We love Stephen Follows because his blog answers the hard questions. Case in point:
by Stephen Follows
A few [months] ago, John August dropped me an email which included a simple question: “How accurate is the page-per-minute rule of thumb?”
The rule John is referring to is that a film based on a (properly formatted) 90-page screenplay will be roughly 90 minutes long. This is useful to a number of people, including;
- Screenwriters who can estimate how long each scene will be for the audience,
- Directors who can ensure the film unfolds at their desired pace,
- Producers and Studios who can check if the film is within the boundaries of commercial exploitation,
- Actors who can get a sense of their character’s screen time,
- Post-production staff who can estimate how much work they may have to do on the final edit.
This isn’t a comprehensive list but already you can see that many different types of industry people rely on the rule being at least broadly correct.
But is it?
Let’s see what the data reveals…
A quick primer on film screenplay formatting
The formatting on a modern film script is extremely exacting, including pre-defined margins, layout, headings, capitalisation and font (12 point, 10 pitch Courier Typeface). The key elements are:
- Scene heading – Setting out where the upcoming scene takes place and sometimes a time of day/night. INT is used for interior scenes and EXT for exterior scenes.
- Action – Descriptions of what is happening in the scene, how the characters are moving and anything else the reader/viewer needs to know which is not contained in the dialogue.
- Character – The name of the character who is about to speak.
- Dialogue – The words the character is speaking.
- Parentheticals – A few words in brackets between the Character and Dialogue, giving guidance on how the line is to be spoken. Writers are normally advised to keep these to a minimum and only to use them when vital to understanding, such as “(sarcastically)” or “(to the dog)”….