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Contents:

Introduction

The Filming Details tab is where you create, schedule and manage all of your project’s shoots. 

You need to create a session for every shoot that the project requires, but you don’t need to finalise the specific details immediately after creating the project. You can add and edit these when the details become known.

Two key differences between managing filming and pre-production details are: 

• Your client can add and edit shoot details themselves from the Client Hub.

• The information provided here can directly inform your shoot team’s agenda. It is intended to be potentially useful on location.

There is no limit to the amount of shoots a Project can host.

Creating new shoots

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To create a scheduled shoot, click the blue “+” icon. 

For each shoot, you will be required to provide several data points. The accuracy of this data is important for three reasons: 

• Communicating and negotiating with the client’s team — they will have access to all of these details via the Client Hub.

• Providing your shoot team with essential shoot information, such as shoot time and address.

• Provide our management team with data, so they can monitor and assess what it takes to deliver a good project. Good data here will help our system to have a reasonable understanding of our current and future workloads.

Required details

Each shoot that you create requires the following information:

• An appropriate name — Try to be as clear and unique as possible. Don’t be against using longer names. After you have created your shoot, this name will be the shoot’s primary identifier — for both your team and your client.

• The address of the shoot location — If you start with the Street field, an auto-search feature will use Google to help you find and auto-complete the location’s full address. 

• Shoot date, time, and duration — Schedule your shoot and estimate how long it will take. 

• Additional extras — Select to add any of the additional shoot extras that will be required for your project. Click them again to remove them.  Each extra will create a calendar event linked to your primary shoot, with the same time and duration. See below for more information on shoot extras.

• General comments — These shoot Comments are visible to the client. The client can similarly leave special notes for you and your team here. To view the shoot comments later, hover your cursor over the notes icon.
  This is a great place to leave notes specific to each shoot day, such as parking location or contact person on the day.

To edit any of your shoot details later, click on the pencil edit icon on the right. This will open up editable fields whilst still displaying the current details. These details can be edited right up until the current shoot date.

The location map 

After you have submitted and saved your new shoot, the VMSX will create and show a map thumbnail in the shoot details, pinning your location. Clicking on this map will open up a new tab in Google Maps, already centred on the pinned location. (Or your mobile device's preferred map application.)

Additional Extras

When you need additional extras for your shoot, you will be booking and scheduling them in collaboration with your Production Manager. Each tagged extra will trigger a flag in the production scheduling calendar that will need to be actioned.

Ensuring your extras are correctly tagged here will also help the VMSX system to understand your project’s scope in getting delivered. We should be able to pull some very interesting company-wide analytics between shoot extras and project scopes — eg, do we need more lights? Or to hire more field producers?

These are the additional extras currently available for a shoot: 

• Second Camera Operator — This is a second DOP with a full camera and lighting kit.

• Camera Assistant (AC) — This is an assistant to the DOP, and does not come with a camera kit.

• Field Producer — Works across a range of projects, and ensures that project briefs are followed, directs interviews and liaises with the client on set.

• Studio — Your project will require some time in one of our studios.

• Additional Camera —  This is a second camera only. It should only ever be added as the third camera for the shoot, as we never send out two cameras with one DOP. Three cameras with two DOPs is acceptable under some circumstances, such as studio shoots.

• Travel — You should be adding (and ideally budgeting) for all travel more than 1 hour beyond the offices in Melbourne and Sydney.

• Director — Usually works on higher end projects, oversees the creative and execution of a production. Ensure you have some pre-production booked for your director as well.

• Director of Photography (DP) — Head of the camera department. They also guide the creative decisions made by grip and electric departments.

• Sound Engineer — Responsible for getting the best on-set sound possible.

• Grip — Usually only required for larger shoots, we use a grip when we need someone to focus on looking after the kit and on-set safety.

• Gaffer — Brought in when we need a specialist to look after the lighting.

Putting shoots on hold

When first creating your shoot(s) in a Project, you may not yet have all of the details finalised. Instead of inventing placeholder data for the compulsory fields, you can choose to put the shoot “on hold”.

To be put on hold, a shoot need only have a Name. Everything else can be added later, after the details have been confirmed. Instead of saving the new shoot, click Hold.

