Scheduling

Company move

What is company move in film production?

A company move is the relocation of an entire unit — cast, crew, equipment and support vehicles — from one location to another during a single shooting day. It is scheduled as a block of lost time, typically one to three hours, during which no filming happens.

Company moves are the most expensive thing on most schedules and the least visible, because the cost appears as absence rather than as a line item. Two moves in a day can remove a third of the available shooting hours while every department is still on the clock.

The scheduling response is to group by location aggressively, accept awkward story order, and where a move is unavoidable, place it against a meal break so the two overlap rather than stack.

Go deeper

Company Moves: The Most Expensive Thing on Your Schedule

Reviewed 2026-08-27

Related terms

Stripboard

A stripboard is the shooting schedule represented as one coloured strip per scene, ordered in the sequence the production will actually shoot. Each strip carries the scene number, length in eighths, cast IDs, location and day/night. Reordering the strips reorders the shoot.

Shooting day

A shooting day is one scheduled day of principal photography, defined by its call time, its planned scenes and its wrap. It is the atomic unit of a production schedule: budgets, crew bookings and location agreements are all counted in days rather than hours.

Turnaround

Turnaround is the guaranteed rest period between the moment a crew member is released at the end of one working day and their call time for the next. Where union or guild agreements apply, a shortened turnaround triggers a penalty payment rather than being prohibited outright.