Plan: brief, shots, locations, call sheets and tasks
On this page
Plan is where a shoot gets worked out: what the film is, what has to be shot, where, on which days, and what still needs doing. It has five tabs. Everything here is for admins and editors to change; viewers and crew can read it all and print the call sheet.
Brief
The synopsis is a line or two: what this is and who it is for. It also shows on share pages and in the client portal.
The brief is the longer document. “Write” and “Preview” switch between editing and reading. Both fields save as you type, about a second after you stop, and the status under the field says “Saving…” or “Saved”.
Formatting is kept small: # and ## for headings, - for bullets, 1. for numbered lists, **bold** for what matters, a blank line between paragraphs, and web addresses become links.
Shot list
- Type a description in “Add a shot: describe it and press Enter”. The shot gets the next number, and the day you have filtered to.
- Click a row to open it and fill in the scene, size, movement, lens, day, status and notes. “Add shot” opens the same sheet for a new one.
- “Move up” and “Move down” in the sheet reorder shots.
Each shot is To shoot, Shot or Dropped. Crew tick shots off on set, from Shoot day, and the count and progress bar here follow. Dropped shots stay in the list, struck through, and are left out of the count.
Filter by “All days”, a particular day, or “No day” for shots that have not been given one yet.
Locations
A location holds the name, address, parking notes, a contact and phone, the nearest hospital, coordinates and notes.
- Coordinates add sunrise and sunset to the location, the call sheet and Shoot day, and let the forecast be fetched. Paste them from a map app, like
48.4113, -123.3886, or leave them empty: the address is looked up when you save, anywhere in the world (OpenStreetMap’s geocoder; a miss leaves them empty for you to add). The sun times are worked out by Pictures Up itself, with no outside service. - Nearest hospital prints in the call sheet’s Emergency box. Write the name, then a comma, then the address.
A location is attached to a shoot day from the day itself, under Schedule & call sheets. Deleting a location leaves those days without one until you pick another.
Schedule & call sheets
Shoot days
“Add shoot day” opens the day sheet: the date, an optional label (otherwise days are numbered), crew call, wrap, the location, the weather, and the schedule. “New location…” takes a name and an address or coordinates. With a located location, the weather line fills itself from the forecast when the day is saved empty; “Fetch forecast” refreshes it, and you can type over it. The line names its source: AccuWeather when the server has an AccuWeather key (5 days out on the standard plan, more on larger ones), otherwise Open-Meteo, up to 16 days out. The forecast service gets the coordinates and the date. Each schedule row has a time, what happens, and notes. Press Enter in a row to add the next one, drag rows to reorder, or “Sort by time”.
Times are 24-hour. Type them any way you like, such as 630 or 6:30pm, and they tidy up to 06:30 and 18:30 when you leave the field.
The “⋯” menu on a day has “Edit day”, “Edit call sheet”, “Send calendar holds”, “Swap with the day before” or “after”, and “Delete day”. Swapping trades the dates and keeps each day’s schedule, location and call sheet.
Calendar holds
Once the days are in, hold them on everyone’s calendar. “Send calendar holds” on a day, or “Calendar holds for every day” under the list, shows who it would reach: the crew booked for the day who have an email, and, if you leave the box ticked, talent with an email from Paperwork. Each person gets an email with a link to their hold page; the email itself names no studio, production, date or person. The page shows the day, with the call and wrap times when they are set and the location, and adds it to their calendar in one tap. The day shows “Holds sent to N” with the date.
The hold page also takes Yes, Maybe or No (no sign-in; the link is theirs alone), and they can change the answer there. Answers are sealed for the studio and reach the day row’s tally, “2 yes, 1 maybe”, the next time someone at the studio has Pictures Up open.
The call sheet
Every day has a call sheet that fills itself in from the day, the location and the crew: crew call and shooting call, sunrise and sunset, weather, the emergency box, the location with parking and a map link, key contacts, the schedule, and the crew with their call times and phones.
“Edit” changes what is on the sheet for that day only:
- shooting call and lunch
- the emergency number, travel time and hospital
- key contacts, filled from the crew and the location until you change them
- who is on the sheet, with a call time for anyone whose call differs from the crew call
- extra lines for the Notes box, such as the radio channel
- notes
People are ticked onto a day automatically when it falls inside their booking dates.
Sending it
- Choose “Send to N people”. The number is everyone on the sheet with an email. The sheet warns you about anyone without one; add emails in Crew.
- Each person gets an email with a button to the live call sheet. The email itself carries no production, date, call time or names; the call sheet has them, with each person’s own call time.
- The panel header changes to “Sent to N people” with the date. If the day, the location or the sheet changes after that, it adds “edited since”, and the button becomes “Send update to N people”. “Resend” sends the same link again when nothing has changed.
Everyone on the sheet who signs in to Pictures Up also gets a notification.
The live link
The link in the email always shows the latest version, with no sign-in. The “⋯” menu beside the send button has “Copy live link” and “Turn off live link”. Turning it off stops the link in every email sent so far, and the next send makes a new one.
“Print” prints the sheet, or saves it as a PDF, from Plan or from the live page.
Tasks
Type in “Add a task and press Enter”. Open a task to add notes, a due date and an assignee, or to move or delete it. Drag the handle to reorder.
Tasks show up in three places: here, on the production’s Overview, and on Home under Needs you when they are due within a week. Ticking one anywhere marks it done, with Undo.
Good to know
- Nothing in Plan is money, so admins and editors see the same thing here, and “View as Crew” changes nothing.
- The schedule keeps up to 80 rows a day. The brief holds up to 50,000 characters.
- Deleting a shot or a task has no confirmation. Use Undo in the toast.