Length of movie.

S

sliznut

New member
I'm guessing my screenplay will be around 80 to 90 pages. I want the movie to be around an hour and a half. I read somewhere that 1 page of writing is worth 1 minute of screentime. If so this is perfect. If not how much do you think a 90 page script will allow on screen?

Also if this helps I want to make this movie myself. So it will be independent. I dont know if that matters or not. Thanks guys.
 
sliznut said:
I'm guessing my screenplay will be around 80 to 90 pages. I want the movie to be around an hour and a half. I read somewhere that 1 page of writing is worth 1 minute of screentime. If so this is perfect. If not how much do you think a 90 page script will allow on screen?

Also if this helps I want to make this movie myself. So it will be independent. I dont know if that matters or not. Thanks guys.
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The page per minute thing is a rule of thumb. And as such it may be more or less that your 80-90 minutes. A lot depends on what your script looks like. Is it dialogue heavy? If it is, your running time will probably be less. If it's heavy on action an light on dialogue, it may run well over 90 minutes. The best way to be sure is to time it. Act it out and time how long it takes. If you've never done this (and I'm assuming you haven't) it can be a little difficult for some of the action sequences.

After you've ready enough scripts, you can get a feel by how much white space there is in it. I know that doesn't help right now.

If you can get your hand on some scripts of movies you've seen (Drew's Script-O-Rama) and compare the script length to the running time. Then see how the dialogue/action ratio compares to yours.

Or just forget the whole thing and go with a page per minute. :thumbsup:
 
is it possible that a 90 page script could run longer than 90 minutes or this rule fairly accurate. I'm guessing that if its a rule of thumb its that for a reason. meaning it is more often then not accurate in its translation.
 
Well, as I said before, it's really dependent on writing style.

Check out a Tarantino script. Lots of dialogue.

Check out a Cameron script. Action laden.

If you've balanced your dialogue with action, you can come in pretty close. If you've got a 90 page script that is heavy on action and light on dialogue, yeah, you're gonna probably run over 90 minutes.

You have to also remember that as you're shooting, things will change. (Something on set may not work the way it was written.) That'll affect the length.

Something may come up and you'll have to cut or add scenes. That'll affect the length.

And all bets are off when you get into post. When you're cutting it together, you may find a scene has to be cut because it's dragging the movie down. That'll affect the length.

I guess what I'm saying is: If you've got a good story between 90-100 pages, you should come in somewhere around 90 minutes. It's really not that critical for a feature movie or documentary. Now if you're doing it for a television slot, better get that stop watch out.
 
I think my current script will come in at around 110 pages. Theres a fair bit of action, but some heavy dialogue pages. Also I expect to cut some things in post. Some things I like but not sure how well they will carry over to screen. I hope they all come up well so I end up with about 110 minutes and then can cute the least best of the best, anyway thats how I try to work it. would hate to have 80 pages, that ends up with about 80 mins of usable shots, but some of the story doesnt work so then Im down to 60 mins screentime.
 
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