How Sara and Hallie Fill a 5-City Shoot in 48 Hours
The call came in on a Tuesday afternoon. A major corporate client needed interview crews in five cities — New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles — all shooting the same week, all needing the same setup: one DP, one audio tech, teleprompter, and a two-light interview kit. They needed confirmed crew lists by Thursday end of day.
This is the kind of call that separates platforms from Rolodexes. And it is exactly the kind of call that Sara and I live for.
Hour 1-4: Building the Requirements
Before we touch a single crew member's name, we build the shoot spec. Every city gets the same brief: roles needed, gear requirements, call time, estimated wrap, location details, and rate. Standardizing this upfront means we are not fielding five different sets of questions from five different DPs.
Sara takes New York, Chicago, and LA. I take Atlanta and Dallas. We split by relationship — Sara has deep coordinator relationships in the Northeast and West Coast markets, and I have been building our Southeast and Texas networks for the past two years.
Hour 4-12: First Round Offers
We do not blast out mass emails. That is the lazy way, and it produces unreliable results. Instead, we go to our preferred crew lists first — the people we have worked with before, rated highly, and know will deliver. In each city, we typically have 3-5 go-to DPs and 2-3 trusted audio techs.
The platform makes this fast. We can see availability at a glance — if someone has marked dates as unavailable or has a conflicting booking, we know instantly. No back-and-forth emails asking "are you free next Wednesday?"
Hour 12-24: Confirmations Rolling In
This is where response time separates the crew members who get booked from the ones who do not. Our top-tier crew respond within hours, sometimes minutes. They know that multi-city shoots fill fast and that the first confirmed crew member locks the slot.
By Wednesday morning, we have confirmed DPs in four of five cities and audio in three. LA is the holdout — our first-choice DP has a conflict. Sara pivots to the directory, filters for LA DPs with 4.5+ ratings and full kit packages, and identifies two strong candidates within 20 minutes.
Hour 24-48: Locked and Loaded
By Thursday at 3 PM — six hours ahead of deadline — all five cities are confirmed. Ten crew members across five markets, all with deal memos signed, gear lists confirmed, and location details in hand.
The client sees one seamless crew list in their portal. They do not see the 47 messages, 12 phone calls, and 3 backup plans that went into building it. That is the job.
Why This Matters for Producers
If you are managing multi-city productions by emailing individual crew members and tracking responses in a spreadsheet, you are spending hours on logistics that a platform handles in minutes. Book through Assignment Desk and let us handle the coordination — that is literally what Sara and I do all day, and we are very good at it.