The pre-production checklist we run before a small shoot

A lot of what goes wrong on a filming day gets decided the week before. Somebody didn’t know which door to use, the person on camera was called in two hours early, the script was still changing at breakfast, and the exterior shot got remembered on the drive home.

We’re a video production company. We make corporate and marketing films, mostly with a small crew, and this is the list we go through before one of those days. It’s written for people doing the same kind of work: a one-person production company, a small studio or agency, or someone in a marketing team who’s ended up organizing the filming as well as everything else. It isn’t for feature films or TV, where there’s a whole department for each of these lines.

Where we’ve made a free template for a step, I’ve linked it. None of them needs an account.

A week or so before

The brief, in one paragraph. Who the film is for, what they should do or think after watching it, and where it’s going to be shown. If that paragraph’s hard to write, sort it out before anything else.

Who’s on camera, and whether they’ve agreed. Names, roles, and any releases you need from them, signed before the day rather than chased afterward.

The location, confirmed in writing. The date, the rooms you can use, the hours you can be there, and anything you can’t film, like customer names on screens or a production line under wraps.

A few days before

The script, locked. Or if it’s an interview, the questions agreed with whoever signs off on the film. A script that’s still changing that morning costs you takes. If someone’s reading it to camera, our free teleprompter runs in the browser and follows their voice, so nobody has to scroll it for them.

The shot list. Every shot you need, written as something you can point a camera at, grouped by room and numbered in the order you’ll film it. Mark the ones you can’t leave without. Our shot list template does that, and downloads as a spreadsheet or prints for the day.

The gear, matched to the list. Go down the shot list and check you’ve got what each shot needs: the lenses, a second mic for the interview, the slider for that one move. Then check the batteries and cards again.

The night before

The call sheet, sent. One document with the times, the address and how to actually get in, where to park, everyone’s own call time and number, the schedule, the weather, and what to do in an emergency. Send it the evening before and ask everyone to reply that they’ve got it. Our call sheet template makes the sheet, with your name or logo on it, and you send the PDF yourself.

The emergency details, looked up fresh. The nearest emergency room and pharmacy for this location, not the last one. It’s the only section of the sheet where being wrong is dangerous.

The people on camera, called in at the right time. Not with the crew. Nobody gives a good interview after an hour of watching light stands go up.

On the day

The interview, usually first. That’s our default. The person who matters most gets filmed while they’re fresh, before anything’s had a chance to run late.

The list, checked off as you go. Check each shot off as you get it, and before you pack up, make sure the starred ones are done.

The cutaways, before they get squeezed. You need them to cut the interview down, and they’re the first thing that goes when the afternoon runs short.

What we’re building next: letting Claude or ChatGPT fill it in

Most of what goes on a call sheet or a shot list already exists before you start. It’s in the client’s brief, in a long email thread about dates and parking, and in the script. Typing it all out again is the evening job nobody wants.

So we’re building Miracue its own connection for AI assistants, what the AI companies call an MCP. It lets an assistant like Claude or ChatGPT work inside Miracue directly, instead of just talking to you about it. Once it’s ready, you’ll be able to drop the brief and the email thread into your assistant and have it fill in the call sheet, the shot list and the rest of the shoot in Miracue. The aim is for it to work the same way in Claude and in ChatGPT.

What should save the most time is the small stuff buried in a thread. We tried the idea out by hand, pasting a rough brief into two different AI models, GPT and Gemini. The brief said “no beach before 15:00”, and both came back with the beach scheduled at exactly 15:00, and both repeated it in the notes without being asked.

The rule we’ve set is strict: it only uses what’s in your material, and anything it can’t find stays blank for you to fill. We learned that one the hard way. Before we had the rule, one of the models invented camera gear and put the golden hour two hours early. It’s the same thinking as the template leaving the emergency details blank today.

You won’t have to use it. The free templates on this page keep working on their own, in your browser. If you do use it, what you give your assistant, the brief, the emails, the script, goes to the AI company behind it, the same as anything else you paste into Claude or ChatGPT.

It isn’t live yet, and we’d rather not promise a date.

Why we give these away

We built these templates from the documents we use on our own shoots. They’re all linked from one page, miracue.app/free-tools, and they’re free. What you type stays in your browser, and the printed call sheet and shot list have a small “Made with Miracue” line at the bottom.

If you’re the person presenting rather than organizing the shoot, you don’t need most of this list. You need the script and something to read it from, and the teleprompter is the only part of this page that’s for you.

When you want all of it in one place

Everything on this checklist can live in one project with Miracue Pro, which opens in November: the call sheet, the shot list and a storyboard you can sketch with AI, with an AI assistant that fills in the call sheet from the client’s notes. On the day, your crew opens the whole shoot on their phones from one link, and your client gets their own link to the plan. Studio, for teams, follows in January.

Join the Pro waitlist to hear first. The free templates stay free either way.

Questions