Late in the afternoon, on almost every shoot day at Yellow Cloud Studio, the same sentence lands. "Yaar, could we just get one more shot? Just one." Followed by "it'll take five minutes." The client isn't lying. In their heads, it really will take five minutes. From where they're sitting behind the monitor, it looks like the setup is already there, the actor is already dressed, the camera is warm. Just move it two feet and roll.
Then forty minutes later everyone's still standing around and the light has changed and nobody knows why. This post is for everyone who's ever asked for one more shot and wondered where the time went.
What one more shot actually unlocks
A frame is a small ecosystem. Every element in it has been placed, lit, keyed, cleared, blocked and rehearsed. Moving to a new frame, even a small one, doesn't move one thing. It moves everything downstream of that thing. Here's the honest chain of what "just one more" triggers:
- Relighting. Even a two foot shift changes how the key hits the face. The gaffer will need to reflag, feather, and often re-diffuse.
- Camera repositioning. New marks on the floor. New focus rehearsal. Sometimes a new lens.
- Continuity reset. Hair drifted since take one. Lipstick faded. Wardrobe wrinkled. HMU comes in.
- Slate and audio. New scene number, new take number, sound checks levels again.
- Waiting for the actor to redo hair and makeup, which takes as long as it takes.
- Grip reset. Flags, cutters, bounce cards, C-stands. All in the frame of the new angle. All need to move.
The time budget
In our experience, a genuinely small "one more shot" on a set that's already dressed and lit is a 20 minute exercise. Not five. If the shot needs a new lens, add ten. If the new angle catches a wall we hadn't dressed, add another twenty. If the actor needs to change, add thirty. If the sun has moved and we were shooting in natural light, we might have lost the window entirely.
This isn't a scold. It's the way sets work. Every crew we've been on has this same math and no client we've worked with has ever fully believed it, because from the monitor, none of that motion is visible.
The soft version of no
The soft version of no, which we now use often, sounds like this. "Absolutely, but it'll come out of the wide reveal at the end. Which one do you want?" Or "Yes, but that pushes us into overtime after 8pm. Cool with that?" This is not a passive aggressive way to shut it down. It's giving the client the actual cost so they can decide.
Nine times out of ten, when the cost is on the table, the client goes "actually no, we're fine". Because they didn't know the cost. Once they do, the ask changes.
The 4pm sag
There's a specific window on almost every shoot day, roughly 3:30pm to 4:30pm, when the "one more shot" requests peak. This is not a coincidence. It's the moment where lunch has landed, energy has dropped, the day feels long, and there's a low grade panic that we might have missed something. So we start reaching for shots to feel productive. This is the time to protect the schedule, not add to it.
The one more shot that always earns its place
To be fair, we have taken "one more shot" plenty of times and been grateful. When it works, it usually shares these features:
- It was actually a small variation of an existing setup, not a new setup pretending to be small.
- The AD had built in a 30 minute buffer at the end of the day for exactly this.
- It was for a specific creative reason, not a hedging "just in case".
- Everyone agreed it was the last shot before wrap.
Under those conditions, we're the first to say yes. Some of our favourite frames from client projects have been the extra one at the end of the day, when the crew is tired and the light is honest and there's no room to overthink.
The problem is not that clients ask for one more shot. It's that the ask is sold as "five minutes" when it isn't, and the "just" carries all the weight.
How to actually get one more shot painlessly
If you're a client and you know there's a shot you're going to want at the end, do this:
- Tell us at breakfast, not at 4pm. We'll build it into the schedule and prep for it. No panic, no compromise on the shots that came before.
- Add a "swing" into the schedule when you brief the film. A 45 minute window at the end for the shot we haven't thought of yet. This is a normal line item.
- Trust the AD's call. If the AD says we have time for it, we have time for it. If the AD says we don't, we don't. This is why they're on the sheet.
- Bring the shot up in the recce, not on the day. Most great "extra" shots are location dependent and can be found at a walk through, not while standing on marks.
The internal version we tell each other
On our own crew, "one more" is a code word for "let's be honest about the day". If someone asks for it and the AD says yes, we do it and it works. If the AD says no, we don't push. It's a small habit and it protects the film.
Last note
The reason we're writing this is not to make clients feel bad for asking. Everyone asks. It's to explain, out in the open, what happens when they do. So the next time you're on our set at 4pm with the sun getting low, and something in you wants to ask for one more shot, you'll know exactly what you're asking for. Then, if it's worth it, ask. And if it isn't, we'll pack up early and buy the crew tea, which is often the better film choice anyway.
If you're planning a shoot with us, our how we build a shoot day spells out how we build a day, and the contact form is the fastest way to get on our calendar.