Movie Magic Scheduling and CineLog get compared because both turn a script into breakdown sheets and a stripboard, and because anyone who has worked in an AD department has a Movie Magic board in their head. It’s the scheduler the DGA has run seminars on, the one whose export file every screenwriting app knows how to write, and the one a funded production expects to receive. So the question isn’t whether it works. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the production instead, because a studio show with a scheduling seat in the production office and a twelve-day feature where the AD, the director and the DP carry the plan around on their phones lose things in completely different places. So if you got here by searching for a Movie Magic Scheduling alternative, or for apps like Movie Magic Scheduling, this is the long answer.
One thing before we start. Everything in here was checked on November 2, 2026. The CineLog side against the app itself, version 1.5.6. The Movie Magic side against Entertainment Partners’ own store, support pages and the manual for version 10, which is the version on sale now, since the old version 6 reached the end of its support on December 31, 2025. Prices are from the EP store on that day. Both tools ship changes every month, so read every number as correct on that date and check the pricing pages again before you decide.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the schedule is one link in a chain the crew runs together. When the script is written, locked and revised in the same project as the board. When the breakdown numbers the cast and that number lands on the strip and in the call sheet by itself. When the DP’s shot list and the AD’s board share the same days. When each person gets their own call sheet with a status on it. And when the crew is on phones and tablets with no signal, because CineLog is a native app on every platform and nobody buys a seat.
Movie Magic Scheduling is the scheduler. You bring in the script or a tagged export from your writing app, it makes a breakdown sheet per scene with twenty-four categories, you build the board, with sub-boards for units and episodes, and the day out of days, the one-line and the shooting schedule print from it. Since March 2026 several people can work the same schedule at once, each on their own seat. It runs on macOS and Windows, it works offline, and it does nothing before the breakdown and nothing after the board. The budget is a separate product, and the call sheets are nobody’s.
Those two paragraphs are the article. Everything below is the reason for it.
Let’s put a real production on the table
So we’re not talking in the abstract, let’s invent one. Let’s call it Harbor. It’s a scripted feature, about 90 pages, twelve shooting days, a crew of 25. Four locations, and two of them are out of town where phones drop to one bar. Six people need to change things in the plan. That’s the director, the first AD, the DP, the producer, the script supervisor and the production designer. The other nineteen need to get a call sheet every night and open it in the morning. We’ll come back to Harbor in every section, because the numbers only mean something on a real crew.
When CineLog is the pick
| Production shape | Why CineLog |
|---|---|
| A scripted shoot of two to twenty days, like Harbor | Script, breakdown, strips, shot list and call sheets are one chain in one project. Movie Magic is the board, and only the board. |
| A script that keeps changing after the lock | Locked scene numbers and pages, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, asterisks and a revised-pages-only PDF, with a scene-by-scene diff when the new draft comes in. |
| A call sheet that has to go out tonight | Built from the schedule day, with weather, sun times and the hospital on it, sent to each person with delivered, opened, confirmed and bounced. |
| A crew on phones and tablets where the signal drops | Native apps on iOS and Android with the whole project on the device, editable for up to seven days offline. |
| Six people changing the plan | No seats. On Movie Magic, every collaborator needs an active licence of their own. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars from the Entertainment Partners store, checked November 2, 2026.
| Movie Magic Scheduling 10 | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script editor | No | Yes |
| Script import | .fdx, .sex, Movie Magic Screenwriter | .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text, with a diff on re-import |
| New draft of the script | Import creates new breakdown sheets | Scene-by-scene diff, breakdown and shot list survive |
| Locked pages and revision colors | No, the script lives elsewhere | Yes, scene and page lock, A-pages, omitted scenes, revised-pages-only export |
| Breakdown | Yes, a sheet per scene, 24 categories plus your own, board IDs for cast | Yes, tagged from the script text into twelve categories, cast numbered for you |
| Stripboard | Yes, boards and sub-boards for units and episodes, a boneyard, banners, day breaks by eighths, conflicts across boards | Yes, with day breaks, a boneyard, scene splits and a board PDF |
| Day out of days | Yes, with hold and drop rules | No report yet |
| Reports | Eleven, plus a one-line vertical | Board PDF, breakdown PDFs, shot list PDF, call sheet PDF |
| Budget | A separate product, same price | No |
| Shot list and storyboards | No, reference images on elements only | Yes, in script order and per production day, several frames per shot |
| Call sheets | No, a breakdown report grouped by shoot day | Yes, from the schedule day, sent per person with tracking |
| AV script | No | Yes, with a client review link |
| Works offline | Yes, on the desktop, shared schedules pause editing offline | Yes, every tool, up to seven days |
| Native apps | macOS and Windows, no browser, no phone or tablet | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Who pays | Every collaborator needs an active licence | One subscription, collaborators are free |
| Price | $42.99 a month, or $24.99 a month billed yearly as $299.88, per seat, academic $125.88 a year, no free plan or trial | Free plan, then $15, $40 or $90 a month |
Six things I compare, in order
There are six things I compare when I look at tools like these, and those are the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can actually use the thing, and who pays. I go in that order because that’s the order a scripted production moves in. Everybody weighs these differently, so if the board is 80% of your job, skip to that section and come back, because that’s Movie Magic’s section.
