What Is a Stripboard?
A stripboard (also called a production board) is the primary visual tool used to plan a film's shooting order. Each scene from the script is represented as a horizontal strip — traditionally a physical cardboard strip — containing the scene number, interior or exterior designation, location, time of day, page count, and cast members involved. These strips are arranged vertically on a board, with black divider strips separating individual shoot days.
The color of each strip indicates the type of scene. Day exterior scenes are typically yellow, night exterior scenes are green, day interior scenes are white, and night interior scenes are blue. This color coding lets schedulers see at a glance how a shoot day is balanced.
Why the Stripboard Matters
The stripboard is where creative ambition meets logistical reality. A director may envision shooting in story order, but the stripboard reveals that grouping scenes by location saves three travel days. It shows that a particular actor is only needed for two scenes and can be scheduled back-to-back to reduce their hold days. It exposes that scheduling two night exterior scenes on the same day creates an impossible workload.
Rearranging strips is how ADs optimize the shooting schedule. Move a strip from day seven to day three because the same location is already booked. Split a heavy day by moving one scene to a lighter day. The stripboard makes these decisions visual and immediate.
Physical vs. Digital Stripboards
For decades, productions used physical boards with cardboard strips held in place by aluminum brackets. Changing the schedule meant physically pulling strips and reinserting them. This worked but was fragile — boards could be dropped, strips lost, and only one person could work on the board at a time.
Digital stripboards preserve the same visual metaphor but add instant reordering, automatic page-count totaling, and the ability for multiple team members to view and edit simultaneously.
Stripboard Scheduling in CutPrint
CutPrint provides a drag-and-drop digital stripboard built from your script breakdown. Each strip is color-coded and shows all relevant scene data. Drag strips to reorder, insert day breaks, and lock finalized shoot days. The platform automatically calculates page counts per day, flags scheduling conflicts, and generates call sheets from the stripboard layout. Changes sync across the team in real time — or offline, with automatic reconciliation when connectivity returns.