A page for the shoot day
On Set is the campaign stripped to what matters when the lights are hot. No panels, no controls, no chrome — a single high-contrast page, set in large type on the house black, built to be read on a phone held at arm’s length between setups.
It appears in the project header only once previz frames exist, because until there are frames there is no shoot day to serve. When it does appear, it carries exactly four things: the Intent, the palette, the light and the shots. Everything else stays back at the desk, where it belongs.
The Intent
The page opens with the campaign summary set large in the house serif — the direction compressed to the sentence the whole day answers to. This is deliberate placement. On set, the fastest way to lose a shoot is to make forty small decisions that are each fine and collectively off-brief.
When a call has to be made at speed — the light has changed, the location fell through, the garment reads differently on camera — the Intent is the test. If the compromise still serves that sentence, take it. If it does not, it is not a compromise; it is a different campaign.
Palette and light
The palette renders as physical swatches with their names beneath — large enough to hold the phone against a surface, a fabric, a wall, and judge the match by eye. Descriptive colours that have no exact value still appear by name, because on set the vocabulary matters as much as the hex.
The light section lays out the lighting philosophy, style, direction, contrast, visibility and mood as a plain table, each value in full-size type under a crimson label. This is the gaffer’s page. It answers the question that gets asked most often on any set — what is the light doing, and why — without anyone having to open a laptop.
The Shots
The shot list closes the page: every shot numbered in oversized figures, titled in serif, described in a sentence, with its lens, angle, framing, light and subject action carried as tags. Where a shot has a mood note, it appears in italics against a crimson rule — the feeling the frame is for, kept next to the mechanics that produce it.
The numbers are set large on purpose. Between setups you are not reading; you are glancing, confirming, and moving. Cross the shots off as they land, and when the day compresses — it always compresses — the descriptions tell you which frames the direction can survive without.
Using it well
Open On Set before the crew arrives and read it once, top to bottom, while the studio is still quiet. Then leave it open. The page respects the phone’s safe areas and holds its contrast in bad light, because it was designed for the environment it is read in, not the one it was written in.
Its deeper purpose is delegation. Anyone on the crew can be handed the link and hold the same four truths you do — intent, colour, light, shots. A set where everyone can check the direction themselves is a set where you direct, rather than answer questions.