The script and its revisions
The first thing is the script, because on a scripted production the script is where every other document starts.
Movie Magic doesn’t hold the script. It takes an .fdx and reads the sluglines and the speaking characters, or it takes a .sex file, the export a writing app makes once a script has been tagged there, and brings the tagged elements in. Every import makes new breakdown sheets at the end of the boneyard. The manual describes no way to update the sheets you already have when a revised draft comes in, no revision tracking, no omitted-scene handling, and of course no colors or page lock, because that’s the writing app’s job. The way a Movie Magic production handles revisions is that the AD reads the pink pages and fixes the sheets by hand, and most ADs are fast at it.
CineLog has a full editor, and it imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF and plain text. The part I lean on is what happens on the second import, because a scripted production gets new pages every week. CineLog shows the new draft as a diff against what you already have, scene by scene, and you accept what changed. It doesn’t wipe your breakdown and your shot list to make room for the new file. And once the script is locked, it does the real production thing. A new scene between 12 and 13 becomes 12A, a new page after 16 becomes 16A, and a cut scene prints as OMITTED and keeps its number for good. Every revision round gets its color, the changed lines get their asterisks in the margin, and you can export only the revised pages on that color, because that’s what goes out to the crew on a Tuesday night.
So for Harbor, where the script gets locked about two weeks before day one and then revised every few days, CineLog carries the breakdown through every draft on its own. On Movie Magic, the breakdown lives in one app and the script in another, and the AD is the bridge.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and this is Movie Magic’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
A Movie Magic breakdown sheet is the breakdown sheet, with the eighths, the script day, the shoot time, and twenty-four categories from cast and extras through vehicles, props, wardrobe and effects to visual effects and notes, plus your own. Elements get board IDs, so the cast is numbered and the numbers lock, and linked elements come along with each other. The board does things a smaller tool doesn’t. Sub-boards run first and second unit, or episode blocks, side by side, and a conflict shows up when the same actor is on two of them on the same day. Day breaks drop in by eighths or by shoot time. The strips show four rows of whatever you choose. The day out of days knows the difference between a hold and a drop, the calendar knows travel days and fittings, and eleven report types print from the same data, down to the daily category totals. Since March, several seats can work one schedule at once, with a history of who changed what. What the board won’t do is split one scene across two days as one scene. You make a second sheet for the part.
CineLog does the breakdown by selecting text in the script and picking one of twelve categories, and it marks the page with the underline, the circle, the asterisk and the box that people know from paper breakdowns. The thing I like most is what happens with cast. CineLog tags every character on every line they speak, gives each one a numbered talent slot, and that number sits on the strip and lands in the cast grid on the call sheet. You tag once. It shows up everywhere. The stripboard has day breaks, a boneyard for the scenes you haven’t placed yet, the standard strip colors, and it lets you split a scene across two days, because that’s how real days go. A finished day flows straight into that day’s call sheet, and the board exports as a PDF. What CineLog doesn’t have is the day out of days report, the sub-boards, the conflict check between units, or the eleven reports.
For Harbor, one unit and twelve days, both boards do the job. If Harbor were two units and eight episodes, that’s what Movie Magic was built for, and I’m not going to argue with it. CineLog’s board is tied to a shot list and a call sheet, which is the next two sections.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this one is short.
Movie Magic has no shot list and no storyboards. Since August 2026 you can attach images to an element or a scene, a location photo, a costume reference, a storyboard frame, and one image prints on the element report. That’s a reference, and it isn’t a shot list. The DP’s document lives in another tool.
