Being a teacher I've gotten pretty good at organizing. Setting up a production schedule basically means figuring out what and who's available and putting it all together in chunks of shoot time.
Even though I don't like the production part of making these MONGREL movies I have to do admit that I enjoy putting together the schedules. I think it has something to do with all the Tetris I played when I was a teenage. I get a real solid sense of satisfaction from getting everything to fit together.
As far as knowing how much time to block for different scenes, it all really depends on the how fast your director is and how prepared your actors are. If the director doesn't know what they're doing you're going to waste tons of time. Ditto for actors who can't remember their lines. Depending on how crazy the scenes are I try to block about half an hour a page. This is considered moving things along at an insanely fast rate by Hollywood standards; they tend to only shoot a couple of pages a day! If the scene is really complicated with lots of action, or if it's really important scene to the tone and themes of the movie I add extra time padding.
MONGREL movies are very organic and you just have to start doing them to really figure out what the natural pace and rhythm of the production need to be. But remember, you will waste if you don't make haste. The last thing you want to micromanage and get bogged down in the details. Keep things moving or else you'll snuff out that MONGREL flame. My experience has been that biggest obstacle for getting anything done in any of the creative industries is perfectionism and getting so bogged down in bullshit that you give up. If you can complete your principal photography I guarantee there's something cool you can get from the footage you've shot.
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