The director with three days
She has twenty scenes and three days' hire of the station. The stripboard, pinned up on the first morning, shows the whole crew why the night platform gets shot before the buffet scene.
Make a film shooting schedule with AI
Two landscape shooting schedules for a short film, as colour strips like a stripboard or as a table by day, every scene in its place. Workflow visible here, no account needed.
Real workflow: two French shooting schedules for "Le Dernier Train", a made-up short film shot over three days, one as six yellow, white, blue and green strips split by black bars with a legend, the other as a table of the same six scenes with set, int/ext and cast.
At a glance
- You provide
- a text or a brief
- What the workflow produces
- 2 images in 16:9
- Canvas structure
- 5 nodes wired by 2 connections
- Models wired in
- GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst
- Cost of one full run
- about 6 credits, roughly $0.07
- Account
- The demo is visible without an account; generating requires a free account, trial credits included
A shooting schedule puts the scenes in the order you shoot them, not the order of the script: locations grouped, nights together, actors called for as few days as possible. Productions have dedicated software for it; on a short film, it's often a spreadsheet or paper strips on a table. This workflow gives you two visual versions of the same schedule: the classic colour stripboard and a table by day.
The hard part is getting each scene's colour and day right, and keeping both versions in agreement. A model left to itself invents numbers or colours at random. The prompt gives the exact order of the strips with their colours, then every row of the table. Sunburst gets the text right and lays it out cleanly, ready to put up at a prep meeting.
The schedule is built from the script breakdown and leads to each day's call sheet. Both templates cost six credits.
Actual renders from the demo
These are the files of the workflow above, exactly as the models produced them, unretouched. The starting point is shown when there is one.
Render
Who it is for
First ADs, line producers, short film and web series directors, film students.
Which files to provide
The title, the scene order by day with each strip's colour, and the table rows, in quotes.
How it works
- 1
Group by location
Every scene at the same location on the same day, nights together, interiors apart. That's the real work; the image comes after.
- 2
Colour and day per strip
Write the order left to right: "day 2 with strip 12 in blue". Without that, the model colours the strips in the order of the legend.
- 3
Same order in the table
One row per scene, in the same order as the strips: day, scene, set, int/ext, cast. Put the headings in quotes too.
- 4
Keep the real schedule elsewhere
An actor drops out, rain is forecast, and everything moves. The live schedule stays in your spreadsheet or software; the image is for the meeting.
Variations and use cases
The same canvas, tuned for different needs: each variation is two or three lines of prompt away.
The first AD in prep
He walks the director and the DP through the schedule. The day by day table, readable on a projector, makes overloaded days easy to spot before the calls are locked.
The line producer doing the numbers
Three days or four is a whole budget line. He compares two schedules as images to show the director, in plain terms, what one more night of shooting would cost.
The film student
He has to hand in the schedule for his graduation film. The table version gives him a presentation template, and the real schedule gets built in the spreadsheet the school provides.
The AI filmmaker going live action
Used to generating shots in story order, he learns that you shoot by location. The stripboard shows his scenes grouped by place and light before he books any actors.
The web series shot in a block
A crew shoots four episodes in a week. The strips, one colour per episode instead of day and night, show how the episodes interleave across the schedule.
Common mistakes
Letting the model pick colours
Without a colour per strip, it alternates in legend order, and a night platform can come out as an interior day. Give every strip its colour.
Following script order
A schedule follows locations and availability, not the story. Shooting scene 1, 2, 3 in order multiplies company moves and hire days.
Too many strips
Sixty strips in one image and the numbers become unreadable. Do one schedule per week, or keep the image for the key days.
Two versions that disagree
A scene on day 2 in the strips and day 3 in the table, and the crew doesn't know which to trust. Copy the same order into both prompts, and check.
Recommended models
GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst
Nano Banana 2.1
Recraft V4.1Frequently asked questions
Is the text spelled right?
In the demo, yes: title, days, numbers, legend, headings and all six table rows are exact, accents and middle dots included.
Do the strip colours match the scenes?
Yes, because the prompt gives them one by one: scene 12, the platform at night, is blue; 14, the carriage at night, green; 5, the buffet by day, white. The table says the same in its own column.
What does the "Effet" column in the French demo mean?
It's French scheduling shorthand for interior or exterior, day or night, what an English schedule calls Int/Ext and D/N. It sets the strip colour and often the day's hours.
How much do the two schedules cost?
Six credits, three per schedule on GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst at medium quality. Next week's schedule costs three more.
Why GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst?
Because it spells correctly in strips and columns and it's the cheapest model in the catalogue. It does what it's told and nothing more, which is why you give it the order and colour of every strip.
Can I put the cast on the strips?
On a real stripboard, each strip carries the cast ID numbers. Add them in quotes, such as "1, 2" under the scene number; beyond two or three numbers, switch to the table.
What output format?
Landscape: the strip version comes out at 1536 x 1024 pixels, the table in a wider format, about 1775 x 890. Both read well on screen and on a projector.
Can it replace scheduling software?
No. Software recalculates everything when a scene moves and links the breakdown, schedule and call sheets. The image shows the schedule as it stands at one moment.
Make a film shooting schedule with AI
Use this workflowFree account, no card required. The workflow opens pre-filled in your canvas.