​

Day Out of Days (DOOD)

The Day Out of Days (DOOD) is your cast availability report: which days each character works, which days they’re on hold, and when they travel, rehearse, or sit idle between shoot days. Spell Slate builds it automatically from your schedule, then feeds those same numbers into the budget so cast costs and paid days line up. This page covers what the DOOD is, the codes on it, how hold-days and work-days are calculated, how you can override a day, and how the DOOD connects to the budget.

​

Where to open it

Production → Schedule → open your schedule → Export → Day Out of Days. You can also reach it from Breakdown → Reports → production section, or from the Budget page (the Cast / schedule card has a View DOOD link).

​

What the DOOD shows

A grid with one row per cast member and one column per shoot day. Each cell shows a short code telling you the actor’s status that day (working, holding, traveling, etc.). The bottom of each row summarizes Start day, Finish day, Work days, Hold days, and Total days. This is the same report Movie Magic Scheduling and Gorilla Scheduling produce. It’s used by production managers, UPMs, and payroll to:

• Know which actors are needed on which days.
• Calculate cast pay (work days + hold days, weekly rates, drop/pickup periods).
• Plan travel, rehearsals, and time-off.
• Feed the cast portion of the budget.

​

How it’s built

You do not fill in the DOOD by hand. It comes straight from the stripboard:

1. Each scene on the stripboard has tagged characters from the breakdown.
2. Each scene lives on a shoot day (between two day breaks).
3. For every character, Spell Slate collects the set of shoot days that contain at least one scene the character is in. Those are the character’s work days.
4. The character’s start day is their first work day. Their finish day is their last work day.
5. Any shoot day between start and finish where the character is not actually working becomes a hold day.

So if LEAD is in scenes on day 1 and day 5, LEAD has 2 work-days, 3 hold-days, and a total span of 5 days. This is why you never “type in” hold days anywhere. They’re a consequence of how scenes are arranged on the stripboard.

​

The codes

​

Extended codes (overrides)

Some cast statuses are production decisions the schedule cannot infer. Use DOOD Overrides on the schedule to set these explicitly per character per day: Open Schedule → Export → DOOD Overrides. Pick the character, the shoot day, and the code. The override replaces whatever Spell Slate would have auto-computed for that cell. Overrides are stored per schedule, so changes on a working schedule don’t affect an approved one.

​

Work-days vs hold-days

This distinction trips people up, so here it is plainly:

• Work day: a shoot day the character is actually on camera.
• Hold day: a shoot day between the character’s first and last work day when they are not on camera.
• Total days: finish day minus start day, plus one. The span the character is “held” on the production.

Why hold days matter: once an actor is started, most union agreements (SAG-AFTRA especially) require you to keep paying them through to their last day. Hold days are paid days even when the actor isn’t on set. Budgeting cast as “work days × rate” understates the real cost. Budgeting as “total days × rate” is usually closer to the truth for series-regular and week-out actors.

​

How the DOOD feeds the budget

The budget’s Cast category is driven by the same numbers as the DOOD.

​

The Cast / schedule summary card

Open Production → Budget. If the project has a schedule, a Cast / schedule card at the top of the budget shows:

• The schedule name, total shoot days, and cast count.
• Across all cast: total work-days and total hold-days, summed across every character.

Those totals are summed from the DOOD. They’re a quick “is my cast budget sized right?” check.

​

Per-line “Use DOOD days”

Each cast line item in the budget has a Use DOOD days option. When turned on:

• Quantity on the line is set to the character’s work-day count from the DOOD.
• Unit is set to daily.
• Estimated becomes quantity × rate.

So if LEAD is in 2 work-days at $500/day, the line fills with quantity 2, rate$500, estimated $1000. Change the schedule, reopen the budget, and the line re-reads the DOOD. If your production pays for hold-days as well (typical on union shoots), add a separate line or adjust quantity to the character’s total days instead. The Use DOOD days button uses work-days because that is the conservative starting point; you bump it up for union or weekly-rate actors. See Line items and board sync for full edit options and Pull from breakdown and categories for how cast lines are first created.

​

Keeping the DOOD accurate

Because the DOOD is derived from the stripboard, keeping it accurate means keeping the schedule accurate:

• Tag characters on every scene they’re in. If a character isn’t tagged on a scene, that scene won’t become a work-day for them. Open the scene in the breakdown to add or correct the character list.
• Put scenes on the correct shoot day. Moving a strip between days changes start, finish, work, and hold days for every character in that scene.
• Split scenes if a scene shoots across two days, so each split can live on its own day with the right characters.
• Add DOOD overrides for travel, rehearsal, and pickups that the schedule can’t infer.

When any of these change, reopen the DOOD (or refresh the budget page) and the numbers recalculate on the spot. Nothing to migrate.

​

Approve the schedule

Call sheets and DPR use the approved schedule. While you’re planning, keep the Working Schedule open and tweak it freely. Once stripping is done, Approve so call sheets, DPR, and the DOOD stop changing mid-production. See Approving a schedule and Boneyard.

​

Next

• Budget and Pull from breakdown and categories for how cast lines get into the budget.
• Line items and board sync for the per-line Use DOOD days toggle.
• Stripboard and shoot days for editing the schedule that drives the DOOD.
• Managing cast for linking characters to cast members.
• Reports for every other production PDF.