A hold a client has placed without confirming it. In the chart that date is taken conditionally.
Levels
Options are first, second, sometimes third. First option means priority: if that client confirms, the day is theirs. Second is the queue behind it — it turns into a booking only if the first client drops out.
Several options on one day is normal practice, and agencies do it deliberately: until a confirmation lands, none of them is money.
What it means in practice
Nothing final. An option can sit for two weeks and dissolve without explanation — that is not a client rejecting you personally, it is how the work goes: line-ups are rebuilt, budgets are cut, shoots move.
Hence the rule: never drop confirmed work for an option, and never plan around one. Until it is confirmed, the date is open.
What to do while one is standing
Hold the date and tell your booker if a second interest appears on it — the decision is theirs, and an agency may release an option when a confirmed job arrives. Quietly taking other work is exactly how reputations get damaged.
How an option becomes a job
The client confirms the line-up and the agency sends a confirmation letter with the date, hours, fee and usage. From that moment the date is closed, and dropping it has a price.
What belongs in that letter is covered under “Confirmation letter”.
