Production Scheduling

Production scheduling in New York runs into overlapping authorities that other cities never face at once. Each shooting day has to clear MOME permits and their hour windows, NYPD movie set detail openings, and FDNY film safety officer scheduling for any work above fifty feet or with SFX. It must also clear NYC Parks blackout dates for events at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Domino Park and the High Line, MTA service hours for any subway or commuter platform work, and FAA planning for drone or aerial units around LaGuardia, JFK, Newark and Teterboro.

Layer on IATSE Local 52, Local 600 and DGA East turnaround rules, Teamsters Local 817 transport needs, SAG-AFTRA meal penalties, and the commercial car congestion pricing zone below 60th Street. With all of that in play, the stripboard turns into a chain of constraints to solve one by one. Our first ADs and production managers build schedules in Movie Magic Scheduling, Gorilla or StudioBinder against this stack of rules from the first day of breakdown.

The schedule itself follows how New York really shoots. Stage-heavy episodics block out non-stop weeks at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Silvercup and Kaufman Astoria in Queens, or York Studios in the Bronx. They then push out for location runs in Tribeca, the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, DUMBO and the Coney Island boardwalk.

We order picture-car shoots on the FDR, BQE and Brooklyn Bridge against NYPD detail openings, batch borough moves to cut Teamsters drive time, and guard golden-hour windows for the rooftop and waterfront work that defines New York shows. Live revisions go out through automated crew alerts, while weather spares route around nor'easter cycles and humidity loads. Our 15% day-saving on average comes from grouping scenes by location and cast openings rather than by script order. The schedule that ships is one a UPM can stand behind in a Monday production meeting.