CineLog runs two shot lists off the same shots, a linear one in script order and one per production day, with seventeen default columns, your own columns on top, and your own dropdown values for shot type, angle, lens and movement. You can populate the first pass of the list from the script and then reorder by drag, whole scenes at a time. The Cast & Crew column shows the cast by the same numbers the schedule uses, so one look tells you who’s in the shot. Each shot holds several storyboard frames, and the shot list PDF prints the frames next to the rows. What CineLog doesn’t have is a drawing tool. You bring the frames in as images, from a sketch, a photo or a previs render.
For Harbor, the DP wants the shot list on an iPad at the location scout, in tomorrow’s order, with the cast numbers from the board on it. That’s CineLog, because on Movie Magic the DP’s list and the AD’s board never meet.
Call sheets
The next thing is the call sheet, and this is the document the whole crew judges the tool by, because it’s the only part nineteen of our 25 people will ever see.
Movie Magic doesn’t make a call sheet, and it has never claimed to. The closest thing, added in July 2026, is a breakdown report grouped by shoot day, which prints the day’s scenes in shooting order with the elements under them, and it’s meant as the starting point for a call sheet made somewhere else. It has no call times, no weather, no hospital and no way to send. Entertainment Partners sells distribution through a separate product, Scenechronize, which emails documents as individual files, watermarks them and keeps an audit trail, and it’s priced by a sales call. The builder is somebody else’s. Every other call sheet tool in this category advertises that it imports a Movie Magic board for that reason.
CineLog’s call sheet pulls the day from the stripboard and the shot list, so the schedule block is a live copy of the day and not a re-typed one, and the cast grid carries the numbers the breakdown gave the cast. It fills the weather and the sunrise and sunset from the location and the date, it carries the nearest hospital and the parking you saved on each location, and it autocompletes the addresses. It sends a personal PDF to each person by email, and for every person you see delivered, opened, confirmed or bounced. And the night before day five, the sheet for day five starts from what day four already knew, because most productions shoot the same place several days in a row, and re-typing the parking notes every night is the part that wears an AD down by week two.
For Harbor, that’s twelve sheets. On CineLog they come off the board. On Movie Magic they come off a report, in a third tool, and the AD exports the board every time it changes.
Where you can actually use it
Now that we’ve gone through the documents, the next thing is where you can open them, and here Movie Magic gets half the credit.
Movie Magic Scheduling 10 is a real desktop app for macOS and Windows, signed in with an EP account, with the schedule saved on the machine and backed up to EP’s cloud by default. Offline work is fully supported for your own file, and the changes sync when you reconnect. On a shared schedule, editing pauses while you’re offline, so nobody overwrites anyone. What it doesn’t have is a browser version, a phone app or a tablet app. The only EP app on the App Store is Scenechronize. The board lives on the laptop, and on set it’s a printout.
CineLog is a native app on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, and it also runs in a browser at app.cinelog.com. Every device keeps a local copy of the project, so the shot list, the script and the call sheets open with no signal at all. You can work offline for up to seven days after you’ve signed in, and when the connection comes back, your changes and everyone else’s merge in the background.
For me, for example, this is the one that decides it, because I’ve never been on a location where the signal was good in every room. On Harbor, two of the four locations are out of town. The DP scouts them with the shot list open on an iPad. The AD walks the stone-walled house with the schedule open on a phone and moves tomorrow’s first scene to the afternoon, right there. Movie Magic gives you that at the desk. CineLog gives you that in the house.
Pricing, and who pays for the crew
And the last thing is the money, and the key here isn’t the first number on the pricing page. It’s what the number becomes once you put the real crew on it. It’s all about who pays for the person.
Movie Magic Scheduling 10 is a subscription per seat. Month to month it’s $42.99, which is $515.88 a year. Billed yearly it’s $24.99 a month, $299.88 a year, with a twelve-month commitment, and extra seats are $299.88 a year each. Academic is $125.88 a year with proof of enrollment. There’s no free plan and no trial. Movie Magic Budgeting is a separate subscription at the same prices. And the collaboration that arrived in March works seat to seat: EP’s support page says every collaborator needs an active licence and an EP account, and the people without one get PDFs. The old one-time licence for version 6 is gone from the store.
CineLog has a free plan with one project, every tool, offline mode, and two collaborators. Filmmaker is $15 a month with three projects and twenty collaborators. Production Company is $40 with ten projects and fifty collaborators. Studio is $90 with thirty projects and a hundred collaborators. There are no seats. The people you invite make a free account and get view or edit rights on the project, based on what you give them, and one subscription unlocks the app on every platform.
