The Day-Out-of-Days (DOOD)

A studio-era invention with an accountant's soul: a grid of your cast against your shoot days: Start Work, Work, Hold, Finish. The row that matters is Hold: a performer paid without filming. Whether a Hold is a real charge depends on the agreement and the deal: weekly deals carry it, and so does consecutive employment, which SAG-AFTRA applies to day players too, with low-budget exceptions your payroll contact can confirm. Studios built the DOOD to find those chargeable gaps and squeeze them out by reordering the schedule. It's still the fastest way to price a calendar: one glance shows whose time you're wasting. I rebuild yours live as strips move, so the expensive holds surface before they're spent.