Pickup Shots

Pickup shots (often just "pickups") are additional, usually small, pieces of footage filmed to fill gaps. The term is used in two related ways.

On set, a pickup can mean restarting a take partway through instead of from the top. If an actor stumbles on the last line, the director may ask to "pick it up" from the line before, which saves time and keeps the energy of the scene.

More commonly, pickups are shots gathered after principal photography has wrapped, once the editor has assembled the footage and the team can see what is missing. Typical pickups include an insert of a phone screen or a letter, a cutaway that helps a transition, an establishing shot of a building, or a line that clarifies a story point. They often need only a small crew and sometimes no lead actors at all.

Pickups are different from reshoots, although the line can blur. Reshoots generally redo scenes or sequences more substantially, often with principal cast, and cost considerably more to arrange. Many productions set aside a little time and money for pickups from the start, because some gaps only become visible in the rough cut.

For writers, pickups are a useful lesson in what an audience actually needs. The shots added late are often small pieces of clarity, a reminder that one clear image can do the work of a page of explanation. See dailies, rough cuts, and notes for where pickups fit in post-production.