How to read a call sheet

A call sheet tells you who was on set, on what day, doing what, in what order, and under what conditions. For anyone trying to reconstruct how a film was actually made rather than how it was later described, it is worth more than any interview.

They surface in academic archives, in estate donations, and occasionally at auction. Production companies rarely release them, which is why the ones that do exist tend to be the ones somebody kept privately.

Start with the unit list. It will usually contradict at least one thing the film's official history says.