What a Run Sheet Cue Actually Means on a Live Broadcast

A technical run sheet is the page everyone in a gallery reads while the programme is on air. It lists each event in order: a camera shot, a graphic, a roll-in, a microphone opening. Because people read it under pressure, the words on it have to mean one thing only. When one operator hears "cue" as a request to start and another hears it as a warning to wait, the error shows on screen.

In my own planning work for Live Event Production Planning, the first job is agreeing the vocabulary before a single cell is filled in. It sounds fussy, yet it is the cheapest piece of preparation a production team can do. A shared list of five or six words, written at the top of the sheet, settles most disagreements before rehearsal begins and saves minutes on the day.

Standby is a warning. It tells an operator that their action is coming soon and that they should have their hand on the control and their attention on the director. Nothing happens yet. A good director gives a standby early enough to be useful but not so early that the operator relaxes again.

Cue is the instruction to begin a prepared action, such as starting a playback or opening a presenter's microphone. Go is used for the moment of execution, for example taking a camera to air or running a graphic. Some crews merge the two, and that is fine provided the sheet says so. What matters is that the same word never carries both meanings within one show.

A short line in the notes column can record the house rule, so a freelancer arriving on the morning does not have to guess.

• Standby: get ready, action is near
• Cue: begin the prepared action
• Go: execute now, on air

Hold means stop the countdown and wait for further instruction. It is used when a guest is late, a link has dropped or a fault needs a moment. Stand down means the action is cancelled and the operator can relax. These two are easily confused in the heat of a problem, so I recommend that directors say the full phrase and that crews repeat it back.

Equally useful is a short list of words nobody uses. "Clear" can mean either that a shot is free or that a line is finished. "Next" is ambiguous when two events follow close together. Replace them with the cue number. Numbers are dull, but a number cannot be misheard as a different meaning the way a casual word can.

Every line on a run sheet should carry a number, and the director calls the number rather than describing the event. "Standby 42" is shorter than "standby the wide shot of the stage with the lower third", and it removes any chance of the operator picking the wrong item. If a late change is added, give it a letter suffix, such as 42A, instead of renumbering everything below.

Renumbering mid-rehearsal is one of the commonest causes of confusion I see on documentation reviews. People hold the old numbers in their heads, and the printed copies in the gallery no longer match the master file. A suffix keeps every copy valid, and the sheet can be tidied properly once the show is over.

A run sheet sits beside two other documents: the signal flow diagram, which shows where each picture and sound travels, and the crew plan, which shows who sits where and who talks to whom. The cue words connect them. When the sheet says "cue 17, roll VT", the diagram shows which machine and which route, and the crew plan shows who is responsible.

Where we prepare these for a client, we read all three together aloud before the first rehearsal. A line that is hard to say is usually a line that is badly written. Reading through catches duplicated numbers, missing owners and vague notes far faster than reading silently at a desk, and it gives newer crew members a chance to ask questions early.

• Read the sheet aloud with the crew
• Check each cue has a named owner
• Confirm one meaning per word