Calendars and calendar events help you mark the dates that affect your production schedule, such as holidays, travel days, rehearsals or days when a location isn’t available. Think Crew uses these dates to work out which days are shoot days, so your boards and Day Out of Days always reflect the real production calendar.
How Calendars Work
Each schedule can have one or more calendars, and each board uses one of them. Several boards can share the same calendar, so a holiday only needs to be added once.
A calendar holds two kinds of dates:
- Blackout days: Days when the production isn’t shooting. Shoot days skip over these dates automatically.
- Events: Days marked with an event type, such as “Holiday” or “Rehearsal”. Events show their short name on the calendar. If the event type is set as a day off, shoot days skip that date too.
Note: A board’s start date and its weekly days off (such as weekends) aren’t stored in the calendar. They belong to each board and are set in the Scenario Manager. See Managing Schedule Scenarios for details.
Opening the Calendar Manager
To open the Calendar Manager, use either of these options:
- Click the “Manage” menu in the schedule menu bar and select “Calendars…”
- Press Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + A
Your calendars are listed on the left. Select a calendar to see its name and its calendar on the right.
You can sort the list by clicking the “Name” column header, drag calendars to reorder them, or use the filter at the top right to search by name.
Creating a Calendar
To create a calendar, click the “+” (New Calendar) button in the Calendar Manager’s menu bar, then give it a name.
To start from an existing calendar, select it and click the Duplicate Calendar button instead. The copy includes all of the original calendar’s blackout days and events. This is a handy way to try out a different holiday plan without changing the original.
To use a calendar on a board, open the Scenario Manager and choose it from that board’s Calendar dropdown.
Reading the Calendar
The calendar on the right shows one month at a time. Use the arrows to move between months, or click the dropdown next to the month name to jump up to a year forward or back.
The calendar shows the dates for the board selected in the dropdown above it, so you can see how your events affect that board’s schedule:
- The board’s start date is marked with an arrow
- Shoot days are highlighted
- The board’s weekly days off are shaded
- Blackout days are shown in a darker color
- Events show their short name on the day
Selecting Days
Click a day to select it. Click it again to clear the selection. To select more than one day:
- Shift-click: Select every day between the first selected day and the day you click
- Ctrl/Cmd-click: Add or remove individual days
- Alt-click: Select the same day of the week across a range. For example, select a Saturday, then Alt-click a Saturday a month later to select every Saturday in between.
Adding Blackout Days
To mark days when the production isn’t shooting:
- Select one or more days on the calendar
- Click the “Blackout” button below the calendar
To remove blackout days, select them and click “Blackout” again.
Adding Events
To add an event:
- Select one or more days on the calendar
- Click the “Events” dropdown below the calendar
- Select an event type
The event’s short name appears on each selected day. Event types that are already on the selected days are highlighted in the dropdown. To remove an event, select the days and choose the same event type again.
To create or change event types, choose “Edit Event Types” at the bottom of the Events dropdown. This opens the Event Types tab in your schedule settings, where you can set each type’s name, short name and whether it counts as a day off. See Schedule Settings for details.
Element Availability
Elements, such as cast members, have their own calendar in the Element Manager. Use it to track when a particular element isn’t available:
- Day Off: Select days and click “Day Off” to mark days the element can’t work, such as an actor’s prior commitment
- Weekly days off: Click a day of the week at the top of the calendar to mark it as a regular day off for the selected elements
- Events: Add events to an element’s calendar the same way you would on a schedule calendar
If an element is scheduled to work on a day they aren’t available, Think Crew flags that day in the Day Out of Days so you can spot the conflict.
Deleting a Calendar
To delete a calendar:
- Select one or more calendars in the Calendar Manager
- Click the Delete Calendar button in the menu bar
- Confirm that you want to delete them
Deleting a calendar also deletes all of its blackout days and events. A schedule must always have at least one calendar, so you can’t delete all of them. Before deleting a calendar, make sure none of your boards are still using it.
Keeping your calendars up to date means your shoot days, Day Out of Days and printouts always match the real production calendar, so you can plan around holidays and conflicts before they become problems.
