Almost nothing is filmed in the order it is watched. Schedules are built around the costs of moving and relighting, and story order is the first thing sacrificed to them.

Moving is the expensive part

Relocating a crew means packing, transporting, unloading and resetting equipment, and the time involved is largely fixed regardless of how many shots are captured at either end.

Returning to a location later multiplies that cost and adds risk, since the space may be unavailable, altered or occupied when the production wants it again.

Grouping every scene that occurs in one place, whatever point in the story they belong to, converts several moves into one, which is usually the single largest saving available.

Lighting setups are the second constraint

Establishing a lighting state takes substantial time, and once it exists the marginal cost of shooting another scene in the same state is small.

Schedules therefore cluster shots that share a look, filming everything that happens at night in one space consecutively before rebuilding the room for daytime.

Natural light imposes the same logic more harshly, because the sun's position cannot be recalled. Anything depending on a particular time of day must be captured within its window.

Availability determines the rest

Performers, specialist equipment and locations each have their own availability, and the schedule is assembled around whichever of these is scarcest rather than around narrative convenience.

A performer available for a limited period will have all their scenes compressed into it, which can mean playing the beginning and end of a story within the same afternoon.

Weather-dependent material adds contingency, so productions carry alternative scenes that can be shot indoors at short notice when conditions make the planned work impossible.

What this demands of the crew

Someone must track where every element stands at each moment of the story, including costume, injuries, props and how much liquid remains in a glass, since adjacent shots may be filmed weeks apart.

Performers carry the same burden emotionally, arriving at a scene's required state without having played anything leading to it, which is why the schedule is discussed in advance rather than simply issued.

Where story order survives

Productions occasionally shoot chronologically when performance development matters more than cost, particularly where a transformation must be visible across a story.

That choice is expensive and is treated as a creative expenditure rather than a default, which is a reasonable summary of why almost everything else is filmed out of sequence.