The Duration view shows each shooting day on your board as a timeline, with every strip sized by how long it will take to shoot. You can see at a glance how full each day is, what time each scene is scheduled to start, and whether you’re shooting at sunrise, in daylight, at sunset or at night. You can also resize strips right on the timeline to plan out your day.
Opening the Duration View
To switch a board to the Duration view:
- Click the view dropdown in the board pane’s menu bar
- Select “Duration”
The Duration view needs day breaks to work out which strips belong to each day. If your board doesn’t have any day breaks yet, you’ll see a message asking you to add days first. See Adding Day Breaks for details.
Note: The Add Day button is unavailable while the board is in the Duration view. Switch back to the Strips view to add day breaks.
Reading the Duration View
Each shooting day appears as its own section, made up of three parts:
- Menu bar: The Start Editing button, plus the day’s Call Time and Day Duration
- Timeline: A ruler down the left side marks each hour of the day, and the strips are stacked next to it in shooting order. The taller a strip, the longer it takes to shoot.
- End of day: A bar at the bottom shows the shoot day number, shoot date, total pages and total duration for the day
Each strip shows:
- Scene number
- Slugline, plus the description when there’s room
- Pages
- Duration: How long the scene takes to shoot
- Time of day icon: A sunrise, sun, sunset or moon icon showing when the scene falls in relation to that day’s sunrise and sunset. Scenes that start within 30 minutes of sunrise or sunset show the sunrise or sunset icon.
- Start time: The time of day the scene starts, worked out from the call time and the durations of the strips before it
Banners appear on the timeline too, so you can block out time for things like a company move or a meal break.
Click a strip to select it, just as you would in the Strips view. Shift-click and Ctrl/Cmd-click work for selecting several strips. When you select a strip, the Duration view scrolls to show it.
Setting the Call Time and Day Duration
Each day has two settings in its menu bar:
- Call Time: The time the day starts. The first strip starts at the call time, and every strip after it starts when the one before it ends. If you change the call time, all of the start times for that day update.
- Day Duration: The total length of the shooting day. This sets how tall the day’s timeline is and limits how much time the strips can fill. New day breaks start with a 7:00 AM call time and a 12-hour day.
If you shorten the Day Duration to less time than the strips already fill, Think Crew shrinks every strip in that day by the same proportion so they fit.
The call time is stored on the day break, so you can also change it by selecting the day break and using the Call Time field in the breakdown pane.
Resizing Strips
To change how long scenes take:
- Click the “Start Editing” button in the day’s menu bar. Strips are shown faded until editing is turned on.
- Drag the separator between two strips up or down to resize them
- Click “Stop Editing” when you’re done
Editing is turned on separately for each day, so only the days you’ve chosen to edit can be changed. You can edit several days at once by clicking Start Editing on each of them.
When you start editing a day that has strips without a duration, Think Crew gives them a starting duration by sharing the remaining time in the day equally between them.
As you drag, the durations and start times update live. Your changes are saved when you let go. A strip can be as short as 15 minutes.
Changing How Resizing Works
By default, dragging a separator makes the strip above it longer or shorter, and the strip just below it gets shorter or longer by the same amount. Hold a key while you start dragging to change this:
- Ctrl/Cmd + drag: The last strip of the day resizes to fit. The strip you drag changes, the strip below it keeps its duration, and the last strip in the day grows or shrinks to make up the difference. Use this when you want to lengthen one scene and push everything after it later in the day, without changing the scenes in between.
- Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + drag: Every strip after the one you drag resizes at the same time. The time you add or remove is shared out between all of the strips below, in proportion to their current durations, so each one grows or shrinks by the same percentage.
Hold the keys down before you click the separator. The behavior is set when the drag starts. Dragging the separator below the last strip of the day always resizes just that strip, using any empty time left at the end of the day.
You can see these instructions at any time by clicking the info icon at the right of any day’s menu bar.
Leaving Strips Out of the Duration View
Strips and banners appear in the Duration view when their “Use duration” checkbox is turned on, which it is by default. To leave a strip or banner out, for example a banner you only use as a label:
- Select the strip or banner
- In the breakdown pane, find the Duration field
- Uncheck “Use duration”
When “Use duration” is off, the strip is removed from the timeline, and its Duration and Start Time fields can’t be edited. Turn it back on to return the strip to the timeline.
You can also type an exact Duration or Start Time for a strip in the breakdown pane instead of dragging.
Printing the Duration View
You can print the Duration view from the print panel. Open the print panel, go to the Boards tab, and set the View to “Duration”. You can print the whole board or only a range of days, and choose how banners, strips and day breaks are colored. See Printing Schedules for details.
The Duration view turns your stripboard into a real hour-by-hour plan for each day, so you can spot overloaded days, plan around the light and give your crew realistic start times.
