Projects & the shooting schedule

A project holds everything for one production: its schedule, crew, deals, approvals and pay.

Creating a project

From the Projects tab, create a project and give it a name, shooting start and end dates, and a location (city). You can refine the details later.

Adding shooting days

Open the project and build its schedule on the production calendar. Add each working day and set its day type, call and wrap time — the times also decide whether crew show as free or booked when you search. To add a new day, the app continues your day numbering automatically.

To fill a stretch of the calendar in one go, give the day an end date as well as a start date: the app creates a day for every date in between and continues the numbering. Dates that already carry a day are left exactly as they are. Skip weekends and Skip public holidays leave those dates out of the run — both start switched off, so a range creates every calendar date unless you say otherwise, which is what you want on a production that shoots weekends. The count under the dates tells you how many days will be created, how many dates already have a day and how many the rules skip, so you can check the run before you save.

If the project's work rules grant a premium-free Sunday allowance, the schedule flags every Sunday or public holiday that falls outside it — in the day list and in the day editor while you pick the date — so a shoot day that will carry the Sunday/holiday premium never comes as a surprise.

Removing days

Select a date on the production calendar — or a range of dates — and the day panel offers Remove day(s) for what you picked. Confirming takes those days off the schedule for good, so the app always asks first and never removes anything on a single tap.

Two kinds of day are held back. A day with signed crew, or one that already carries a cancellation fee, can't be removed: the confirmation tells you how many days in your selection are protected and removes only the rest. To take such a day out of the schedule, cancel it instead — a cancellation keeps the record, and any late-cancellation fee, where a removal would leave nothing behind. Cancelled days are never removal candidates for the same reason.

Removing days changes the live plan, so it's open to anyone who can edit the schedule. Inside a scenario, days are added and removed in the scenario itself and reach the plan only when you promote it.

Day types

Each day has a type, shown by a small shape on the calendar:

Day type matters because it affects how pay is calculated for that day. Shooting days use the full overtime model; travel and prep days use their own simpler formulas.

The day's category also decides billing: Production days — prep, shooting and wrap alike — are the ones that use crew-days, while office and travel days are free. See Crew-day credits.

Work rules

Every project runs on a set of work rules — base hours, overtime, premiums and per-diems. They're what turn clocked hours into pay. Set them up before crew start logging time: see Work rules and How pay is calculated.

Project info package

The info package is the overview of your production for someone deciding whether to take the job: a logline, a short description, genre and format, a budget band rather than an exact figure, the city crew are expected to travel from, and a content and safety checklist. Everything on it is optional — fill in what you have.

Attached crew is a list you curate, not an automatic dump of everyone on the project. Pick confirmed crew from the project, or type a role and name for someone who isn't on CrewShift, such as a director or DP you've already secured. Both a role and a name are needed for an entry to be kept.

Links point at your own files — the script on your Drive, a lookbook, a mood board, a schedule. CrewShift stores no files: it controls only when a link is revealed, so once someone has opened a URL you can't take it back. Every link sits at one of two stages. Invitation covers what you're willing to share while a deal is still being discussed — mood boards, lookbooks. Confirmed unlocks only once the deal memo is signed, which is where the script, the sides and the detailed schedule normally belong. Picking a link type sets the usual stage for you; you can override it. A link opens outside CrewShift — in a new tab, or the system browser on a phone.

The package starts as a draft and stays entirely private until you publish it. Publishing needs at least one field or one link filled in, so an empty draft can't go out by accident. You can unpublish at any time.

Once it's published, everyone you have an open negotiation with sees a summary of it on the offer in their Inbox, and your confirmed crew get the full version on the project's Planning tab. Visibility follows the negotiation: if one ends without a booking — declined, cancelled or expired — the package and its links drop out of that person's app again. That's in-app visibility, not recall: a URL someone already opened stays open on the producer's own storage. What crew see is described in What the producer shares about the production.

Scenarios

Scenarios let you model "what-if" variations of your live plan without touching it. Copy the current schedule into a named scenario, then adjust dates, overtime settings, or team size to see how the budget shifts. Each scenario generates a forward cost estimate you can compare side-by-side with the live plan. The estimate is indicative — it uses the plan's scheduled times and current work rules — and is not a binding commitment.

