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« on: Sep 02, 2007, 03:28 pm »
I've been meaning to upload my scene timing grid for some time. My boyfriend wrote me an excel spreadsheet to do the time math for me if I just let the stopwatch run, and wrote down successive times. I've used it for about 2 years now and I love it. It's not the most intuitive document at first, but once you learn it, it's pretty simple. Below is the instruction sheet I created to go with it.
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In the scene and pages columns you can just input information as you normally would. At the top of the timing columns there are spaces to input date, and such. All of these spaces are formulated as text, so whatever your type will appear exactly as typed.
In the timing columns , you will note that there are actually two columns. The larger column contains the formula. You should never type in that column(unless the formula's not working, then you should copy it in from another cell). The smaller column is where you input each successive time. It is formatted so that the text is white, so that what is entered into that column is not visible on the final output.
Times must be entered without their colon. For example:
12:13 becomes 1213
4:54 becomes 454
0:36 becomes 036
The formula in the large column will take the time you enter and subtract the time in the row above it, so that you end up with the time for just that scene.
Say scene 1 ends at 2:36. In the first box in the little column, you enter 236. In the first box in the large column 2:36 appears. Then say, scene 2 ends at 5:21. You enter 521 in the 2nd box in the little column, and in the 2nd box in the larger column 2:45 appears. Note that it takes into account that math with time is out of 60.
Finally, at the bottom, there is a row that says TOTAL. In this row, you type in the last time that your stopwatch said. Unfortunately this version of the scene timing grid does not do the addition for you.
Another shortcoming of this version of the scene timing grid is that it cannot group sections like acts, because if you interrupt the column of times, the formula starts again. So this is okay if you restart the stopwatch after every group of things you ultimately want a collective time for, but not if you keep the stopwatch running.