schedule recording at two to four times the final length, with a five-minute floor for short pieces.
- Group videos by set, put breaks and moves on the schedule with a time, and end half an hour before the real limit.
- Note when each block really ends, and send one live schedule to the crew and the client.
Start from the script
The schedule needs durations, and the most honest source for those is the script. Count the words someone will say out loud, leaving out lower thirds and camera directions, and divide by a reading speed.
140 words a minute is a sensible starting point for a calm read to camera. A 700-word course module comes out at five minutes, a 105-word social cut at 45 seconds.
Before the shoot, time your presenter on one paragraph and correct the number. A product specialist who talks fast and a CEO who weighs every word won’t land on the same rate.
If a script isn’t approved yet, get it signed off before the shoot day or give the block a generous estimate. Rewrites on set are one of the usual reasons a day of short videos runs late.
Why recording takes two to four times the final length
A five-minute video doesn’t get shot in five minutes. The first take is a warm-up, the line with the product name trips the presenter twice, and every mistake means going back to one.
Then there’s the safety take. Multiply the final length by a pace factor and you get a recording time you can schedule.
- Twice the final length works for an experienced presenter on a teleprompter, in a single frame, with a script nobody will touch.
- Three times is a safer default for most corporate and course shoots.
- Four is for someone who has never been on camera, for scripts full of product names and figures, or for a day when the client gives notes between takes.
The multiplier breaks down at both ends. A 45-second social cut at 3× gets two minutes and fifteen seconds, barely enough to slate and reframe, so give short pieces a floor of five minutes each. An interview has no script to count, so plan it by the number of questions.
Breaks, setup changes and location moves
Group the videos by set, since the client’s list is almost never the best shooting order. Every relight, camera move or change of background costs 15 to 30 minutes with nobody recording.
If three of the ten videos are standing shots against another wall, shoot them back to back, wherever they sit on the list. Wardrobe works the same way.
Open with a short, easy piece, so the presenter warms up on something low stakes and reaches the important video already loose.
Breaks go on the schedule with a time, like any other block. A fifteen-minute break written in at 10:15 happens. One planned for “whenever we can” turns into the presenter losing their voice at 11:30.
A location move costs more than the drive. The crew packs, loads, travels, unloads and lights again, so a 10-minute drive becomes a 40-minute block, and it fits best right after lunch.
Crew and talent arrival get blocks too, since lighting an interview takes most of an hour and the presenter needs makeup and a mic before the first take.
An example shoot day
Here’s that day at 3× pace, starting at 8:00. Final lengths come from the word count at 140 words a minute, and recording time is three times that unless the row says otherwise.
| Time | Block | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 08:00 | Crew arrival: unload, light set A, sound | 60 min |
| 09:00 | Presenter arrives: makeup, mic, read-through | 30 min |
| 09:30 | Course module 1 (700 words, 5:00 video) | 15 min |
| 09:45 | Course module 2 (840 words, 6:00 video) | 18 min |
| 10:03 | Course module 3 (560 words, 4:00 video) | 12 min |
| 10:15 | Break | 15 min |
| 10:30 | Course module 4 (980 words, 7:00 video) | 21 min |
| 10:51 | Course module 5 (420 words, 3:00 video) | 9 min |
| 11:00 | Setup change to set B (standing, vertical frame) | 30 min |
| 11:30 | Four social cuts (45 s each, 5-minute floor) | 20 min |
| 11:50 | Lunch | 60 min |
| 12:50 | Pack and move to the warehouse | 40 min |
| 13:30 | Customer interview | 45 min |
| 14:15 | Warehouse B-roll | 45 min |
| 15:00 | Wrap and load out | 30 min |
| 15:30 | End of day |
The five modules add up to 25 minutes of finished video and 75 minutes of recording. Setups, breaks and the move take more of the day than the modules do.
The plan also ends at 15:30 even though the warehouse closes at 16:00, which leaves half an hour for whatever goes wrong.
Track the actual time as you shoot
The schedule is an estimate, so someone on set, usually the producer or an assistant, should note when each block really ends. That’s what tells you at 10:15 that the day is slipping, while there’s still something to do about it.
Say module 2 runs long and ends at 10:15 instead of 10:03. Everything after it moves 12 minutes: the break starts at 10:27, lunch at 12:02 and the day ends at 15:42. That still fits before 16:00, but the buffer is down to 18 minutes before the morning is over.
Decide while the options are cheap. Cut the break to five minutes, move the social cuts to another day, or ask the client which piece can be simpler.
And check the pace. If the first modules are coming in closer to 4× than 3×, the rest will probably follow, so re-estimate the afternoon at that pace.
One schedule for the crew and the client
On most shoot days the schedule exists twice, as the spreadsheet sent the night before and as the version in the producer’s head. By mid-morning neither matches the set, and after lunch the client’s marketing team turns up for the interview at the time in the email.
The fix is one schedule that everyone opens and that changes when the day does. Send the link the day before to the crew, the presenter and the client contact, with the address, each person’s call time and who on the client side approves takes.
A calendar invite with the start time, the link and a video call for the client puts the day where people look anyway. Once the footage is cut, sending it to the client for review has a checklist of its own.
How this works in RecReview
In RecReview, a production plan is one shoot day, with a date, start time, location, crew, pace and a list of blocks. Each video block is the video’s task, script included.
When you add a video that has a script, RecReview counts the spoken words, after stripping lower thirds, camera directions and scene headings, and estimates the final length at 140 words a minute.
The pace applies to the whole plan: Optimistic 2×, Normal 2.5×, Realistic 3× (the default) or Conservative 4×. Recording time is the estimated final length times the pace, and changing the pace recalculates every video block.
You can type over any duration by hand, which is how an interview gets a realistic block. Arrivals, breaks, setup changes and wrap are blocks too, each with a default length you can change.
On the day, ticking a block off records when it ended. The block shows how many minutes ahead or behind it ran, and every later block moves to match. If someone ticked it late, you correct the actual time.
The plan’s share link opens without a login and can have a password. The page updates live as blocks are ticked off, shows the projected end of the day and marks the block being recorded when the script is on the teleprompter.
With Google Calendar connected, the plan becomes an event that runs to the planned end of the day, with a Meet link, the crew invited, the client’s main contact selected by default and the live link in the description.
For a client you shoot every week, duplicating last week’s plan to a new date copies the blocks with nothing ticked.
