Production Contingency Planning: A Practical Guide for Shoots
Production contingency planning means deciding, before the cameras roll, what you will do when something goes wrong. You identify the risks that could stop or slow a shoot, rank them, assign a backup and an owner to each, and set aside budget and schedule room to absorb the hit. Do it well and a lost location, a grounded flight or a failed camera becomes a re-ordered call sheet instead of a lost day.
This guide walks through the process step by step, with the budget numbers producers actually use and the extra layer that applies when you shoot abroad, which is the work we do every week in Switzerland.
TL;DR
A contingency plan has five parts: a risk register, a ranking by likelihood and impact, a fallback for each top risk, a named owner, and a communication chain.
Budget a contingency line of roughly 5% to 15% depending on who is financing the project and how complex the shoot is. Treat it as risk management, not spare cash.
Weather, permits, equipment failure, travel and crew availability cause most disruptions on location shoots. Each needs a backup you have already arranged.
Keep the plan alive: update the budget, schedule and risk register daily during production.
On international shoots, a local partner who knows the permits, vendors and terrain shortens every fallback.
Table of Contents
What a production contingency plan actually is
A contingency plan is not a list of worries. It is a set of pre-decided responses. Effective planning, as one film production planning guide puts it, is the proactive work of identifying risks and building strategies to reduce their impact, including backup plans, allocated resources and protocols for unforeseen challenges.
The difference between a worry and a plan is the decision. “Rain might hit the rooftop scene” is a worry. “If the 6 a.m. forecast shows rain above 60%, we move to the interior location booked as cover, and the 1st AD circulates the revised call sheet by 6:30” is a plan.
Three things separate a useful plan from a document nobody opens:
It is specific. Names, phone numbers, addresses, decision times.
It is short enough to use. One page per major risk, not a binder.
It is tied to money and time. Every fallback has a cost and a schedule consequence written next to it.
How to build the plan, step by step
1. Review the script and the shooting plan
Start with what you are actually going to do. Screen safety guidance recommends a three-step risk management process: assess the script, treatment or production plan, compile a report of hazards with recommended control measures, then implement those controls or adjust the plan. Even if your shoot is a two-day commercial, the logic holds.
Read every scene against four questions: where is it, when is it, who is needed, and what equipment does it depend on. A night exterior with a drone shot and a lead actor who flies in that morning has four single points of failure in one line.
2. List the risks in a register
A risk register is a simple table. One row per risk, with a description, likelihood, impact, fallback, owner and cost. Below is a starting list for a location shoot.
Risk | Typical trigger | Fallback to arrange in advance |
Weather | Rain, wind, fog, snow, low light | Cover set or interior, buffer day, alternate shooting order |
Permit delay or refusal | Late application, changed scope | Backup location with its own permit, early filing |
Equipment failure | Camera, audio, drone, lighting | Backup body, spare media, rental house on call |
Talent or crew unavailable | Illness, travel disruption | Named replacement, flexible shooting order |
Transport problem | Missed flight, road closure, vehicle breakdown | Second vehicle, flexible call times, local driver |
Safety incident | Injury, unsafe conditions | Medic or first-aid plan, stop-work authority |
Data loss | Card failure, theft | Two copies before cards are reformatted |
Be honest about what is on your shoot. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health lists activities that call for specific attention in motion picture safety planning, including firearms, major pyrotechnics, major stunts, aircraft or trains, off-road vehicles, open-water work and workweeks over 60 hours. The Australian national screen safety guidelines add overhead rigging, rugged outdoor locations, inclement weather, animals, heights, night shoots and intermittent traffic control. If your shoot touches any of these, it needs its own written assessment, not a line in the register.
One more point from the UK’s screen safety body: rigging and de-rigging are often the highest-risk periods because of heavy equipment movement and time pressure. Build extra time into both rather than squeezing the schedule around them.
3. Rank by likelihood and impact
You cannot plan for everything, so rank. Score each risk from 1 to 3 for likelihood and 1 to 3 for impact, multiply, and spend your planning effort from the top down. Prioritizing by likelihood and impact, then preparing backup equipment, locations or personnel, is the standard approach.
A rare event with a catastrophic impact (a lead’s injury on day one) can deserve more attention than a likely event with a minor impact (a 20-minute delay). Insurance usually covers the first kind. Schedule slack covers the second.
For safety-related risks, apply controls in order. The hierarchy runs from elimination, substitution, engineering controls and administrative controls, to personal protective equipment last. Removing the hazard beats giving everybody a helmet.
The goal is realistic. The Australian guidelines note that risk management means reducing risk to a level that is as low as reasonably practicable, balancing cost, time and effort, not removing every hazard.
4. Write the fallback and the trigger
Every fallback needs two things: a trigger and a deadline. The trigger is the observable fact that activates Plan B (a forecast threshold, a permit not confirmed 48 hours out, a camera failing a test). The deadline is the latest moment the switch is still cheap.
A useful fallback has already been checked. Contingency planning works best when it is integrated with safety management, so every alternative has been evaluated for its own risk profile. A cover location that is dry but has no safe rigging points is not a fallback.
5. Name an owner for each risk
Who carries it out? On a typical shoot:
Producer or line producer: owns the budget, the contingency line and go/no-go decisions.
1st assistant director: owns the schedule, call sheet changes and daily communication.
Location manager: owns permits, cover locations and site access.
Director of photography and gaffer: own equipment backups and lighting alternatives.
Production manager or fixer: owns vendors, transport, accommodation and local problem solving.
