What a DOOD is
The Day Out of Days — DOOD — is the schedule that answers one question for every performer: which days do they work, which days are they held, and which day do they start and finish? It's a grid. Cast down the side, shoot days across the top, a status code in every cell. Read across a row and you see one actor's entire engagement. Read down a column and you see who's needed that day.
It's the document that drives cast deal terms, holds, drop-and-pickups, and a meaningful slice of the budget — because a held performer is usually a paid performer who isn't shooting.
The status codes
Every cell carries a code. The standard set:
- SW — Start Work. The performer's first day. They start and work this day.
- W — Work. A regular working day.
- H — Hold. Not shooting, but contracted (and usually paid) — held so they're available for the surrounding days.
- WF — Work Finish. A working day that's also their last.
- SWF — Start Work Finish. Start, work, and finish all in one day (a single-day performer).
- SF / WD — Start/Finish or Worked Day, depending on the convention your scheduler uses.
Read a row left to right and the story is obvious. An actor with SW … W … H … W … WF worked the first day, a couple more, sat on hold for one, worked again, and finished. That one H is a day you paid for and didn't shoot.
Why hold days cost money
Here's the economics that makes the DOOD matter. A performer engaged from their start date to their finish date is typically paid for every day in that span, working or not — including holds. So if your hero starts on day 2 and finishes on day 18, but only actually shoots on eight of those days, you may be paying for seventeen days to get eight.
The DOOD makes this visible. A long run of H codes in a row is a flag: that performer is sitting expensive. The fixes are scheduling moves — re-board their scenes closer together to eliminate the holds, or negotiate a drop-and-pickup (release them mid-engagement and re-engage later) if the gap is long enough to justify it under their agreement.
How a DOOD gets built
The DOOD is computed, not typed. It falls out of two inputs: the breakdown (which characters appear in which scenes) and the schedule (which scenes shoot on which day). Cross those two and you know, for every performer, exactly which days they're needed. The start and finish dates are the first and last of those; everything in between that isn't a work day is a hold.
This is why you can't build a real DOOD before you've scheduled — and why a schedule change ripples straight into the DOOD. Move a scene to a different day and a performer's holds can appear or vanish.
How to read a DOOD as a producer
Three things to look for. Hold ratio — total held days vs total worked days, per performer and across the production. A high ratio means cast money is leaking into holds. Long single holds — a performer with one isolated work day surrounded by holds is a candidate to re-board. Start/finish spread — a performer whose engagement spans most of the shoot for only a handful of work days is your most expensive hold problem.
The DOOD is one of the first documents a completion bond or a line producer reads, because it's where cast cost discipline shows up.
DOOD vs the stripboard
Related but distinct. The stripboard is the shooting order — scenes sequenced into days. The DOOD is the consequence of that order for cast. You optimise the stripboard (group locations, minimise company moves) and the DOOD tells you what that optimisation did to cast holds. The two are read together: a stripboard that's efficient on locations but creates a wall of cast holds might not be the cheaper plan overall.
What this looks like inside StoryboardCanvas
The DOOD is computed live from the breakdown and the schedule — no manual grid-keeping. Every performer's SW/W/WF/SWF/H row falls out of which scenes they're tagged in and which day those scenes shoot. Hold ratios surface automatically, and a run of holds flags as a drop-and-pickup candidate. Re-board a scene on the stripboard and the DOOD updates with it, so you can see the cast-cost consequence of a scheduling decision before you commit to it. Cast day rates feed a cost roll-up so holds show up in real money, not just letters.