How to Make a Call Sheet & Script Sides

In this episode we build the call sheet for Day One of Dead Tired card by card, then export the script sides with it. Auto-fill brings in everything the project already knows, which is most of the page. The timings it cannot know, so those you type. For the wider picture, see the call sheet generator.

Every time box on this page runs on a 24-hour clock, and you type the digits without the colon: type 700 and it formats to 07:00.

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Step 1: Auto-Fill Day One

1. Click Schedule in the top navigation bar.
2. Select Call Sheets in the left sidebar.
3. Click Shoot Days in the toolbar and select Day 1.
4. Click Auto-fill in the toolbar.

Every field that lands comes from something you already built:

• Scene running order — from the board you optimized in Episode 2.
• Cast list and the artists playing them — from the contacts you made in Episode 5.
• Location addresses and map links — from the locations you pinned in Episode 10.
• Live weather forecast — fetched using that location’s GPS coordinates.
• Background and extras — from the tags you added in Episode 3.

Two cards arrive as a starting point rather than an answer. Department Calls comes in with eight departments on the same time, and Key Personnel comes in with seven roles and no names against them.

Run Auto-fill before you type, not after. It rebuilds the running order, the cast, the locations and the extras every time, so any times you entered in those four go with them. The same applies to Refresh on the Cast card.

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Step 2: Set the Four Times That Run the Day

Type into the three faint fields in the header first. They belong to the project rather than the day, so every call sheet carries them.

• Production Company: Night Owl Pictures
• Production Name: Dead Tired
• Production Hotline: (323) 555-0148

Then the four chips under the divider:

• Crew Call: 07:00
• First meal (BREAKFAST): 06:30 — half an hour ahead of the crew call
• Second meal (LUNCH): 13:00 — six hours after the call
• Est. Wrap: 19:00

The two meal labels are dropdowns offering BREAKFAST, BRUNCH, LUNCH, DINNER and SUPPER, so a night shoot can call the first meal dinner. The crew call and wrap labels are text you can type over, and right-clicking any of the four opens a colour picker for its background, label and time.

If you set a call and wrap time on the day header on the stripboard, Auto-fill brings those two in for you.

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Step 3: Add the Rest of the Day’s Times

There is no Shooting Call field on the sheet. Every time other than the four above is added in the Additional Times card.

1. Click Add Time, type SHOOTING CALL as the label and 08:00 as the time.
2. Click Add Time again, type TAIL LIGHTS and 20:00.

Unit security, catering call, craft on set and a company move all belong here too. These carry forward to the next day, and on the exported PDF they are sorted into one chronological strip together with the crew call, the meals and the wrap.

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Step 4: Name Your Key Personnel

Each row is a role and a contact, and both fields autocomplete: the contact against your address book, the role against the roles already on those contacts. Match the role on the row to the role your contact carries, or you end up with the same job under two names.

Row	Change the role to	Contact
Director	(leave)	Clark Kent
DOP	Director of Photography	Matt Murdock
1st AD	First Assistant Director	Hal Jordan
Line Producer	Producer	Carol Danvers

Remove 2nd AD, Production Manager and Script Supervisor with the X on the row, since nobody on this short does those jobs. Then click Add for the rest of the crew: Gaffer Thor Odinson, Key Grip Logan, Makeup Artist Selina Kyle, Art Director Bruce Banner, Production Sound Mixer Arthur Curry and Boom Operator Barbara Gordon.

Type a name that is not in your contacts and FilmBase creates it, marks it as crew and assigns it that role. Everyone you name here carries forward onto every following day.

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Step 5: Fill In Base Camp, Parking and the Hospital

The location arrived with its name, address and map link from Episode 10. The five boxes underneath are the ones that decide whether the day starts on time.

• Base Camp: Hillhurst north end, 1950 Hillhurst Ave
• Tech Parking: Unit parking, Hillhurst Ave, east side
• Crew Parking: Kingswell lot, 1800 Kingswell Ave
• Nearest Hospital: Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, 4867 Sunset Blvd
• Location Contact: Alfred Pennyworth, (323) 555-0173, alfred@hillhursthomes.com

Typing them here fills them in for this one day. The same fields sit on the location itself on the Locations page, and anything you enter there arrives on every call sheet that shoots at that address, so fill it in there for somewhere you are at all week.

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Step 6: Adjust Department Calls

Auto-fill puts every department on the general crew call. The departments that have to be ready by the crew call need to be there before it.

