Scheduling

Stripboard

Also called Production board, Strip board

What is stripboard in film production?

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.

The colours are conventional and carry meaning: white for day interior, yellow for day exterior, blue for night interior, green for night exterior. Day breaks are marked by black divider strips. A schedule can be read at a glance because the colour pattern shows immediately whether a day is fighting the sun or fighting the clock.

The board's purpose is grouping. Scenes are shot out of story order so that everything at one location, or with one expensive cast member, or requiring one lighting setup, happens together. What looks like an arbitrary order on the board is usually the cheapest order that still gets the film made.

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Stripboard software

Reviewed 2026-08-27

Related terms

Page eighth: A page eighth is the standard unit of screenplay length used for scheduling. Every script page is divided into eight equal vertical strips, so a scene measured at 3/8 occupies three of them. Scheduling, day counts and stripboard lengths are all expressed in eighths rather than in pages.
Day Out of Days: 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.
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.
Company move: 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.