feature length?

merc

merc

Well-known member
im workin on a movie project and it looks as if the final product will be 60 minutes long. i know that as far as festivals are conserned this is feature length. but is it long enough to be bought by a distributor and put at say, every blockbuster in the country?
 
I've heard 75 minutes for distribution as a good rule of thumb. I don't know if there are any hard and fast rules, however. It just depends on the distributor.
 
Yeah, but sometimes the distributors will lie because people expect 90 minutes. Look at Puppet Master 6, it claims "approximately 90 minutes"; by the time the end credits rolled I timed it at 68 minutes(!)

Of course, it felt like about 3,000 minutes...
 
Those incidents notwithstanding, I mean movies that clearly state their running length as less than 90 minutes. MIBII is on the box as 88 minutes. My feature film will be labeled as 80 minutes. So whatever the minimum is, if there is one at all, it isn't 90 minutes.
 
I feel ripped off when I rent/go to a movie and it's only 70 or 80 minuets long, even if it's really bad. 60 minuets is pretty short I think most people plan to spend at least 85 to 90 minuets in a theater if not longer...
 
i just noticed that smugglers ransom is 47 minutes long and its labeled as feature length. and brandon rice said that he's getting deliverables together for distributer. so if sr gets picked up for distribution at 47 minutes maybe we can consider that the new minimum length. so maybe 60 minutes aint to bad?

ive just looked at it from every angle and i cant figure out how to add another 20 minutes without it being boring.
 
merc said:
i just noticed that smugglers ransom is 47 minutes long and its labeled as feature length. and brandon rice said that he's getting deliverables together for distributer. so if sr gets picked up for distribution at 47 minutes maybe we can consider that the new minimum length. so maybe 60 minutes aint to bad?

ive just looked at it from every angle and i cant figure out how to add another 20 minutes without it being boring.
Click to expand...

This is an anomaly....

The market that Smuggler's Ransom is in sometimes has shorter films.... it's not a mainstream thing.
 
movie time?

movie time?

traviscool said:
I feel ripped off when I rent/go to a movie and it's only 70 or 80 minuets long, even if it's really bad. 60 minuets is pretty short I think most people plan to spend at least 85 to 90 minuets in a theater if not longer...
Click to expand...

I thought making movies, and watching them, for that matter, was about telling stories not stretching a story out longer than it comfortably flows so its "officially" feature length.:huh:
 
I know Netflix, for example requires anything that they carry to be at least 60 minutes. I would say that's the bare minimum. If you're looking for distribution I would definately try and make it a little longer by adding longer credits or a longer opening title sequence. If you have a character driven story, adding minutes shouldn't make it too boring at all.

Maybe you could even go back and shoot flash back scenes to add or something. To have worked so hard to come up with 60 minutes and be teetering on the fence of feature or short, I would definately go feature as you may have more options with distribution of a "short feature" as opposed to a "long short."
 
I know Blockbuster requires many of the films they carry that as distributed straight to dvd to be at least 85 minutes long. Granted, they'll make an exception if the film had some mainstream success - but as a general rule, 85 minutes is their minimum.

At least, that was the number told to two different friends of mine who now have films sitting in Blockbuster.
One was already over 100 minutes, so it wasn't an issue - the other had a 78 minute film, and actually had to find a way to make it 85 minutes long so Blockbuster would carry it - well, its a little more complicated than that...but point is they said they wanted to see movies that were at least 85 minutes long.
 
At least 80... in my opinion.

My first feature was exactly 80. Ha ha.

Be objective in your editing. Much better to have a good solid 80 then a boring in spots 90, etc.
 
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