So let’s put Harbor on it. Six editors, nineteen readers, one project.
| Tool | Plan for Harbor | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Movie Magic Scheduling | Six seats, billed yearly | $149.94, or $257.94 month to month |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 |
That’s not a small difference, and it’s not because CineLog is cheap. It’s because Movie Magic charges for the person at the board, and CineLog charges for the production. On a studio show, one scheduling seat in the office is the right shape, and that’s $24.99 a month. On Harbor, six people change the plan, and the seat count follows them.
What neither of them does
A quick word on what both leave out, because it’s the reason every production I’ve been on still had a spreadsheet open.
The budget, in the same app. Movie Magic’s is a second product and a second subscription. CineLog has none.
Text delivery. Neither sends anything by SMS. Movie Magic sends nothing at all, and CineLog sends by email.
Post. Both stop at wrap. Review, approval and delivery are a separate tool and a separate bill.
A quick exercise before you pick
So here’s a quick exercise before you move on to a trial.
First, count the units and the episodes. If the answer is more than one of either, Movie Magic’s sub-boards and cross-board conflicts are the reason it’s the standard, and CineLog doesn’t have them. If the answer is one and one, read on.
Second, count the people who will change the plan, and leave out the people who only read it. Then multiply that number by $24.99. That’s your real monthly Movie Magic number, billed yearly. On CineLog the number to multiply is zero.
Third, write down where the call sheet will come from. If the answer is a third tool that imports the board, add that tool’s price and the export every time the board changes. On CineLog the sheet is the board.
The bottom line
Movie Magic Scheduling is the board the industry runs on, with sub-boards, conflicts and a day out of days that CineLog doesn’t have, and it’s the file a funded production expects to receive. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because the script, the board, the shot list and the call sheet are one project, every person gets their own sheet with a status on it, the whole crew is on it for one price, and it works on a phone in the basement too. That’s Movie Magic Scheduling vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Movie Magic Scheduling?
For the breakdown and the board on a single-unit shoot, yes, and CineLog adds the script editor, the shot list, the call sheets and native offline apps around it. For a multi-unit or episodic schedule with a day out of days and eleven reports, that’s what Movie Magic does and CineLog doesn’t.
Which one is cheaper for a crew of 25?
CineLog, at $40 a month on Production Company with everyone on the project. Movie Magic is $24.99 a month per seat billed yearly, so six editors is $149.94, and the readers get PDFs.
Which one works offline on set?
Both work offline, in different places. Movie Magic works offline on the laptop, and shared schedules pause editing until you reconnect. CineLog works offline on every device, including phones and tablets, for every tool, up to seven days.
Does Movie Magic Scheduling make call sheets?
No. It prints a breakdown report grouped by shoot day as a starting point, and EP sells distribution separately through Scenechronize. CineLog builds the sheet from the schedule day and sends it per person with delivery and confirmation tracking.
Can I bring my script in from .fdx or Fountain?
CineLog takes .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF and plain text, and shows re-imports as a diff so your breakdown survives the new draft. Movie Magic takes .fdx, .sex and Movie Magic Screenwriter files, and each import makes new sheets.
Which one handles colored revision pages?
CineLog. It locks scene numbers and pages, gives you A-pages and OMITTED scenes, colors every revision round and exports the revised pages only. Movie Magic doesn’t hold the script.
Which one prints a day out of days?
Movie Magic, with hold and drop rules and a summary. CineLog doesn’t print the report yet.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On CineLog, no. They make a free account and get the rights you give them. On Movie Magic, every collaborator on a shared schedule needs an active licence and an EP account.
Which one runs as a real app on a phone or tablet?
CineLog is native on iOS and Android with the whole project on the device. Movie Magic Scheduling runs on macOS and Windows only.
Can I switch from Movie Magic Scheduling to CineLog?
Yes. Bring the script into CineLog as .fdx, Fountain or PDF. CineLog doesn’t read .mmsx or .msd files, so the breakdown is re-tagged on the page, with the cast numbered for you, and the board is rebuilt by drag from the strips CineLog makes. Contacts come in from a spreadsheet.
To recap
To recap, in this article we talked about picking on production shape instead of feature count, we walked six things in order, the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can use it, and who pays, and we put a twelve-day, 25-person feature on both price lists. Movie Magic is the board for the production office, per seat, on a desk. CineLog is the chain for the crew, from the first draft to the last call sheet, on any device, for one price.
If you want to see the CineLog chain for yourself, the Free plan is one project with every tool, and you make the account inside the app after you download it. So put your own Harbor on it, and then move on to the part that matters, which is the shoot.