What Is a Shot List, and How Detailed Should It Be?

A shot list is a numbered list of every shot you intend to capture, scene by scene, with enough information for the crew to know what each one is: the shot size, the subject, any camera movement, the lens if it matters, and a note on what the shot is for.

Its value is not that you will follow it exactly. You will not. Its value is that all the thinking has been done somewhere other than on the shooting floor.

What a shot list contains

For each shot:

• Shot number. Usually the scene number plus a letter: 47A, 47B, 47C.
• Shot size. Wide, mid, close, and so on.
• Subject. Who or what is in frame.
• Movement. Static, pan, tilt, track, handheld, crane.
• Lens, where it matters.
• A brief description. "Maria closes the tin, hears the door."
• Notes. Anything the crew needs: a practical light, an actor's eyeline, a piece of business.

Some lists add estimated setup time, which is useful, and whether the shot is essential or optional, which is more useful still.

The standard abbreviations

Widely understood, with minor local variations:

Shot sizes:

• ELS / EWS : extreme long shot / extreme wide shot
• LS / WS : long shot / wide shot, the full figure and environment
• MLS : medium long shot, roughly knees up
• MS : mid shot, roughly waist up
• MCU : medium close-up, chest and head
• CU : close-up, the face
• ECU / BCU : extreme or big close-up, part of the face
• OTS : over the shoulder
• POV : point of view
• 2S / 3S : two shot, three shot
• INS : insert, usually a detail or an object

Movement:

• PAN : horizontal pivot
• TILT : vertical pivot
• TRACK / DOLLY : the camera physically moves
• PUSH IN / PULL OUT : moving toward or away
• CRANE / JIB : vertical movement on an arm
• HH : handheld
• STEADI : Steadicam
• ZOOM : lens focal length changes, which is not camera movement and looks entirely different

How detailed should it be?

The honest answer is that it depends on the kind of scene and the kind of director, and there are two defensible positions.

Fully detailed. Every shot specified, sometimes storyboarded. Suits action, effects, anything with a technical dependency, and anything where the coverage has to be precise for the edit to work. It is also what most first-time directors should do, because the alternative requires experience they do not yet have.

Loosely specified. A list of the setups intended, with the framing decided on the day with the actors. Suits performance-led dialogue scenes, where blocking discovered in rehearsal is often better than blocking imposed in advance.

Most working directors do both within the same film: precise lists for the technical and action material, looser ones for the intimate scenes.

What is not defensible is nothing. A director who arrives with no plan is making structural decisions in front of a waiting crew, and those decisions are worse than the ones they would have made at a desk.

Building one

Start from the scene's purpose. What has to be understood, and what has to be felt. Coverage follows from that rather than from a formula.

Decide the master. How is the geography established, and does it need to be.

Work out the coverage. For a dialogue scene, typically a master, singles on each character, and possibly over-the-shoulders. For anything else, whatever the action requires.

Add the inserts. The objects, the hands, the detail that the scene turns on. These are frequently what is missing when an edit does not work.

Check the edit works on paper. Read your list as a sequence and ask whether you could cut the scene from it. If a moment has only one angle, you have no options there.

Order it for shooting, not for story. Group by camera direction so you shoot everything one way before turning around, which is covered in day breaks and banners. Your list should be in the order it will be shot.

Mark what is essential. When you run out of time, and you will, you want to have decided in advance which three shots are the film and which four were nice to have. Doing that triage calmly at a desk is far better than doing it at 5pm.

Estimate setups against the schedule. Count them and check against your time estimates. A scene with fourteen setups scheduled for two hours is a scene that is not going to happen.

Using it on the day

Share it in advance. The AD, DP, gaffer and grip should all have it before the day. A shot list in the director's notebook is worth a fraction of one everyone has read.

Treat it as a plan, not a contract. Rehearsal will produce better ideas than you had at your desk. Take them.

Update it visibly when it changes. If shot 47D is gone, everyone needs to know, because someone is preparing for it.

Tick things off. Sounds trivial. It is how you know at 3pm exactly what remains, and it is how you avoid the specific misery of discovering in the edit that a shot everyone assumed was captured never was.

On a short

Shot list everything. There is no argument against it at this scale.

The reason is simple: on a small crew, thinking time is the most expensive thing you have, because nothing happens in parallel while the director decides. Every minute spent working out coverage on the day is a minute the whole unit is idle.

A workable minimum for each scene: a numbered list, shot size, who is in it, whether the camera moves, and a star against the three shots you cannot leave without.

Write it after you have seen the location, not before. A shot list made from imagination and a shot list made from having stood in the room are different documents, which is what the tech scout is for.

Next

The related documents that get confused with it, and what each one is actually good at.