There's an App for That: Alarm Stacks

Directors and Assistant Directors need to have an iron grip on time passing during the day. For years, I used a series of (silent) alarms to mark waypoints throughout the day. The only downside of this system has been having to adjust all of the alarms, manually, after receiving the callsheet each night. Time math takes me a minute (pun intended) at the best of times, but after a 14hr day, and while staring down the barrel of another pre-dawn call time, it gets a bit sketchy.

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Enter: Alarm Stacks. After initially setting up the intervals I need, I only have to set the crew call time for the next day, and Alarm Stacks takes care of the rest. I have wake-up alarm stacks that are back-timed from the time I need to leave home in the morning (one with time for a shower, one without), but the main attraction is my Crew Call stack. A vital feature is that I decide which alarms include sound, and which are vibrate-only; nobody wants to be "that guy" on set.

With this app, I enter tomorrow's crew call, determine my travel time, and enter my departure time. Voila! The most wonderful part of the day is no longer plagued by math, and the anxiety about oversleeping disappears.

For the greenhorns: early is on time, on time is late, late is embarassing (at best). Lateness does not go unnoticed, in any department, no matter how cool you play it. And, for the love of God, do not show up late with a hot coffee in hand. We're not saving babies here, but time is money, and your "on-time" reputation matters more than you think.