Call Sheets & Shooting Schedules

Here is how this works in practice. A New Zealand call sheet is the operational contract that aligns Wellywood crews, DOC custodians, iwi cultural advisors, and visiting IATSE department heads around a shared shooting day, and our production planning team builds it to survive the country's compressed geography and Southern Hemisphere weather windows. Each sheet ships with the production's IRD number for PAYE and GST 15% reporting, NZSPG qualifying NZ production expenditure (QNZPE) line references for the 20%-plus-5% rebates audit trail, ACC accident-cover sign-ups numbers for each crew member, and the NZ Customs Service ATA carnet line items for gear cleared through Auckland or Wellington ports.

Here is how this works in practice. For shoots staged out of Stone Street Studios in Miramar. Peter Jackson's flagship through Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Mortal Engines, and Avatar: The Way of Water capture — or out of Kumeu Film Studios and Auckland Film Studios further north, the call sheet publishes stage assignments, capture-volume safety briefings, and Weta FX / Weta Workshop department contacts beside the standard talent and crew columns. We push revisions through a single source of truth, sync with the first AD, and distribute via the sites Equity NZ and DEGNZ members already use day to day.

Here is the short of it. New Zealand's geography forces operational nuance into each call sheet that shoots arriving from flatter, drier countries underestimate. Fiordland records seven metres of annual rainfall, Aoraki/Mount Cook and Mount Aspiring deliver four-seasons-in-one-day micro-climates, and Mackenzie Country UNESCO Dark Sky Reserve nights need red-light protocols — our sheets surface dawn and dusk windows tied to actual mountain shadow rather than civil twilight, plus DOC ranger contact numbers for each park entry.

Here is the short of it. Shoots in Tongariro, Fiordland, Aoraki/Mount Cook, Westland Tai Poutini, or Abel Tasman route Department of Conservation Part 102 permit windows directly onto the sheet, alongside Heritage The country Pouhere Taonga custodian contacts for any built-heritage scene. Iwi and hapū cultural protocols are surfaced as karakia openings, tapu-area no-go boundaries, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership notes set up with mana whenua before crew call. Hobbiton at Matamata, Glenorchy, Mount Sunday, and Kaitoke Regional Park add LOTR-trail tourism windows. CAA NZ Part 102 drone slots, Waka Kotahi road-closure references, and Maritime NZ coastal permits ship on the same sheet. Each wrap line ties to E tū crew late hours triggers and our 24/7 fixer-on-call number for last-minute DOC or iwi calls.