Location Scouting & Management

The Location tab (under Preproduction) is where you scout, document, monitor, and report every shooting location for a project. It replaces scattered location notes with one source of truth that also feeds your call sheets.

Preproduction is the tab formerly called "Shotlist & Schedule" — it now covers Script, Moodboard, Characters, Shot List, Floor Plan, Schedule and Location.

Grouping: master locations and sets

A master location is a physical place (e.g. "Old Docklands Warehouse"). A set is a shootable space inside it (e.g. "Main Floor", "Loading Bay"). A location can also be standalone when it has no sub-spaces.

Add master creates a physical place; use Add set on its card to add the spaces inside it.
A set inherits the master's shared logistics (address, parking, power, access, catering, HMU/wardrobe areas, contacts, safety, costs) — enter them once on the master. A set can override any inherited value, and always keeps its own scenes, dimensions, photos and notes.
Add location creates a standalone location. You can attach it to a master later (Overview → Master location) or promote a set back to standalone.

Tiles or list

The toggle beside the export menu switches the whole tab between two views:

Tiles (the default) — each location as a card led by its first photo, with the type pill, address, photo and scene counts and the status badge underneath. A tile with more than one photo carries a count badge in the corner. Locations you haven't photographed yet show a placeholder rather than collapsing, so the grid stays readable. Click the picture to open that location's photos full screen and page through them; click anywhere on the text below it to open the location itself. A tile with no photograph yet opens the location from either half.
List — a spreadsheet, one row per location. Alongside the name, type and status it prints the columns you actually compare when choosing between candidates: address, contact, phone, available dates, crew parking, power, scene count and photo count. Those live several sections apart in the detail panel and one location at a time; here they sit side by side.
- A set shows its master's inherited values, so parking and contact are filled in even when only the master carries them. A set that overrides a value shows its own.
- Long notes shorten to one line — hover a cell to read the whole thing. A dash (—) means nothing is recorded there yet, which is different from a value that failed to load.
- The location name stays pinned to the left edge while the table scrolls sideways, so a row of parking notes always belongs to a name you can see. On a phone the table scrolls horizontally; the rest of the app never does.

The choice is remembered per project on this device — a commercial with four photographed sets and a series with sixty don't want the same view, and the setting describes your screen, so it isn't synced to collaborators. One toggle governs both the sets under a master and the standalone locations, and a master shows a small thumbnail of its own first photo in tiles view. Sorting is not offered yet.

Arranging the columns

In list view a Columns button sits beside the view toggle. Drag a row in its panel to reorder the table, untick a column to take it out and tick it to bring it back — hidden columns stay in the panel so you can always find one to restore. The last remaining column cannot be unticked. To change a width, drag the right-hand edge of a column header in the table itself; with that edge focused, ← and → step the width and Shift + ← / → take a bigger step. Resizing is a pointer and keyboard affordance on tablet and desktop — on a phone the table scrolls sideways instead. One arrangement governs every table on the tab, because a master's sets and the standalone list are the same columns twice.

The arrangement is kept with your account, not with the project: the layout you set on a laptop is the one your tablet opens on, it survives a reload even offline, and a collaborator hiding a column never hides it for you. It is remembered per project, because column sets differ per production. Reset columns appears as soon as the arrangement differs from the default and restores the original order, the default set of columns and the original widths.

Monitoring status

Each location carries a status: Scouting → Option → Confirmed, plus Backup and Rejected. Set it from the card or the detail header to track scouting progress at a glance. Backup/rejected locations stay in the list, visually de-emphasised.

The scout detail

Open a location to fill in everything a recce report needs, organised into collapsible sections:

Overview — name, address, master, INT/EXT, DAY/NIGHT, status, time zone, primary location, available dates, linked scenes.
- Primary location marks the project's home base. Travel times are measured from it and the project header names it. Exactly one location holds it: setting it here takes it off whichever location had it, so the button on the current primary reads "Primary location" and is inactive — you move the flag by setting it somewhere else. The first location you create takes it automatically.
- Time zone is what this location's call-sheet times and schedule display are read in. Leave it unset to follow the device. A set with no zone of its own inherits its master's, and the picker says so rather than claiming "Auto-detect".
Map & Pin — enter an address in Overview, then Locate address to drop a geocoded pin; upload a map/satellite screenshot and annotate it with pins and lines.
Photos — upload multiple photos of the space (compressed and stored in the cloud, so they don't bloat sync). Add captions. Click any photo to open it full screen, then move through the rest with the arrows, the ← / → keys, the filmstrip along the bottom, or a swipe on a tablet. Esc closes it. Read-only collaborators get the viewer too — it is the whole point of sharing a recce.
Access & Directions, Logistics & Parking, Departments (HMU, wardrobe, holding, video village, production office, equipment, restrooms, catering), Technical & Power, Environment & Constraints, Contacts, Safety (nearest hospital), Costs, Notes.

Call-sheet sync

When a location is assigned to a shoot day (Calendar tab → shooting period), generating that day's call sheet auto-fills its curated location details — address/basecamp, parking, nearest hospital, load-in, department areas, power notes and the map image. Sets pass their master's inherited values through automatically.

Export a Location Report

Use Export report (all locations, grouped by master) or Export on a single location to produce a polished Location Report PDF with the map, photo grid and every populated section — ready to share with the crew.

Last Updated: 2026-09-09 Version: 0.766.0