#callsheets

Pretend you are in a different department.  Someone is asking to use a part of your kit and not pay you for it.  It gets a lot easier to say no.

People in larger markets are more apt to share as they’re not up against the same four people for three jobs every year.  So please keep that in mind if you are someone in NY or LA who think I’m crazy for being template protective. 

It’s always better to be polite than not.  It doesn’t sound like this person is putting you in a good spot.  To go over my (personal) logic….

Times I think it’s okay to ask for someone’s template:

When you are part of the same department on the same show and the 1st has a template he/she would like you to use.  It’s okay to ask for the template then.

When you have a very good, open, working relationship with that AD and you don’t directly compete for jobs.

When you are a very established AD and have the ability to share templates back with people and/or they know you are simply looking to combo, not to use as your own tool.

I mean, frankly, it’s extremely assumptive to ask a fellow independent contractor for their hard work.  That’s something you are expected to have or be able to do as an AD and if you can’t do it by looking at a PDF of a callsheet (Easily available through this website : www.google.com)  you are not an AD and not ready to be an AD.  Knowing that template inside and out is your job.  And you don’t ask other people to do your job.  If you’re not willing to build a template you are too lazy to work in production.

These are fair to say:

One which is usually true, “My call sheet is a mess right now because I just had to chop it up for a show.  I don’t really have a good sharable template.”  And then ignore any follow up emails.  This is a polite “no” and if someone doesn’t want to respect it or gets demanding, that’s their issue.

This one, which, well, doesn’t go over well always but I have used, “It’s a really custom callsheet and it’s part of my kit. I’d prefer not to share the template as I’ve spent a lot of hours working on it and usually it’s what is included in my kit rental.”

Sometimes I just send them a PDF of it and say, “As you can see, pretty easy to just copy over!  I don’t do anything fancy, just use this to mirror in Excel.”  The thing is, this is usually also really true.  They aren’t saving that much time by using yours.

"I have always found it’s best to learn by making the template yourself."

You can always break the template and email a smashed template.  We all know how easy that is to do in Excel and how much time it takes to fix it.  This is extremely passive aggressive, so it’s not an approach I would  condone using.  I think we all need to dig our heels in more and say “No.” 

The thing is, production has this endemic illness of people asking for things that they are not entitled to.  Indie film especially.  Personal cars, weekend time, using up all the data on our phones without compensation…you name it.  If we want safer sets, if we want to improve our industry, we will start and continue to say a polite, and calm “No.”