Open a scenario to edit it in three areas. Days adds, removes, or adjusts shooting days — call and wrap times, day type, location, and per diem. Work rules sets the scenario's overtime and pay configuration; any per-department or per-crew overrides carried from the plan are shown read-only. Team adds or removes positions and sets their day rates. A live estimate at the bottom updates as you edit, so you can see the budget impact before saving. Saving stores the scenario — it still doesn't change the live plan or the people on it.

A scenario is a snapshot of the plan at the moment you forked it, so the comparison marks it Outdated once the live plan's schedule has changed since — the figures still show, but they were built on an older version of Main and no longer compare like for like. Recalculate re-runs the cost estimates on the scenarios you're comparing, which is what you want after a rate or work-rule change; it refreshes the numbers, not the days the scenario was built from. To compare against the current schedule, fork a new scenario.

Promoting a scenario to Main

When a scenario is the plan you want to run, Promote → Main writes it onto the live plan. Promoting doesn't apply everything at once: each consequence is grouped, and you review and switch each group on separately before you confirm. A group only takes effect if you opt it in, so you can promote schedule changes while leaving team changes for later, or the reverse.

The confirmation opens with the plan cost impact — the estimated labour cost of the whole plan as it stands now and as it would be after the promotion. It's the total picture, not a per-group figure, and it covers labour only: per diem, gear, and other expenses aren't in it.

The groups you may see are:

• Invites — new positions the scenario added that aren't on the live plan yet. These are created as open roles.
• Drops — positions the scenario removed that were never confirmed. They are simply taken off the plan.
• Cancellations with fees — confirmed crew the scenario removes. Cancelling a confirmed crew member can incur a late-cancellation fee, calculated from how close to their shooting days you are. The fee is shown per person, with the chargeable day count, before you opt in. Promoting this group cancels their assignment and issues the fee.
• Schedule amendments — moving a shooting day's date affects confirmed crew who work that day. Each affected confirmed crew member is sent a schedule amendment to re-sign; until they sign, their deal stays on the previous dates. This group is informational — it follows automatically from the day updates you promote.
• Schedule / day updates — the day changes themselves (added, removed, moved, or adjusted shooting days).
• Position changes — department, role, gear, or rate changes for positions that aren't confirmed yet.

Work-rule and day-rate changes for already-confirmed crew are flagged only. Promoting does not alter a signed deal memo: the figures the crew member already agreed to stay in force. The flag tells you the scenario assumed different terms for that person so you can follow up separately if needed.

After you promote, the live plan and the scenario match. A scenario you promoted in full is marked Promoted in the scenario switcher: it stays as the record of what was merged, can still be renamed, but its Promote → Main action is gone — the same changes can't be written onto the plan twice. If you switched only some groups on, the scenario isn't marked, and its promote action stays available for the rest. Either way, a banner at the top of the plan offers to delete the scenario — remove it once you no longer need it for reference.

Submitting a scenario for approval

If you hold the Planning right, you build a scenario for your departments just like the producer does — adjusting days and your team's positions — but instead of promoting it yourself, you submit it for approval. Submitting hands the scenario to the producer with your proposed changes intact. Until they review it, the live plan and everyone on it stay unchanged, and your scenario is locked from further edits while it's pending.

One thing is deliberately not limited to your departments: the shooting-day schedule. A production has one calendar — every confirmed crew member works every shooting day unless they're marked off — so adding, removing or moving a day in your scenario proposes that change for the whole production, not just your team. Positions, rates and work rules stay scoped to your departments. The producer still reviews and confirms every schedule change before it reaches the live plan.

Reviewing planner requests

When a planner submits a scenario, it lands in your Inbox as a request to review. Open it to see exactly what they changed, scoped to their departments. From there you promote it the same way you'd promote any scenario — each consequence grouped, opted in one at a time — or send it back. Approving applies only the groups you switch on; nothing the planner proposed touches the live plan until you confirm. Rates and work rules stay yours — a planner's request never changes pay or work rules.