Props & Elements: Costing by Shoot Day

In this episode, we will convert our script breakdown tags for Dead Tired into trackable production elements and manage our asset list.

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Step 1: Promote Every Tag to an Element

A breakdown tag is a note on a page. To give something a rate, attach a supplier, and get it into the budget, it has to become an element.

1. In the Scenes Panel, select Scene 12.
2. In the right breakdown categories panel under Props, right-click the drone tag chip.
3. Select Promote to Element.
4. Do the same for the other three: blender, ketchup, and folding chairs.

Not every tag needs promoting. A note that costs nothing can stay a note. Anything you will pay for, hire, or have to remember to bring should be an element.

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Step 2: The Elements Page

1. Click Script in the top navigation bar.
2. Select Elements in the left sidebar.

This is the production’s asset register, and all four are here. The props master works from this list, and so does your budget.

3. Click the drone element to open its details.

Its scene tags show a single scene, Scene 12, because that is the only place we tagged it.

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Step 3: Give It a Rate, and Read Its Usage Days

1. In the Costing section, enter 400 in the Rate field.

Now look at the two figures beside it: Usage Days reads 1, and Est. Total reads $400.

Usage Days is a count of shoot days, not of scenes. A rental house charges for the days you have the drone, not for the number of scenes it turns up in, so FilmBase multiplies your rate by days on set.

$400 × 1 usage day = $400.

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Step 4: The Magic Sheet

1. Select Magic Sheet in the left sidebar under Script.

Everything you have tagged appears as one grid: elements down the left, scenes across the top, and a tick wherever an element appears. The breakdown shows one scene at a time; this shows the whole script at once.

Telling tags and elements apart

The icon beside each name is the thing to read:

• Cube icon: promoted, and now a tracked production element. All four of yours have one.
• Plus icon: still only a breakdown tag. Click it to promote it, or right-click the row and choose Promote to Production Element.

Rather than hunting through scenes for what you have missed, you read down the column of icons.

Change what an element is used in

Look at the drone row: one tick, under Scene 12, and nothing else. But the drone is also in Scene 14, where Dev climbs the ladder to fetch it out of the oak, and in Scene 23 at the park. We only auto-tagged one scene in Episode 3, so those two are sitting there untagged.

2. Click the empty cells under Scene 14 and Scene 23.

Two clicks, and the drone is tagged everywhere it actually appears. Doing that in the breakdown would have meant opening two more scenes and finding the word in each.

Every one of those scenes already sits on a shoot day, so each tick also changes how many days the drone is needed for — which is what it costs you.

Scenes or story days

The toggle at the top switches the columns between Scenes and Story Days. A story day column stands for every scene in that day, so ticking something once tags it into all of them. That is the behaviour wardrobe and continuity want: a costume worn for a whole story day belongs in every scene of it, and ticking one box beats ticking six.

There is also a scene filter that combines scene numbers, ranges, and heading text, so 1-5, 8, INT narrows the grid to exactly those columns.

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Step 5: Watch the Cost Follow

1. Select Elements in the left sidebar and open the drone again.

Usage Days now reads 2, and Est. Total has gone from $400 to $800.

Two, not three, even though you added two scenes. Scenes 12 and 14 are both in the woods, and the optimizer put them on the same shoot day back in Episode 2, so between them they cost one day of drone hire. Scene 23 at the park is the second day.

The rate is still $400. Only the usage day count changed, and the total followed it.

In Episode 7 you will import this drone into the budget, and it will arrive carrying both numbers.