Scheduling

Day Out of Days

Also called DOOD

What is day out of days in film production?

A Day Out of Days is a grid showing which cast and crew are required on which shooting days. Each row is a person, each column a day, and each cell is marked with a status code — start work, work, hold, drop, or finish. It is the document contracts and payroll are built from.

The codes matter more than they look. SW marks a performer's first day, W a working day, H a hold day they are paid for but not used, and WF their last. The pattern across a row is what determines what someone is owed, which is why a DOOD error is a money error rather than a paperwork one.

It is generated from the schedule, not maintained beside it. Any change to the stripboard changes the DOOD, and a DOOD that has drifted from the current schedule will quietly authorise the wrong payments for weeks.

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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.
Drop and pickup: Drop and pickup is a scheduling provision that lets a production stop paying a performer during a gap between their working days, then re-engage them later. The performer is dropped after one day and picked up on a later one, with the intervening hold days not paid.
Hold day: A hold day is a day on which a performer is contractually retained and paid but not called to set. It sits between their first and last working day, keeping them exclusive to the production and unavailable to take other work.
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.