Guides · Guide 03
Free templates: when they are enough, and when they are not.
A printed grid and a pencil is a real answer, used by good people on good films. It is worth being honest about where it works, because that is most of the time.
Straight up: there is no template to download on this page. It is the argument for and against using one, so you can work out which side of the line your shoot is on before you go looking.
Where a template genuinely wins
- One setup, one room, one afternoon. Two lights and a camera in a bedroom does not need software. It needs thirty seconds and a biro.
- On the day, on your feet. Paper works in bright sun, does not run out of battery, and can be handed to someone with light on it.
- Thinking out loud. Sketching is faster than any interface for the first idea. Plenty of good plans start on the back of a call sheet.
- You already have a printer and no budget. Free is a genuine feature.
If your work looks like that list, use the template. Nothing on this site will make that shoot better.
Where it falls over
1. The plan changes
It always changes. The location swaps, the actor count changes, the schedule folds two scenes together. On paper, a change means redrawing the whole page; so people do not redraw it. They annotate, then re-annotate, and by the third pass the drawing quietly stops matching the plan and nobody trusts it.
2. Nothing follows anything else
Move a light on paper and its coverage does not move with it, because you drew that coverage by hand. Change the lens and the frame you sketched is now a lie. Every relationship on the page has to be maintained by you, in your head, every time.
3. Scale is a guess
Most templates are a generic grid, not your room. "Three squares back" means whatever you decide it means, and it means something else to the person reading it. That is exactly the class of error a tape measure on the day discovers expensively.
4. Distribution
A pencil drawing has to be photographed to be shared, and a photographed pencil drawing at the bottom of a group chat, at night, on a phone, is not a readable document. A gaffer will not rig from it and should not have to.
5. It does not carry the detail a rigger needs
Fixture type, height, a numbered schedule, a scale bar. You can hand-write all of it, and the fifth time you hand-write it you will start leaving bits out.
The honest test
Ask one question: how many times will this plan change before you shoot it?
Zero or one, use paper. Three or more, or more than one person needs a current copy, and the template is now costing you more than it saves. That is the whole distinction. It is not about how professional your production is; it is about how many revisions the document has to survive.
What a tool has to earn
Anything that replaces a pencil has to be nearly as fast as one, or people go back to the pencil. That is the bar we set: room, camera, three lights, two actors, exported to PDF, in under five minutes, first time, without reading anything.
It also has to be free to open, because the person receiving your plan should never hit a paywall to read what you sent. So it is: drawing and editing are free with no limits. The one-time payment only affects your own exports, taking off the watermark and putting a whole project on one PDF.
Look at a finished plan with its legend and schedule, then decide whether it beats the template you are currently printing. If it does not, keep printing: genuinely.
Related
- How to draw a lighting plot, what has to be on the page, whatever you draw it with.
- How to make a blocking diagram, showing movement without the page turning to spaghetti.