On December 14, Assistant Directors, Unit Production Managers and DGA Trainees attended a special event at Guild headquarters in New York. Presented by the Eastern AD/UPM Council Member Education Committee and the DGA Assistant Directors Training Program, the seminar Scheduling: Theory and Practice guided the attendees through the basics of how to break down a script to create a schedule and a subsequent call sheet.
Following a welcome from AD/UPM Council East Member Education Committee Chair Michael Reichman, the attendees opened their laptop computers to participate in a hands-on demonstration of the industry standard scheduling program Movie Magic. The demo was conducted by Richard Guay of Entertainment Partners, a company that specializes in software for production management.
After Guay walked the participants through the basics of the software and its features, 1st AD Bettiann Fishman (Blue Bloods, Sex and the City) shared the knowledge gained by her many years of experience on the subject. Fishman spoke about how the digital approach to scheduling and breaking down a script compares to pen and paper, pointed out how the Movie Magic software has changed from previous versions and suggested what could be done to improve it in future versions.
There was also input from UPM Denise Pinckley (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Oblivion) who spoke about the process of scheduling for feature film work, and 1st AD Louis Guerra (The Americans, Homeland), who covered the issue from the perspective of episodic television.