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Crew Prep & Return Matrix

Per-crew availability grid for prep and return days

The Prep & Return Matrix turns the project's prep and return dates into a horizontal day grid and crew members into vertical rows, so you can mark each person's availability per day. It is intentionally scoped — only prep and return phases, only this project. The Crew tab's Matrix view is the same grid over every project day (prep, shoot and return); cross-project conflict detection lives in the Calendar.

What the matrix shows

Each row is a crew member; each column is one prep or return day. Cells show the crew member's availability status for that day.

  • Rows — crew members from the project's Crew tab (Permanent view).
  • Columns — prep and return days only, from the prep and return periods set in the project's Calendar tab (not the shoot days).
  • Cells — click to cycle through Confirmed (✓) → Tentative (?) → Unavailable (✕) → Off.
  • A day inside one of a crew member's unavailability periods starts as Unavailable; a click overrides it like any other cell.
  • A cell switched to Off or Unavailable takes that person off the day's call sheet, and so does a day inside their unavailability periods. A cell never set keeps them on it, so a project that never uses the matrix keeps its whole crew on every call sheet.
  • Period groups visually separate prep blocks from return blocks.
  • Weekends are visually muted but still clickable.
  • The project's General tab shows a read-only Crew Prep & Return Schedule summary of the same assignments.
Tips
  • Empty matrix with 'No prep or return days set' message → add prep or return periods in the Calendar tab first.
  • No crew rows showing → add crew members in the Crew tab's Permanent view first.
  • Status legend sits at the top of the matrix — Confirmed, Tentative, Unavailable, Off.

Setting availability

Click cells one at a time to cycle through the four statuses.

  1. Open the project's Crew tab and switch to the Prep & Return view.
  2. For each crew row, click the day cell to mark their status.
  3. Each click cycles through Confirmed → Tentative → Unavailable → Off.
  4. The legend above the grid maps each icon to its status.
Tips
  • No drag-select or bulk fill — every cell change is one click.
  • No 'mark all of Camera dept' shortcut — each row is set individually.
  • Updates persist immediately. No save button.

Day summary row

A summary row below the crew rows shows the confirmed count vs. total crew per day (e.g. 3/5). Useful as a sanity check before sending the call sheet for that day.

  • Per-day confirmed-vs-total count, colour-coded by how close to full the day is: green from 80 % confirmed, amber from 50 %, muted below that.
  • Spotting under-coverage is faster here than by reading individual rows.

What the matrix does NOT do

Common confusions worth clearing up — these features exist elsewhere.

  • NOT a shoot-day grid. This matrix is prep + return only; the Crew tab's Matrix view covers every project day, shoot days included, and works the same way.
  • NOT cross-project conflict detection. That's the Calendar's Double-Booking Detector.
  • NOT an ICS export source. ICS export lives on the Calendar.
  • NOT bulk-fill capable. No drag-select, no 'set whole department' shortcut. Single-cell clicks only.
Tips
  • For shoot days, use the Crew tab's Matrix view, Call Sheets (per-day editor) and the Calendar (timeline view).
  • For double-booking detection, see the Calendar topic → 'Double-Booking Detector'.

The Prep & Return Matrix is a focused tool for the often-overlooked planning around shoot days. For full timeline planning, the Calendar's Gantt view is the right surface.

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