When a shoot is on hold, the shoot will have no scheduled date and it will not be scheduled in the calendar. It can be found within the calendar’s “On Hold Events”. 

If a shoot has already been scheduled, it can still be placed on hold by clicking its On Hold button. When you do this, the shoot’s scheduled date will be removed. It will retain all other data that has been entered. The shoot (and its scheduled Additional Extras) will be removed from the calendar and moved to On Hold Events. 

To remove the shoot’s on hold status: click the highlighted On Hold button and choose a new date for the shoot. You will need to update and/or provide all of the remaining required shoot information, then click Save.

Pre-production documents

Feature released Sept 15 2022 

When managing a project with a large number of pre-production documents, you can attach pre-production documents to your shoots here (as well as the edits in Deliveries tab). 

For example, if a DOP needs to find a shot list, they can go straight to the shoot details where you will have attached it. 

How do you do this?

• Select the Pre-Production dropdown associated with the shoot You will get a list of all the project’s pre-production documents.

• Select all the documents that relate to this shoot. Click Submit. 

• You have now created direct links to your relevant documents.

What if I haven’t yet created the pre-production document I need? 

You can create new Pre-Production documents directly from your shoot details.

• Click on the small +

• Choose your document type

• The VMS will take you straight to the Pre-Production tab with the new document ready to be set-up. This will automatically be linked to your shoot. 

The call sheet

At 3pm the day before your scheduled shoot, the VMS will automatically email a call sheet to your contacts and crew. This call sheet will compile itself using shoot and Project data, plus VMS contact information. 

• To edit contact information: go to the Contacts page under the VMS Clients menu.

• To edit VMS staff information: go to the VMS Users page under the VMS Admin menu.

You can preview, edit, or add to the call sheet data by clicking on the shoot’s call sheet button.

Shoot Events

This top-left section of the call sheet data shows the scheduled VisDom crew for this shoot. 

All of the Additional Extras that you have selected for your shoot should be presented here. As these roles are scheduled and assigned in the calendar, this information will show here, alongside the crew members' contact details.

Shoot Schedule

An optional tool. This tool occupies the top-right section of the call sheet information. It provides an easy-to-use way to create a shoot schedule breakdown for your call sheet.

Each schedule row includes a start time, a task, and notes. The task and notes are text boxes with no restrictions. You can add and rearrange as many schedule entries as you need.

The first schedule row is provided by default and is hardwired to the schedule shoot start time. 

Comments/Remarks

Parking arrangements

If you have any special parking arrangements that need to be communicated, select the "Parking is arranged?" checkbox above the special notes and add this information to the field provided.

Notes

A large text field has been provided for generic additional shoot notes.

Linked pre-production documents

If you have linked any specific pre-production documents to your shoot, these links will be added to the call sheet.

If done well, your shoot crew will have access to all the information it needs from the call sheet, without needing to access to the VMS.

Shoot Contacts

The external stakeholders for a shoot are listed in the bottom-left section of the call sheet details. All of the project contacts will be added here by default, using the contact details available in the VMS.

Additionally, the shoot will be presented with reminder slots for a Site Contact and a Hair & Makeup contact. You will need to manually add these the details. However, they can be deleted, if not required.

Any further "Other contacts" for your shoot can easily be added. For the time-being, if you need to provide any further details on their role (or specific call times), this data can be added with the open-text name field.

eg, "Dave -- dog wrangler -- 2pm to 5pm"

Preview and download call sheet PDF

You can preview and download your call sheet any time by clicking on the "eye" preview button at the bottom of the call sheet details.

This call sheet can be shared with your stakeholders. However, it will always be automatically shared with all contacts at around 3pm the day before the shoot.

What can the client see?

When accessing the project via Client Hub, your client will be able to see and edit all of the filming details. Their view of these details is exactly the same as yours.

The client can also create (ie, propose) their own shoots, completing all of the details for themselves.

The key difference here is that your Project Chat will publish an alert whenever your client creates or edits shoot details. This ensures that you get a timely opportunity to assess the client’s information and engage with them.   

Completing your shoots

Unlike other VMSX tasks and deliverables, your shoots do not have statuses and there is no requirement for you to “deliver” or “complete” them.

A shoot is either:

• Scheduled and in the future, or

• In the past and locked.