What Is a Day Out of Days (DOOD) Report?

A day out of days, universally shortened to DOOD, is a grid showing every cast member against every shooting day, marked with codes indicating what they are doing on each. It is generated from the shooting schedule and it is how a production works out what its cast will cost.

It is a small document with disproportionate financial consequences, because actor deals are negotiated on the numbers it produces.

Try the free Day Out of Days template to fill a seven-day cast grid in your browser and print it.

What it looks like

Cast down the left, by number and name. Shoot days across the top. A code in each cell.

          D1  D2  D3  D4  D5  D6  D7  D8
1 MARIA   SW   W   W   H   H   W   W  WF
2 DAVID        SW  W   W   WF
3 ANNA                          SW  WF

And at the right, totals: how many work days, how many hold days, and the first and last day each actor is required.

The codes

Consistent across the industry:

• SW : Start Work. The actor's first working day.
• W : Work. A day they are working.
• H : Hold. A day they are not working but are contracted and unavailable to anyone else, usually because they work either side of it.
• F : Finish. Their last day.
• WF : Work Finish. They work and it is their last day. Very common.
• SWF : Start Work Finish. They work exactly one day.
• T : Travel.
• R : Rehearsal.
• TW : Travel and Work.

Reading the example above: Maria starts on day 1, works through, is held on days 4 and 5, works again, and finishes on day 8. She has six work days and two hold days.

Why hold days matter

The commercially important column.

An actor on hold is not working and is usually still being paid, because they cannot take other work. Every hold day is money spent on a day producing nothing.

Which makes hold days the most reliable source of savings in a schedule. If Maria works days 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, moving one of her scenes so she works days 1 to 6 consecutively removes two hold days from the budget without cutting a single frame.

This is a substantial part of what a first AD is doing when they rearrange the board, and it is why the DOOD is rebuilt every time the schedule changes.

Reading one usefully

Look at the ratio of work to hold days for each actor. Anything approaching one to one is a problem worth solving.

Find single-day actors scattered across the schedule. An actor working only day 22 in an otherwise clear month is a candidate for moving next to other material, or for grouping with another day player.

Check the span. An actor whose first and last day are five weeks apart is committed for five weeks regardless of how many days they work, which affects their availability, their fee, and whether they can take the job at all.

Look for actors who never overlap. Sometimes an indication that scenes can be regrouped freely.

Check travel and rehearsal days are represented, since they are contractual days too.

What it is used for

Negotiating cast deals. The agent will ask how many days and over what period. The DOOD is the answer, and an inaccurate one creates a renegotiation later.

Budgeting. Cast cost is work days plus hold days plus travel, multiplied by rates. It cannot be calculated without this document.

Testing schedule changes. Any proposed reorder can be checked against the DOOD to see what it does to cast days, which is often the deciding factor.

Booking actors. Their agents need to know the span so they can manage other commitments, and a production that gives vague dates loses actors to jobs with definite ones.

Managing availability conflicts. Covered in scheduling around actor availability.

Building one

It is generated from the schedule, not authored separately. For each cast number, read across the shooting days and mark which ones they appear on, then confirm any hold days between their first and last working day against the production plan and applicable agreement.

Doing it by hand for a twenty-actor feature is tedious and error-prone, which is why it is one of the first things any scheduling tool automates. Doing it by hand once, on a short, is a good way to understand what it is telling you.

The one thing to be careful about: it is only as accurate as the cast tagging in your breakdown. An actor missed from a scene's cast list is an actor who will not be called.

On a short

Even with six actors and four days, build one. It takes fifteen minutes on paper.

The value is that it converts your schedule into the question your actors will actually ask, which is "which days do you need me". Being able to answer that precisely, early, is the difference between an actor accepting and an actor waiting to see what else comes in.

It also exposes the small inefficiency that is endemic on short films: an actor asked to come for two days when a small reorder would have made it one. On a paid shoot that is money. On an unpaid one it is goodwill, which is scarcer.

Worked example: a scene move changes the cast span

In a fictional three-day plan, Maya works in the cafe on Monday and Wednesday. Ethan works on the street on Tuesday and in the cafe on Wednesday. If Maya is confirmed on hold on Tuesday, her row reads SW, H, WF. Ethan's row reads unmarked, SW, WF.

Now move Wednesday's cafe scene to Monday. Assuming these are their only scenes, Maya works on Monday only: SWF. Ethan works Monday and Tuesday: SW, WF, then unmarked on Wednesday. Recheck their availability and agreed commitments before confirming the revision.

This is more than moving a coloured strip. It changes when each performer starts and finishes. Keep the report's version consistent with the revised schedule, and distinguish the proposed work pattern from any contractual decision about paid holds or release. Try both versions in the free seven-day DOOD template, saving a PDF of the first version before replacing it.

Next

The other half of the same problem: what to do when the actors you want are not available when you need them.