What is a run of day? (with example)
A run of day is the timed schedule for a shoot - crew call to wrap, laid out against real clock times instead of vague blocks like "morning" and "afternoon". It's the part of a call sheet everyone actually reads first, and the part most people write worst, usually at 11pm the night before with too much optimism about how fast rigging goes.
What a run of day actually contains
Strip it down and a good run of day has five kinds of entry, always attached to a real time, not a rough order:
- Crew call - when the crew arrives and starts unloading.
- Rig and setup - lighting, camera position, audio, get-in for the first shot.
- Shooting blocks - each thing you're actually filming, in the order you'll shoot it (not necessarily the order it appears in the edit).
- Breaks - lunch at a fixed time, plus any pickups (talent arriving late, product delivery, a client call).
- De-rig and wrap - packing down and the time the crew is actually released, which is not the same as the last shot finishing.
The whole point is that anyone on the shoot - crew, client, talent - can look at one line and know exactly where they need to be and when, without asking.
Run of day vs call sheet
These get used interchangeably and shouldn't be. The run of day is the schedule. The call sheet is the bigger document the run of day sits inside, alongside location and parking, contacts, kit and access notes, weather, and safety information. Every call sheet has a run of day in it; not every run of day needs the rest of a call sheet around it - you might sketch one out during a recce long before you know who's on the crew list.
Worked example: a one-day brand shoot
Here's a realistic run of day for a two-person crew shooting a half-day product and lifestyle brief for a client, in a rented studio with one location change.
- 07:30 - Crew call, unload
- 07:30-08:15 - Rig: lighting, camera, background
- 08:15-08:30 - Client arrival, brief walkthrough
- 08:30-09:30 - Shooting block 1: product hero shots
- 09:30-10:45 - Shooting block 2: lifestyle scene A (talent in)
- 10:45-11:00 - Reset and relight for scene B
- 11:00-12:15 - Shooting block 3: lifestyle scene B
- 12:15-13:00 - Lunch
- 13:00-13:30 - Move and rig: location change to exterior
- 13:30-14:45 - Shooting block 4: exterior b-roll and cutaways
- 14:45-15:15 - Pickups: anything on the priority shot list not yet covered
- 15:15-15:45 - De-rig and pack
- 15:45 - Wrap
Notice what's doing the work here: rigging gets its own honest slot instead of being absorbed into the first shooting block, lunch sits at a fixed time rather than "whenever", and there's a fifteen-minute reset built between scenes A and B instead of assuming the relight happens for free. Real days still run over. A run of day like this is what lets you tell, at 11:45, that you're fifteen minutes behind and need to trim block 4 rather than discovering it at wrap time.
Why crews write it badly
Almost never because they don't know how - because it's written from a blank page, late, after prep and emails and the kit check, and a blank page invites round numbers and wishful thinking. "Shooting: 9am-1pm" isn't a run of day, it's a hope. The fix isn't more discipline, it's not starting from blank: generate a sensible skeleton from your call and wrap times, then adjust the specifics for the day in front of you.
That's the one thing Cinella does that we built for ourselves first: give it crew call and wrap time and it produces a run of day like the one above - rig, blocks, lunch, pickups, de-rig - which you tweak instead of writing from nothing. It sits on the same shoot as your call sheet and shot list, so if a call time moves, the schedule moves with it.