1. Change HMU to 06:30, since hair and makeup have the lead in the chair before anyone is on set.
2. Click Add, type Catering and 06:00, because they are cooking a breakfast due at 06:30.

Department names are editable, the X removes a chip, and a department with no time against it does not print at all.

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Step 7: Check the Weather and Fill In Emergency Contacts

The Weather card fills during Auto-fill from the GPS pin on the first location and the real date of the shoot day. That needs both a pin on the location and an internet connection; without either, every field is still yours to type. Fetch beside the section header pulls a fresh reading, which is worth doing the evening before rather than the week before.

Then the six emergency lines:

• Emergency: 911
• Fire: 911
• Police: LAPD Northeast Division, (323) 555-0155
• Hospital phone: (323) 361-2300
• Medic: pick Logan from the autocomplete
• Security: leave empty

Nobody in the demo pack is a full-time medic, which is normal on a five-day short: the job goes to whoever holds the first aid certificate. Picking an existing contact fills the phone number from their contact card and adds the Medic role to them alongside their own.

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Step 8: Set ETAs on the Running Order

The running order came off the board in shooting order, with the scene number, pages in eighths, interior or exterior, day or night, the set and description, cast numbers and story day. Any banner strip from the board arrives as its own shaded row.

Two columns are yours:

1. Type 08:15 into ETA on the first scene, and 10:30 on the second.
2. Type Practical lamps on dimmers into that scene’s Notes.

What the crew need to know about one scene belongs on that scene’s line, not in a paragraph at the bottom nobody reads.

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Step 9: Enter Cast Call Times

Auto-fill brought in the characters in today’s scenes with their cast number and the artist playing them. A character with nobody linked reads TBC under ARTIST, which is your reminder to go and cast it. Every time column is empty.

Fill in Maya’s row, played by Wanda Maximoff:

Column	Value	What it is
SWF	SW	Start, work, finish marker, as on the Day out of Days
P/U	06:00	Pickup, when the driver collects her
ARR	06:45	Arrival at base camp
CALL	07:00	Her call time
MEAL	13:00	When she eats, with the unit
COST	07:05	Costume
M/U	07:20	Makeup
HAIR	07:40	Hair
READY	07:50	Finished and dressed
SET	07:55	Wanted on set, ahead of the 08:00 shooting call

Work backwards from the SET time for everyone else on the day.

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Step 10: Set Background, Notes and the Optional Cards

Background / Extras arrived from your breakdown tags with an ID, a description and the scenes. FilmBase cannot know how many there are, so set QTY to 6 for the shoppers, then 07:30 in CALL, 07:45 in COST, 08:00 in HMU and 08:30 in SET.

Notes is the free text block for anything the whole crew needs before they arrive:

No parking on Hillhurst before 07:00. Residential street, keep noise down until 08:00.

Three cards are toggles or additions:

• Driver Assignments — who rides with whom, from the Drivers page, which this series does not cover. It is also where the P/U and ARR times on the cast rows come from once you have set up runs there.
• Custom Fields — click Add Field, type WEATHER COVER and Gran's Kitchen interiors. Right-click the chip to set what it holds: text, time, phone, email, number, url, date or a contact.
• Advance Schedule — switch it on and tomorrow’s scenes appear on today’s sheet.

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Step 11: Export Call Sheet + Script Sides PDF

1. Click Save, then Export in the toolbar.
2. Select Call Sheet + Sides, which is what most productions send, so the crew get one attachment instead of two.
3. Under Page Layout, set Paper Size to Letter.
4. Under Sides Options, switch on Include previous scene heading, leave the header and footer empty for the defaults, and set Scene order to Shooting order.
5. Leave all five Meta Paragraphs off, since sides go to the floor and the floor wants the scene.
6. Scroll the preview panel to check the sheet, then click Export and select your Dead Tired project folder.

FilmBase trims the screenplay to the exact pages scheduled for that shoot day, which used to mean opening Final Draft and saving a separate script.

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What Day Two Inherits

Open Day 2 and run Auto-fill, and it arrives with your key personnel and their names, your department calls at the times you set, your additional times and your custom fields, all copied from Day One.

What it does not copy are the times that belong to the day: the crew call, the meals, the wrap and every cast time are yours to set again. Day One is the sheet you build. Every day after it is the sheet you adjust.

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Day One of Dead Tired now has a complete call sheet, with the sides exported alongside it. That is the production office work covered: schedule, breakdown, budget, actuals, locations and call sheet.

The next two episodes are the director’s and the DOP’s, starting with the script editor.