How to create a schedule

        When it comes to creating movies, TV shows, magazines, podcasts, and every other type of media; a schedule becomes one of the most important things for producers and directors. The breakup of jobs and managing on time helps bring down production time, allowing us to view weekly or bi-weekly shows. Schedules become highly important for larger productions, as they allow for different Production Units to all work together.

        One great example of this is in literally every action movie that uses a stunt double or needs a variety of "Pick-ups" (shots that do not require the main unit eg. closeups, establishing shots, cutaways, etc.). Were it not for schedules, movies would take much longer to make, as all these different production units would not be able to work without the preceding unit finishing up their work.

        I am having this problem. Kind of. As I am a mortal man, I can only do so much by myself. I plan on starting with the most important scenes that take the longest amount of time, CG. Good CG scenes can often take months of production time. Production for them usually begins at the start of production, and they are often the last of the scenes to finish up. For the 2012 movie, one of the final earthquake scenes took 20 hours on average to render a single frame. Keep in mind there were 7,000 frames to go through. Had the production not accounted for multiple artists and computers, as well as artists breaking scenes up into easy-to-manage components, it would have taken 141,120 hours to render the scene alone. If you want to look more into the astonishing numbers and work that went into CG scenes for the movie, check out Popular Mechanic's article on it.

        If you couldn't tell already, I need to start working on a good CG scene, and pronto. As soon as I am done with CG, I can move on to recording live action. Seeing how most of my scenes are done at home, I can keep my render going while recording, which helps save time in case I need to make a quick change or something goes wrong. Post-production should come shortly after. Starting of with a simple rough cut is ideal, as I'll be able to add/delete scenes quickly, without wasting too much time on more complex editing, such as transitions, effects, and color grading. 

        I am purposefully not including many dates and expected completion times as this is mostly dependent on how well some scenes come out. While loose schedules are bad for productivity, I'm working alone, so I'll be able to make  sure everything comes out ideally, especially with CG (more on that later).