How to Read a Call Sheet (And What It's Really Telling You)
How to Read a Call Sheet (And What It's Really Telling You)"
The call sheet is a piece of paper — or a PDF, we live in the future — that tells everyone on a production when they are expected to be where, doing what, with whom. On its surface it is a scheduling document. Below the surface it is a personality test, an org chart, a threat assessment, and a direct window into the mind of whoever built the production. I have been reading call sheets for two decades and I can tell you more about a production from its call sheet than from any conversation with its producer.
Let me show you what I mean.
**The basic anatomy.**
A call sheet has, at minimum: the date, the venue or location, the general call time (when the overall operation begins), the specific call times for each department or position, and some version of the day's schedule — what's happening when, in what order. On a television production you'll also have a scene breakdown, a cast schedule, weather, and a frankly alarming amount of fine print. In live events, the format is more variable but the bones are the same. Who. When. Where. What.
The first thing I look at is the spread between the earliest call and the latest call. If the riggers are called at 6am and the doors open at 8pm, that's a fourteen-hour spread and someone has built a reasonable cushion into the day. If the riggers are called at 8am and the doors open at 7pm, that's an eleven-hour spread for the same show, which means whoever scheduled this is optimistic in a way that I find professionally alarming. Not impossible — I've made eleven-hour spreads work — but you're driving the whole day with no margin, and margin is the difference between a show that goes up on time and a show that goes up with everyone running.
**What the department order tells you.**
Departments are listed in the order they arrive, which should be the order they're needed, which should reflect a thoughtful understanding of how the load-in sequences. Riggers first, then electrics and audio, then video and scenic, then the departments that need the other departments to be done before they can do their thing. If you see audio called before rigging, either the audio is all ground-stacked and there's no hang, or whoever built this call sheet is working from a template they didn't think too carefully about.
Either way, now you know something.
**The notes section.**
Every call sheet has notes. The notes are where the production manager puts everything that doesn't fit in a box. "Please use the back entrance, main entrance is in use for a separate event." "Load-in crew must wear hi-vis at all times, venue requirement." "Catering is in the green room, which is on the second floor, which does not have an elevator, please plan accordingly." The notes are the shadow show behind the show — the logistics and complications and special circumstances that don't fit in the schedule but will absolutely affect your day if you don't know about them.
Read the notes. Read them again. There is always a person on every call who did not read the notes and this person has a very long day.
**What the meal breaks tell you.**
Union calls have contractually mandated meal breaks at specific intervals. Non-union calls should still have meal breaks at sensible intervals because human beings need to eat and they become significantly worse at their jobs when they don't, which is a thing that some producers understand deeply and some producers understand only in theory. A call sheet with no meal break scheduled is either a short call (fine) or a very long call where someone has decided to handle the food question by leaving it vague (not fine). Vague is not a meal plan. Vague is how you end up with a crew that had a granola bar at 7am and it is now 3pm and the load-out hasn't started yet.
On a well-run call, the meal break is on the call sheet with a location and a duration. On a poorly-run call, the meal break is "TBD" and the TBD gets resolved by someone eventually going on a food run while everyone else keeps working, which is technically a solution and also genuinely bad production.
**The contact sheet.**
Attached to or incorporated into most call sheets is a contact list — who the department heads are, how to reach them, sometimes who the venue contacts are and what the production office number is. This is where I look to understand who I'm working with. If I recognize names — good ones, people I've worked with before, people whose reputations I've heard about — I know something about what to expect from the day. If I don't recognize anyone, I'm in information-gathering mode from the moment I walk in the door.
And if the contact sheet is missing entirely? If the call sheet doesn't tell me who the production manager is or how to reach them or who to call if something goes wrong? That tells me something too. It tells me that this is a production that doesn't yet know what it doesn't know, and I will proceed accordingly, which means I will be very pleasant and I will ask a lot of questions and I will build my own mental map of who runs what because the paperwork isn't going to do it for me.
**The version number.**
Good call sheets have a version number and a timestamp. Call Sheet v1 goes out the night before. Call Sheet v2 goes out at 6am when something has changed. Call Sheet v3 goes out at 9am when the thing that changed in v2 has changed again. If you're on Call Sheet v5 by noon, the show is either very complex or very chaotic or both, and you should pace yourself accordingly.
If the call sheet has no version number, it was built by someone who has never had to send a correction and doesn't yet know that they will. They'll know soon. We all learn eventually.
The call sheet is just paper. But paper made by humans reveals the humans who made it, every time, without fail. Learn to read it right and you'll know what kind of day you're walking into before you walk through the door.
— Dots