My current fear

[nouou]

I'm in the process of writing my first draft, of my first feature length screenplay. It's fun and I'm learning a ton, but my fears grow each time I open this document. I fear that I will finish my screenplay, and it will come out to 45 pages. The story is about a man who is isolated in a cabin when paranoia starts to take hold of him. The only dialogue in the film comes from the phone calls he makes throughout. To compensate for this, I have somewhat lengthy but story contributing conversations, and very descriptive action. IF I were to finish this, and end up short of let's say 90 pages, could it be possible that when actually filmed, it can come out to 90 minutes? Does anyone have experience w/ this?

 

[David W. Richardson]

Possible? Yes. Not likely, but possible. The formula of "1 page = 1 minute" works when there's a good balance of action and dialogue. My script "The Circle" is almost ALL dialogue, with very little action. The script is 104 pages, but a staged reading of it timed out to about 70 minutes. A script that's all action and no dialogue might time out longer than its page count, but I doubt it would be nearly double that.

And if it does come out to 90 minutes, there's a good chance it's going to be boringly tedious to watch.

The Tom Hanks movie 'Cast Away' comes to mind. He was alone on that island, but he still talked a lot -- to himself and to 'Wilson'. And the island part of the story wasn't the whole movie. In addition, he had a lot of beautiful scenery around him for the audience to look at so they didn't get bored -- he wasn't just holed up in a cabin.

You have a tremendous challenge ahead of you -- to take a man alone in a cabin and make it REALLY interesting for 90 minutes. If you're a good enough writer to pull that off, you'll blow people away. But it's going to be hard.

Good luck!

David

 

[wcmartell]

"descriptive action" - make sure there's little description and mostly actions.

What is the *visual* conflict? (you know, the movie part)

- Bill

 

[brianluce]

Just write it out and see how long it is. Then, start the rewrite process. Assess if each scene is sufficiently milked. Never add stuff merely for the sake of page count. If you end up with 50 pages, don't worry about it, you have a teleplay or a short.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

My current 118 page feature screenplay started out as a few pages of treatment, then I think my short story present tense draft was 50 pages; it just kept growing as I tuned it. Normal I think, because the story will take on a life and give you new scenes.

As for little dialog, maybe take a look at the screenplay There Will Be Blood; there is an amazing 15 minutes of so of initial film time with no dialog whatsoever--see how they handle that in the script, how many pages it works out to, etc.

Maybe in your story you could add in an imaginary companion that your hero invents in his mind as he goes crazy from isolation, someone we see in the cabin, who talks with the hero, comes and goes. And/or a radio so there is dialog from a radio personality, and maybe your crazy hero talks to the radio in a sort of twisted dialog at times. Just ideas.

I'm in the process of writing my first draft, of my first feature length screenplay. It's fun and I'm learning a ton, but my fears grow each time I open this document. I fear that I will finish my screenplay, and it will come out to 45 pages. The story is about a man who is isolated in a cabin when paranoia starts to take hold of him. The only dialogue in the film comes from the phone calls he makes throughout. To compensate for this, I have somewhat lengthy but story contributing conversations, and very descriptive action. IF I were to finish this, and end up short of let's say 90 pages, could it be possible that when actually filmed, it can come out to 90 minutes? Does anyone have experience w/ this?

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

For a first screenplay, honestly I am not sure that it will work with just one character. Great for a short film, but a feature length screenplay? Going to be tough to write. All power to you if you can pull it off. But it is hard enough writing one's first screenplay let alone trying to do it with just a lone character. My thoughts would be to somehow bring in other characters-- even Robinson Crusoe had Friday, and pirates coming ashore. Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson fell in love with a native American gal, fought native Americans, etc. even though he was an isolated man in the woods. For a short film you can pull it off, for a feature it will be difficult.

I'm in the process of writing my first draft, of my first feature length screenplay. It's fun and I'm learning a ton, but my fears grow each time I open this document. I fear that I will finish my screenplay, and it will come out to 45 pages. The story is about a man who is isolated in a cabin when paranoia starts to take hold of him. The only dialogue in the film comes from the phone calls he makes throughout. To compensate for this, I have somewhat lengthy but story contributing conversations, and very descriptive action. IF I were to finish this, and end up short of let's say 90 pages, could it be possible that when actually filmed, it can come out to 90 minutes? Does anyone have experience w/ this?

