A checklist for scheduling a co-production across borders

August 31, 2026 · updated August 31, 2026

A co-production means the schedule has to hold two countries’ worth of assumptions at once, and most of the friction from that doesn’t show up as one dramatic problem. It shows up quietly, across prep, as a string of small mismatches nobody flagged early enough to matter. A working checklist, run once at the start of prep, catches most of it before it becomes anyone’s emergency.

Confirm every country’s public holiday calendar, not just the primary one

A shoot day that’s ordinary in one country can be a premium day, or simply unavailable, in the other. Build the calendar for every territory involved before scheduling starts, not as each holiday is discovered one at a time.

Decide which currency the schedule-facing numbers use

Budgets and schedules end up in conversation together constantly – a delay has a cost, a company move has a cost. Pick one currency for schedule-adjacent numbers early, and agree how conversions get handled for anyone working primarily in the other, rather than leaving each person to convert silently in their head.

Confirm rest and turnaround conventions locally, for each country

Don’t assume the more familiar country’s norms travel to the other. These conventions are often locally negotiated and vary in ways that aren’t obvious from outside – confirm with each territory’s production office or local legal counsel rather than carrying an assumption across the border.

Decide the language of paperwork, and for whom

Call sheets and sides in a language half the crew doesn’t read fluently are a daily friction, not a one-time inconvenience. Decide upfront whether translated versions are needed, for which documents, and for which crew members – and build that into the schedule for report generation, not as an afterthought once someone complains.

Confirm permit lead times per country separately

Permit timelines rarely match across borders, and a lead time that’s comfortable in one territory can be tight or impossible in the other. Check each country’s requirements on its own terms rather than assuming the more familiar process sets the pace for both.

Check whether department or day definitions differ

What counts as a full day, a half day, or a specific department boundary isn’t universal, and two crews from different countries can walk onto the same set with quietly different expectations about where those lines sit. Confirm this explicitly rather than assuming everyone means the same thing by the same words.

Flag time zones during prep, even for a single-location shoot

If any part of prep – remote department heads, a co-producer in the other country, casting happening in parallel – crosses time zones, that affects meeting scheduling and response times even before a camera rolls. Worth naming early so it doesn’t quietly cost a day of back-and-forth later.

Name a point of contact per country, not just one production office

A co-production complex enough to need this checklist is usually too complex for a single production office to hold every local detail for both territories. A named local contact for each country – someone who can answer the specific, local version of any question on this list – is worth having before prep starts, not once something’s already gone wrong.

None of this is a sign of a poorly planned co-production

It’s simply what a cross-border schedule needs to carry explicitly. A single-country production can get away with leaving most of this implicit, because everyone shares the same defaults without discussing them. A co-production can’t – and the productions that handle this well aren’t the ones with fewer differences to manage, they’re the ones that wrote the differences down early enough to plan around them.