What should a call sheet template actually contain?
Three things are never missing: the date, the location, and each person's own time. Everything else varies by the kind of shoot you do, and four of the nine parts most templates present as required are genuinely optional. Read ten real call sheets side by side and the surprise is how little is truly fixed.
the day comes off the script breakdown, with scene numbers, sets and page counts
DownloadXLSX · 13 KBthe day is written by the hour, and the client's job number sits on the sheet
DownloadXLSX · 12 KBthe day reads as a list of looks, and every model carries their agency's number
DownloadXLSX · 13 KBFree, and it downloads straight away. No email.
The three parts that are never missing
Date, location, and the hour each person is due. Every other block on a call sheet is a convention that some corner of the industry does without.
Location is not just an address. On the sheets that work there is also where to park and how to get in: a door code, a floor, a name at reception. It is the part nobody reads until they need it, at 6.40am, in front of a locked door.
Cast and crew belong on one list
Put everyone who comes to set on a single list with a marker to tell cast apart. It reads wrong if you come from scripted work, where the schedule separates them, but on the day the question is identical for everyone: what time, and where.
For cast and models, the agency matters as much as the person, because the agency is who you call when someone does not pick up. So the agency belongs on the person, not in a separate address book: one agent handles several people, and people change agents.
The running order is not universal
In scripted work the day comes out of the script breakdown: scenes, sets, who is in them. In commercials, fashion and stills there is no script to break down, so the running order is a list of hours and moves written by hand the night before.
This is why scheduling software built for scripted work does not come down-market into these jobs. Take the script away and there is nothing left of the chain.
Meals belong in that running order. Lunch at 1pm is a moment in the day like any other, not a section of its own.
The vendor block most templates leave out
Seven sheets out of ten carry a band of suppliers: catering, trailers, grip, studio, security. One line each: the service, the company, a contact, a phone number, and the hour they arrive.
It is the block free templates forget most often, and the one people end up retyping on every single sheet.
Typing the nine parts into a file is one way to get a sheet out. The call sheet generator on this site is the other: it asks for them in order and gives you the PDF at the end.
What it contains
Common misconceptions
Plenty do not. Some give every person their own time; others give one call per department (photo call 8.30, hair and makeup 8.15). Those boxes are not a general call, and they are not a running order either: every hour in them is already somebody's own call time.
Almost never. It is the caterer: a company with a contact and a phone number, no different from a grip truck. The lunch hour itself is a line in the running order. Treating one as the other leaves an empty section on every sheet you make afterwards.
On paper yes, in practice no. “Four vegetarians, one vegan, no nuts on set” is one sentence and belongs in general notes. A column per person costs one entry per person, for something that fits on a single line.
They belong on the sheet, but they should never be typed. Both follow from the location and the date. A template that asks you to enter them by hand makes you retype something nobody verifies and everybody trusts.
How we checked
- 01This describes what call sheets actually contain, read off ten production documents from different sources (commercials, fashion, corporate and scripted), rather than what a template prescribes.
- 02The items listed as misconceptions are rules we had to write into our own import tool because a real document caught us out. That is why they are specific, and why they are not in a definition article.
- 03What is presented here as optional is optional because we have seen it missing from real sheets, not because we assume it is rare.