Guides
How to draw the plan, whatever you draw it with.
Short, practical writing about the documents themselves: what goes on them, who reads them, and what makes one useful on the day. Useful with a pencil, useful with this tool.
How to draw a lighting plot
What a lighting plot is for, what has to be on it, and a worked example: a small kitchen with a key, a daylight fill, an edge and a practical.
How to make a blocking diagram
Marks, paths and camera coverage. How to show an actor moving through three positions on one page without the drawing turning into spaghetti.
Free templates: when they are enough
A printed grid and a pencil genuinely works for a lot of shoots. Here is exactly where it stops working, so you can tell which side of the line you are on.
Three-point lighting diagram
Three-point lighting is the standard starting point for lighting one person: a key to shape them, a fill to soften the shadow, and a back light to separate them from the background.
Lighting a night interior
A night interior has a built-in logic: warm lamps inside, a cooler world outside.
What a gaffer needs
A gaffer reads a plot to answer one question: what do I need to bring, and where does it go? Everything on the page should help with that, and everything else is noise.
Every guide here refers back to the same drawing: a 6.5 × 4.5 m kitchen with two cameras, four fixtures, a flag and five actor marks. Look at the finished page, including the legend and the object schedule that print with it.