If a risk has no name next to it, it has no owner. Our own overview of the roles of a film crew shows how these responsibilities split on a real shoot.
How much contingency should the budget include?
The answer depends on the financier and the complexity, but the published figures cluster in a narrow band:
Source | Contingency guidance |
Unallocated contingency of roughly 5% to 10% for emergencies | |
Minimum of 8% of direct and indirect production costs | |
10% to 15% as standard for professional producers in 2026 |
Two practical readings of that table. First, a short branded shoot with a proven crew and one location can sit near the low end. A multi-location international production with travel, weather exposure and aerial work belongs near the top. Second, the same source stresses that contingency is a risk management tool on paper, not a slush fund. Spend it only on events in your register, and log every draw.
What tends to eat it? Producers point to equipment damage, overtime, catering, reshoots, location fees, travel and insurance as the usual culprits. Notice that most of these are the cost of a fallback you did not arrange early. A backup camera rented in advance costs a fraction of an emergency rental on shoot morning.
Also, look at your numbers. Investors read a budget full of round figures as a sign it was made up. Quotes from real vendors make your contingency line more credible.
If you are comparing what different levels of support cost for a Swiss shoot, our production costs page outlines the service tiers.
Build time into the schedule, not just the budget
Money does not fix a lost afternoon. Schedule flexibility does. The habits that work:
Buffer days. Production teams commonly build buffer days into the schedule to absorb weather problems.
Weather-sensitive scenes first. Shoot exteriors early in the block, so interiors remain as the cover set when the weather turns.
Interchangeable scenes. Group scenes by location and cast so you can swap days without breaking the continuity of availability.
Realistic moves. Count the real time to pack, travel, rig and de-rig. Mountain roads and cable cars do not run on your call sheet.
For a deeper look at sequencing, see our guides on scheduling production planning and control and building a time planning sheet.
Communicating and activating the plan
A plan nobody can find at 5 a.m. is useless. Make activation boring and fast.
One source of truth. Keep the register, call sheet and emergency contacts in one shared place everyone can open on a phone.
A decision rule. State who can trigger a fallback (usually the producer, with the 1st AD executing) and by what time.
A short message template. What changed, new call time, new location, who is affected, what to bring.
A log. Record each trigger, the decision, the cost and the schedule impact. This feeds your insurance claim and your final cost report.
A daily review. After wrap, spend ten minutes asking what could break tomorrow.
The budget must move too. Experienced producers treat it as a live document, updated continuously with actual costs and new surprises. For incident response specifically, our article on how to handle emergencies covers what to do in the first hour.
Contingency planning when you shoot abroad
Everything above gets harder when the crew, vendors and rules are unfamiliar. Foreign productions in Switzerland face a few specific pressure points:
Permits are local. Switzerland has no single filming licence. Requirements vary by canton and municipality, and drone flights fall under separate aviation rules. A permit that comes through late is one of the most common reasons a fallback location is needed.
Terrain and weather shift quickly. Alpine conditions can change within hours, so your cover set should be close, not a half-day drive away.
Vendors need lead time. Backup gear, a second vehicle or a replacement crew member is easy to arrange from home and slow to arrange from an airport.
Language and local knowledge. A fixer who can phone a municipal office, a rental house or a mountain railway in the local language solves in minutes what takes a visiting team half a day.
Our perspective
After more than 20 years supporting international productions in Switzerland, we have found that most disasters are not surprises. They are known risks that nobody owned. A permit that was “basically sorted”, a vehicle that was “probably available”, a crew member who was “checking his schedule”.
So we do three things differently. We confirm permits and vendors in writing before the shoot, not by assumption. We line up at least one named alternative for the risks that matter most: location, crew, gear and transport. And we stay reachable on shoot days, because speed of response matters more than the elegance of the plan.
A contingency plan should reduce your stress, not add paperwork to it. If the plan fits on a few pages and everyone knows who to call, it is doing its job.
— Pieter
Let us carry the local contingencies
If you are bringing a crew to Switzerland, you do not have to build this layer alone. Our video production support in Switzerland covers permits, crew sourcing, equipment, location scouting, accommodation and transport, with a free initial consultation to assess your needs before anything is agreed. We plan the fallbacks with you, then manage them on the ground.
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Tell us about the shoot and we will tell you where the real risks are. You can also review our service tiers and costs first.
FAQ
What is the process of contingency planning?
Review the script and plan, list the risks in a register, rank them by likelihood and impact, write a fallback and trigger for the important ones, and assign an owner to each. Then set a contingency budget and monitor everything throughout production. Update the plan whenever the schedule or locations change.
How much should contingency be on a project?
Published guidance for film budgets runs from about 5% to 10% from the New Zealand Film Commission, to a Telefilm Canada minimum of 8%, to 10% to 15% cited as standard in the US. Use the low end for simple shoots and the high end for complex, multi-location or international work. Check the requirements of your own financier, since some set a minimum.
What should a production contingency plan include?
A risk register, ranked priorities, fallback actions with triggers and deadlines, named owners, emergency contacts, a communication method and a contingency budget line. Safety-critical activities such as stunts, heights or aerial work need their own written risk assessment. Keep it short enough that the crew will read it.
Who is responsible for the contingency plan?
The producer or line producer owns it overall, including the budget and go/no-go decisions. The 1st AD, location manager, department heads and production manager or fixer each own the risks in their area. Every risk should carry one name.
Can a local fixer reduce contingency costs abroad?
Often, yes, because local knowledge shortens fallbacks: pre-checked cover locations, known vendors and faster permit handling. We cover common questions on our FAQ page.
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