Free shot list template
A free printable shot list template with nine columns and eighteen numbered rows on one A4 landscape page, in a table somebody can read standing up at six in the morning. Download the PDF, print it or put it straight into the shoot pack.
What’s inside
Shot, description, size, angle, movement, lens, frame rate, duration and dialogue. Nothing decorative.
All eighteen on one sheet, numbered on the paper. Where a list runs on, the column header prints again at the top of the next page.
Landscape A4 with the margins inside the page, clear enough to punch. It prints on US Letter scaled to fit.
What belongs on a shot list
A shot list says what has to be in the camera before anybody can go home. It gets read standing up, in a hurry, by somebody who has not got time to interpret a paragraph. The blank shot list template leaves every production field open, so the list can be filled in on a laptop or printed and written on by hand.
- Everything on it should help the crew understand what has to be captured. Size, angle, movement, lens and frame rate describe the shot clearly enough to plan and execute it.
- Location, cast, unit call and equipment belong on the call sheet, and putting them here makes the list longer without making the day clearer.
- Leave a column blank where the decision has not been made. A blank lens box gets asked about on the day, which is what it is for.
- Abbreviate the way the crew already does: WS, MS, MCU, CU, ECU.
How the nine columns work
Filling it in
Four rows of an invented sequence, written the way they would get written the night before.
A kitchen, early morning. A kettle boils, a phone rings, somebody crosses the room to answer it, and we hold on the empty worktop.
- Shot
- 1
- Description
- Kettle comes to the boil on the worktop
- Size and angle
- CU, eye level
- Movement and lens
- Locked off, 50mm
- Duration
- 3 sec
- Shot
- 2
- Description
- Phone rings on the worktop, room otherwise still
- Size and angle
- WS, eye level
- Movement and lens
- Slow push, 35mm
- Duration
- 4 sec
- Shot
- 3
- Description
- Hand enters frame and lifts the phone
- Size and angle
- MS, over shoulder
- Movement and lens
- Handheld, 35mm
- Duration
- 2 sec
- Shot
- 4
- Description
- Empty worktop after they leave frame
- Size and angle
- CU, high
- Movement and lens
- Locked off, 50mm
- Duration
- 3 sec
- Four rows and the morning already has a shape: two locked-off frames, a slow push on the wide, one handheld.
Ordering it for the shoot
Once the board is approved in story order, make a shooting order for the day.
- Group shots around whatever is expensive or difficult to change on that production. That might be location, lighting direction, camera setup, cast availability, daylight or a practical effect. The right order is the one that gets the coverage without repeatedly rebuilding the same conditions.
- Keep the original shot numbers while you reorder them. The number identifies the shot; its position in the day's schedule can change.
- Split a long list by location and print each as its own set, so the sheet in somebody's hand covers the room they are standing in.
Story order and shooting order
Two documents describing the same shots, and running them together is how a list stops being useful.
- The board is in story order: what the film looks like, and what a client approves. The list is in shooting order: what the day looks like, and the last shot of the film is quite often the first thing in the camera.
- Keep the board's shot numbers. Renumbering into shooting order breaks every reference in the production office.
See also: Storyboard vs shot list
Setups, not shots
What governs a day is setups: how many times the camera and the lights have to move and be re-rigged. Six shots off one setup and one lens can be quicker than two that need the room turned round, so sixty shots is a lot for a day with dialogue in it and much less of a problem on a product table where the camera barely moves.
- Mark on the sheet where a setup ends, with a rule or a blank row. Somebody is counting setups whether or not the document helps them.
When a list is enough, and when a board earns its place
Interviews, events, product on a table, a second unit day. Nobody needs a drawing of a locked-off two shot: they need to know there are eleven of them and what lens each is on.
Where the schedule is the hard part rather than the composition, the list runs the day.
A board is what a client signs off, and what an agency shows to somebody who was not in the meeting.
Plenty of directors do not draw, and reference stills pinned beside a clear list carry the look. A lot of jobs end up with both: a board for the sequences that have to be sold, a list for the whole shoot.
The sheet, and printing it
One A4 landscape page, nine columns, eighteen numbered rows, no bleed. The table is laid out to fixed widths so it can never grow past the paper and lose its right-hand columns off the edge, and where a list runs past the first sheet the header prints again at the top of the next one.
210 by 297mm with the margins inside the page: 10mm at the sides and 12mm top and bottom, tighter than the storyboard sheets because nine columns want the width. Fit to page on US Letter prints at about 94 percent. Punch the top edge; on the left a two-hole punch lands close to the shot-number column.
Build your storyboard in Storybrdr
In the app the shot list is not a document you maintain. It derives from the board: add a shot, set its size, movement and lens, and the row appears. Change the board and the list changes with it.
Export it as a PDF for the shoot pack or a CSV for a spreadsheet, and take the same list to set on a phone with the approved frame attached to each shot.
The exported PDF is printed by the same engine that printed the blank sheet at the top of this page, which is why the two are the same document.
What that looks like on the day: On Set.
If the list has to change as the shoot does, the shot list app keeps it derived from the board rather than retyped.