Scene Timing Grid

[Aerial]

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.

[leastlikely]

Was poking around the forms section and this reminded me of a scene timing sheet I had made for myself back when I was doing radio dramas, where it is vital to be timed perfectly to the second. If you have a 58:30 timeslot and your show runs 58:40, the last ten seconds will not be heard, but if you run 58:20, you'll need to kill ten extra seconds on air. It was helpful for me to know the exact differences in times from one rehearsal to the next, so I was able to know where the added or lost time was coming from. I lost the original workbook which had more than 5 minutes worth of work thrown into it... but this should be pretty easy to manipulate. You can time scenes, acts, pages, shifts, specific sequences, whatever you'd like, and it will calculate the time lost or gained each time you do it.

Punch in your lap time for each scene on the first column under every date. Once you have two dates worth of times in your sheet, it will calculate the - (meaning time lost since yesterday: the scene got faster) and the + (time gained since yesterday: the scene got slower). If it sped up, then there will be ##### in the + column, and if it got slower there will be ##### in the - column. They can be deleted if you prefer blank space!