Stripboard

In practice

Scheduling starts from the breakdown. Each scene becomes a strip, and the assistant director reorders the strips so scenes that share a location, cast, or time of day shoot together. The story order in the script and the shooting order on the board are rarely the same.

Strips are traditionally color-coded for interior or exterior and day or night, so a scheduler can read the board at a glance. Today the board usually lives in scheduling software, and the same arrangement prints as a one-line schedule: a compact list of each shoot day's strips.

Writers shape the board more than they think. A location renamed between scenes, a time of day left vague, or an extra character slipped into action all change strips. Consistent scene headings and cue spellings are what let a board be built from the script without guesswork.

Two scenes, one strip group

Scene 12 and scene 47 are thirty-five scenes apart in the story, but they share a set, a time of day and an actor. On the stripboard their strips sit next to each other on the same shoot day, so the crew lights the diner once. Keeping both headings spelled the same is what lets the board find them.

What is a stripboard?

A stripboard is the working form of a film or TV shooting schedule. Each scene in the script becomes one strip, and the strips are arranged into shoot days in the order the production will film them.

Each strip carries the scene number, the set, interior or exterior, day or night, the scene's length in eighths of a page and the cast members who appear in it, usually by number.

The assistant director builds the board from the script breakdown and keeps changing it as locations, actors' availability and the budget change.

Stripboard colors

Strips are traditionally colored by interior or exterior and day or night, so a scheduler can see the shape of each day at a glance. A common scheme is white for interior day, yellow for exterior day, blue for interior night and green for exterior night.

Day breaks are marked with a black strip between days, and banners mark things like a company move to a new location or a holiday.

Productions vary, and scheduling software lets the assistant director change the scheme, so read the legend on the board you are given rather than assuming the colors.

How a stripboard is built

Scheduling starts with the breakdown: someone reads the script and tags every scene's cast, props, vehicles, effects and locations. Each scene's tags become a strip.

The assistant director then groups strips by what they share. Scenes on the same set shoot together, night scenes are grouped so the crew is not switching back and forth, and an actor with few scenes is scheduled into as few days as possible.

Other limits follow: when a location is available, rules on working hours for children and turnaround between days, weather and the order of the story for scenes where an actor's look changes.

Stripboard vs one-line schedule

The stripboard is the arrangement; the reports are views of it. The one-line schedule, or one-liner, lists each shoot day's strips as short lines, and the full shooting schedule adds every scene's cast, props and other breakdown elements.

The day-out-of-days report reads the same board from the actors' side and shows which days each cast member works. Call sheets for each day are built from the day's strips.

Physical boards of cardboard strips in a folding frame were the standard for decades. Today the board usually lives in scheduling software, but the strips and colors work the same way.

What writers should know about stripboards

Writers do not build the board, but the script decides what goes on it. Every scene heading becomes a strip, so a set called ROSIE'S DINER in one scene and THE DINER in another can be scheduled as two locations.

A vague time of day such as LATER makes the assistant director guess whether a scene is day or night. A new speaking character added in action adds a cast member to a strip and sometimes a day to someone's contract.

Consistent scene headings, times of day and character names are what let a production schedule your script without calling you to ask. Inkwell's free script breakdown tool shows each of your scenes as a strip so you can check how your pages will read on a board.