Day Out of Days (DOOD)

A Day Out of Days (DOOD) is the scheduling grid that maps every cast member against every shoot day: who starts when, works which days, and finishes when. Each cell carries a code — SW (start work), W (work), H (hold), F (finish) — and the totals at the row's end are what that actor costs.

The document exists because cast time is bought in blocks, not moments. An actor on a hold day isn't filming but is being paid to remain available; a schedule that scatters one character's scenes across five weeks buys weeks of holds. The 1st AD builds the schedule and the DOOD together, consolidating each actor's work into the tightest span possible — one reason films shoot out of story order.

Writers shape this document without knowing it. A minor character who appears in scenes on page 8, 54, and 102 forces either an awkward schedule or a long, expensive engagement for a small role. The rewrite that merges that character into another — or concentrates their scenes — is a DOOD optimization performed on the page, where it's free.

Cast economy is one of the clearest signals separating producible scripts from expensive ones, and it's read directly by our scorecard's budget realism dimension.