What a commercial production schedule covers
A commercial production schedule maps every stage of a spot from the bid through final delivery, so the agency, the production company and the crew all work from the same dates.
For most commercial and branded-content shoots that means tracking:
- Bidding and treatment — brief received, treatment, bid, award
- Pre-production — kickoff, casting, wardrobe, location scouting, tech scouts
- Client milestones — pre-production meeting (PPM), approvals, reviews
- Shoot days — call times, travel and rest days
- Post-production — edit, color, sound, VFX, client rounds
- Delivery — final files, versions and hand-off dates
What's in the template
The downloadable PDF is a real production calendar exported from Calendar by unabase — a clean, month-by-month layout with color-coded stages, working days and key dates already laid out. Use it as a reference for structuring your own schedule.
It shows how the pieces fit together: stages on one timeline, weekends and holidays accounted for, and the kind of polished, client-ready layout you can hand to an agency.
Static template vs. a live production calendar
A PDF or spreadsheet template is a fine starting point, but a commercial schedule changes constantly — a location falls through, a shoot day shifts, an approval slips. With a static file, every change means recalculating dates by hand and emailing a new version nobody trusts.
A live production calendar recalculates dependent dates automatically when one moves, factors in working days and the production country's holidays, and stays shareable as a single source of truth. When you need a formal version, you export the same polished PDF — Draft (watermarked) or official.
How to use it
Download the sample PDF below to see the structure. When you're ready to make it live, start from a template in Calendar by unabase, set your client, agency and shoot dates, and invite your team — everyone sees the latest version, and you export a branded PDF whenever a client needs one.