How to brief remote crew before shoot day

What does a remote crew brief include?

Six things, and nothing else: the day's scope in one paragraph, the person's own role and deliverable, the full timed run sheet, a pin and arrival note for every location, a contact list wired to phone numbers, and the weather call with a named decider and a deadline. A remote crew member reads this on a phone; everything beyond those six items is noise.

Remote here means any crew member who is not in your office the week before: the local sound recordist joining for one day, the drone operator driving up from the city, the photographer you have only met on a call. They have none of the context your regulars carry, so the brief has to carry all of it.

What do you need before you write it?

Four inputs, all of which should exist before a word of the brief is written: a finished timed run sheet, the exact address and parking reality of every location, a phone number for every person on the day, and a weather rule you have actually decided. If any of the four is missing, fix that first; a brief cannot paper over a plan that does not exist.

• The run sheet, finished. Every stop, shot block and move with honest times. If you do not have one, build it first: see the run sheet guide on the shelf below.
• Every location's arrival reality. Not just the address: where to park, gate codes, the walk from the car to the camera.
• Every phone number. Yours, each crew member's, and the on-site contact for each location.
• The weather rule. Who decides, by when, and how the crew hears. Decide it now, in the calm.

How do you brief remote crew, step by step?

Seven steps: scope the day in one paragraph, give each person their own job, attach the full run sheet, pin every location with an arrival note, wire every contact to a phone number, turn the weather call into a rule, then send the pack 48 hours out and confirm the call time the night before. Each step below opens with the outcome it buys.

1. Scope the day so everyone knows what winning looks like. One paragraph: the client, the deliverable, how many locations, roughly when wrap lands. A crew that knows the day's shape makes better calls when the plan slips. Do not paste the treatment; the paragraph is the point.
2. Tell each person their own job, not the whole production's. Name their role, what they are responsible for delivering, and who they answer to on the day. A remote crew member reads the brief on a phone between other jobs, so the part that applies to them should take under a minute to find. Broadcast briefs with no names get skimmed and forgotten.
3. Send the timed run sheet, the whole day, not a summary. The run sheet is the day's bible: every stop, setup, shot block and move, in order, with times. The crew needs the sheet itself, current, not a prose retelling of it. If two versions of the day exist anywhere, the brief has already failed.
4. Pin every location and write the arrival note. A pin gets a remote crew member to the car park; the arrival note gets them to the camera. "Park behind the kiosk, gate code 4412, walk 300 metres up the boardwalk" saves more time on the day than any other line in the pack. Never send an address bare.
5. Put every contact one tap from a phone call. You, each key crew member, and the on-site contact for every stop, with numbers, not just names. On the day nobody scrolls an email chain for a number; if reaching you takes more than one tap, the crew member solves the problem alone, and that is how the wrong call gets made.
6. Make the weather call a rule, not a vibe. Name who decides, the deadline, and the channel: for example, the producer decides by 5:30am for a 7am call, posted to the crew thread. The crew then knows silence means go. A remote crew member's worst morning is driving 90 minutes to a cancelled beach.
7. Send it 48 hours out, then confirm the call time the night before. 48 hours gives people time to ask questions while answers are cheap. The night-before confirmation, by 6pm, is the message that sets alarms, and it should collect an acknowledgement from every person. Any change after send goes to the same single source, never a new attachment.

When does each piece go out?

The pack goes once, 48 hours before call time. The call-time confirmation goes the night before, by 6pm. The weather call lands at the deadline the pack named. Changes go out the moment they happen, to the same single source the pack lives at, so nobody has to wonder which version is real.

Where does this go wrong?

Five ways, all real: the brief forks into competing PDF versions, it goes out too late for questions, it says too much and gets skimmed, it sends bare addresses without arrival notes, or the weather call has no owner. Every one of them ends the same way, with a crew member acting confidently on wrong information.

• The version fork. Version 3 in email, version 4 in the group chat, and one crew member shooting to version 2. Every attachment you send is a future stale copy; the fix is one source the crew reopens.
• The night-before dump. The pack lands at 10pm and the questions arrive at 6am, from the road, when nothing can be fixed. 48 hours exists to move those questions to a moment when answers are cheap.
• The everything brief. Fourteen pages of treatment, moodboard and client history. The crew member skims, misses the one line addressed to them, and the day pays for it. Six items, and their own role findable in under a minute.
• The bare address. A pin with no arrival note loses 15 to 20 minutes per stop to parking, gates and the walk in, and on a multi-stop day those losses compound into a dropped shot.
• The ownerless weather call. Nobody named, no deadline, so at 6am the group chat debates radar screenshots while half the crew is driving. One decider, one deadline, one channel, agreed before anyone sleeps.

Doing this with Runner Runner

Everything above works in email and a group chat. What Runner Runner changes is the delivery: the brief becomes one shareable link instead of a pack of attachments. Your shoot already holds the locations, contacts and shot list, the timed run sheet is generated in one tap and refined in plain language, and the crew opens the lot from a single link: the schedule, route maps for every stop, and every contact wired to call, message and WhatsApp. When the plan changes, you change it once and the link is current for everyone, so the version fork above cannot happen. The crew call sheet is also built to keep working with no signal, so every stop, contact and call time still opens at a location with no reception. One thing to be straight about: today every crew member sees the same view through that link; views personalised to each role are on the roadmap, not in the product yet.

The link replaces the attachments, not the craft: the 48-hour send, the night-before confirmation and the weather rule are still yours to run.

Frequently asked

Keep reading

• How to set up a production run sheet that survives the day, the document at the centre of this brief.
• Production software that works offline on set, for the locations where the brief has to open with no signal.
• Best production management software for Australian film productions, the ranked list with every fact fetched and dated.