Quick Answer
Prepping a Netflix series as a DP means doing about three months of solid work before day one. On Glory, that meant building location breakdowns, scene-by-scene canvases, and a master scene list. You’re handling scouts, lighting plots, and camera movement diagrams, while sharing references to decide a color palette with the art and costume departments. It’s camera and lensing tests, fight choreography sessions, and negotiating costs with producers. All before a single frame is actually shot.
What does DP prep actually involve on a series?
The DP has to manage logistics in a similar way as the AD, but it’s much broader. You are constantly balancing the schedule and timing with the money from quotes. It’s a fluid negotiation, trying to make the best show possible within the confines of your resources. You have to maintain flexibility. One minute you’re having theoretical, thematic conversations with directors, and the next you’re having practical arguments about costs with your gaffer and production.
Why is Netflix-scale prep different from a feature or commercial?
These Netflix shows run for a whole season. You have to establish and maintain a look across 400 to 500 scenes, compared to maybe 100 in a feature or 20 shots in a commercial. You have to be flexible and run a marathon. There are executives watching dailies, and you have to make sure the footage doesn’t spook them. You also have to maintain morale and a good working environment for months, sometimes across an 85-day shoot, motivating your crew to give their best by tapping into their creativity and love for the craft.
How did the prep for Glory actually work?
For Glory, a mystery thriller set in the world of Olympic-hopeful boxing in Punjab, the first weeks were about finding a visual language. It needed the compositional weight of a classic western, the spatial patience of Kurosawa, and the texture of contemporary Indian noir. Those three things don’t sit naturally together, so that friction was the first problem to solve.
To manage over 400 scenes over multiple cities, I used several tools in tandem. I built and maintained a massive spreadsheet of all the scenes to view the schedule, manage logistics, and combine equipment in a way that was production-friendly. It helps you prioritize upcoming shoots and gives you an easy look at where cuts are necessary and where to push. The more data you can provide producers, the better your chance of getting what you need, if not necessarily what you want.
Meanwhile, we spent six weeks scouting in Punjab. On location, you’re figuring out where the sun goes at 4 PM, which wall we can take out, and how to light a night exterior on a street with no power. Back on the Mumbai stages, where the sets were being built, we were making decisions about a world that didn’t exist yet based on architectural drawings and scale models. Both matter.
I like to compile references, art renders, costume tests, diagrams, raw notes, and shot lists in the Concepts app so I can see everything from afar or zoom in to specific notes to present. I’ll often export these as image briefs so a director or a crew member can understand exactly what I’m going for in a particular scene. I also worked in Resolve to create a proper show LUT so we had our look figured out.
What prep documents does a DP actually build?
I start with a reference document. Not a mood board. That implies decoration. This is a functional map. For Glory, it was a spatial canvas organizing hundreds of film stills by lighting condition: Day Exterior, Day Interior, Night Nature, Night Streets, and Night Interior.
Then I built location-specific breakdowns for every significant set: the Hospital, Fort, Lake, Gas Station, and Forest. The Hospital was the densest. It had color palette swatches, schedule context, overhead layouts, lighting plans, and scene-by-scene shot diagrams right alongside the shot list. At 6 AM, standing on that floor trying to remember what you decided in a prep meeting six weeks ago, you open one document, and it’s all there. For the Gas Station sequence, we even used hand-drawn fight storyboards. Some things you just have to draw to show what you mean.
What tools do DPs use for pre-production?
Before Headroom, the landscape was fragmented. Spreadsheets, Shot Designer, and Concepts aren’t connected to anything. You can create hyperlinks, but you’re just sending someone from one thing to another. Nothing automatically updates when you make changes, and you need to manually change schedule days when a new schedule drops.
Every brief and document has to be manually compiled, exported, and sent out to various people across email, WhatsApp, Dropbox, and Google Drive. It’s very difficult to find things quickly when you need them. Scriptation updates, but the notes are stuck there and need to be manually copy-pasted to every other deliverable. Shotdeck has buckets of photos, but you still need to put them somewhere and give them context. I like to wrap everything up into one package instead of having it all spread around.
Where large-scale prep breaks down
It breaks down when coordination fails. Your master scene list might run to hundreds of scenes, which a spreadsheet handles fine. But when a scene moves in the schedule, which happens constantly, you update the sheet, and then manually check every affected location document.
The prep and the production reality start to drift from each other. On a short shoot, that’s manageable. On a series, it compounds. By week four of shooting, documents are living in four places. The gaffer gets v1, the director gets v3, and you’re not sure which version of the blocking you actually agreed on. I was doing that translation in my head, every day, for months.
How does Headroom change this workflow?
Headroom consolidates all the information in one place. The scene list talks to the visual documents, and the blocking diagrams talk to the shot lists. It updates automatically with the schedule and creates briefs you can send via a live link. You put the info in as you establish it, and when you need it, it’s easy to find, share, and edit. The prep document and the execution document are finally the same thing.
FAQ
How long does DP prep take for a TV series?
I routinely prep these 7 to 10-episode series over 3 months. It’s often 6 days a week, continuing to tackle one thing and prioritize where needed.
What’s the difference between a DP’s prep and the director’s prep?
The DP has to manage the broader physical logistics of the shoot. While both are concerned with the artistic vision, the DP is balancing the schedule, timing, and money from quotes, handling the practical coordination between departments to make the director’s ideas actually happen.
What is a location breakdown?
It’s a functional canvas for a specific set. It includes scout photos, film references, floor plans, overhead blocking diagrams, lighting plans, shot diagrams, art renders, and action requirements all in one place.
How do DPs organize visual references?
I organize them functionally rather than just dumping photos into a folder. I group them by lighting condition, like Day Exterior or Night Interior, so if a director wants to talk about a specific sequence, I can find the right reference in thirty seconds.
What does a master scene list look like?
It’s a spreadsheet on Google Drive that allows you to see all details in their own column: scene number, location, INT/EXT, day/night, description, VFX needs, and equipment days.
Did John Schmidt use Headroom to prep Glory?
No. Glory was prepped before Headroom existed. I used Concepts, Google Sheets, and PDFs. I spent three months doing the translation in my head and wishing for a connected tool, and when the show wrapped, I built it.