 

[David W. Richardson]

As for little dialog, maybe take a look at the screenplay There Will Be Blood; there is an amazing 15 minutes of so of initial film time with no dialog whatsoever--see how they handle that in the script, how many pages it works out to, etc.

But where would he get a copy of the actual shooting script? Most of what's found online that are called 'scripts' are actually transcripts -- where someone sat down, screened the movie, and wrote what they saw in script format. That won't help him much.

Another great movie with extremely little actual dialogue is 2001: A Space Odyssey. A screenplay for it is available for sale on Amazon for $59.95, but again, I'd want to be sure it wasn't a transcript.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

Here you go (anybody), the final shooting script for There Will be Blood:
http://www.vantageguilds.com/twbb/FinalScript_TWBB.pdf
(Ref: http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/12/26/there-will-be-blood-screenplay/)

But where would he get a copy of the actual shooting script? Most of what's found online that are called 'scripts' are actually transcripts -- where someone sat down, screened the movie, and wrote what they saw in script format. That won't help him much.

Another great movie with extremely little actual dialogue is 2001: A Space Odyssey. A screenplay for it is available for sale on Amazon for $59.95, but again, I'd want to be sure it wasn't a transcript.

 

[wcmartell]

Plenty of scripts out there. Hundreds of them. Not transcripts, but PDFs of the actual scripts (usually shooting scripts, because earlier drafts aren't widely circulated).

Right now, there are most of the Black List scripts floating around and most of the studios have their Oscar contenders on their sites for download (which is how I got the PDF of THERE WILL BE BLOOD).

- Bill

 

[Ezekiel667]

I'm in the process of writing my first draft, of my first feature length screenplay. It's fun and I'm learning a ton, but my fears grow each time I open this document. I fear that I will finish my screenplay, and it will come out to 45 pages. The story is about a man who is isolated in a cabin when paranoia starts to take hold of him. The only dialogue in the film comes from the phone calls he makes throughout. To compensate for this, I have somewhat lengthy but story contributing conversations, and very descriptive action. IF I were to finish this, and end up short of let's say 90 pages, could it be possible that when actually filmed, it can come out to 90 minutes? Does anyone have experience w/ this?

I've had the same problem myself. But a lot of action makes the movie longer then the script makes it out to be, so if you have some good action happening it'll make the movie longer.

I agree with Randall, maybe if you add dialogue of your character talking to himself, or add an imaginary character that he hallucinates, it could make the movie not only longer, but adds more conflict.

Or depending on why he's in the cabin to begin with, you could do flashbacks of the conflict that drive him to isolation, something like that. Just some thoughts.

 

[David W. Richardson]

I've had the same problem myself. But a lot of action makes the movie longer then the script makes it out to be, so if you have some good action happening it'll make the movie longer.

I agree with Randall, maybe if you add dialogue of your character talking to himself, or add an imaginary character that he hallucinates, it could make the movie not only longer, but adds more conflict.

Or depending on why he's in the cabin to begin with, you could do flashbacks of the conflict that drive him to isolation, something like that. Just some thoughts.

How about giving the character an alter ego? A 'twin' of himself, basically, that he can interact with. The opposite side of his normal personality -- a foil and a sounding board. A bit more challenging to shoot, but a lot more interesting.

 

[Ezekiel667]

How about giving the character an alter ego? A 'twin' of himself, basically, that he can interact with. The opposite side of his normal personality -- a foil and a sounding board. A bit more challenging to shoot, but a lot more interesting.

Now there's an idea. There's actually a good amount you could with just one man in a cabin.

 

[pmark23]

Don't make the mistake of thinking that once you finish the first draft you're "done". You've actually just started. There will be MANY MANY MANY more drafts, and A LOT of material will be added and removed.

If you have a short script and want to expand it, then treat the short script as your "A" story, and add a "B" story. If you only need to add 20 pages or so, then maybe think of a framing story.