One Minute Per Page?

Did all of my beautiful ones have a lovely weekend? You Rouge Wavers are keeping us on our toes at the Script Department - and the Wave-inatrix likee! Cupcakes for all of my friends!

Here's another great Waver question:

How do you make sure you get your 'page to film' timing as close as possible? So that you don't write 90 pages that only lasts for 50 min, or 50 pages that lasts for 90 min. Since you're not always completely sure of the place were it will be filmed, timing it in your head might not be accurate enough.

Take it away, Monsieur Bart Gold

Let’s consider this an overdue new installment in my old “INT. BRAIN – DAY” series of essays on screenwriting.

The minute-per-page rule is an imperfect guideline that obeys a certain law of averages. Some material usually falls victim to the imperfections of film production. Material gets cut because of budget overruns, scheduling fiascos, or just hits the cutting room floor in post. That makes the run time of the film shorter. There may be ad-libs or pauses that make dialogue longer in certain scenes, adding more time to the finished film. Realistically, the post production process alone could add or subtract several minutes. SOME margin of error is implied, but a properly written script typically ends up close to a minute per page.

Let’s assume for simplicity of discussion that everything in a script is filmed as written. It’s important to realize and to accept that each individual page of a professional screenplay might not literally take one minute as filmed.

I always like to use the example of Dances With Wolves, where a 4 line snippet like--

EXT. FRONTIER PLAINS – DAY - MONTAGE

Several shots follow the lieutenant and his mangy horse through the fields and plains of the pristine, unsettled old west. No one else around for miles.

--could cover a six minute montage of screen time near the beginning of the movie.

Likewise, a page of dialogue might fly by in seconds:

INT. FRANK’S GARAGE – DAY

Frank impatiently tries to teach Clyde how to fix the old Buick’s timing belt.

-------FRANK
--Left.

-------CLYDE
--Left?

-------FRANK
--My left!

-------CLYDE
--There?

-------FRANK
--Ahh!

-------CLYDE
--Got it.

-------FRANK
--Hurry!

-------CLYDE
--Why?

-------FRANK
--Because

-------CLYDE
--Why?

-------FRANK
--Beth’s coming over, okay? Go!

This dialogue, delivered at a comedic, quick pace, took me and my fiancée about 8 seconds. As it turns out, this dialogue, which I just made up, takes about the same amount of page space as Jack Nicholson’s big “You Can’t handle the truth” diatribe at the end of A Few Good Men, which is a much denser piece of dialogue and of course takes longer to say as a result.

Now, in your question, you give two extreme examples: 90 pages versus 50 minutes and 50 pages for 90 minutes.

First, let’s talk 90 pages to 50 minutes. I would bet the only way you’re going to be that far off is if your screenwriting style has too much useless filler in it.

Now, that Frank-Clyde scene is already pretty sparse, and too many pages of such dialogue will seem really thin already. But buckle in, I’m about to inflict some pain that is familiar to many readers: I’m going to take the Frank-Clyde scene and stuff it full of overly thick description and stage directions to make it take two pages instead of one.

INT. FRANK’S GARAGE – DAY

The rickety old garage features a tool bench full of clutter and oily rags. There is an old pegboard full of gardening hoes and shovels, and there are several yellow light bulbs dangling from the dusty rafters. Frank paces, wearing blue jean style coveralls and an Iron Maiden tee shirt that looks like he’s owned it since 1985.

Clyde lies under an old Buick, which is up on cinder blocks courtesy of a JACK.

Frank impatiently tries to teach Clyde how to fix the old Buick’s timing belt.

-------FRANK
--Left.

Clyde moves his wrench and the timing belt to his right.

-------CLYDE
--Left?

Frank frowns.

-------FRANK
--My left!

Frank looks very irritated now, and Clyde, that big lovable dope, he just keeps making Frank even more infuriated due to his incompetent repair skills.

-------CLYDE
--There?

Frank can’t take it any more.

-------FRANK
--Ahh!

Clyde nods. This time he’s sure he understands what Frank means for he (Clyde) to do. Clyde twists his wrench counterclockwise and aligns the timing belt with the engine’s rusty alternator gear. With a loud SNAP, the gears fall into place.

Frank looks relieved.

-------CLYDE
--Got it.

Then Clyde starts to turn his wrench, AGAIN! Ugh! Frank is growing more impatient.

-------FRANK
--Hurry!

Clyde looks at Frank, curious.

-------CLYDE
--Why?

Frank doesn’t look like he wants to admit to the truth here.

-------FRANK
--Because.

Clyde is made even more curious by Frank’s restrained expression.

-------CLYDE
--Why?

Frank SIGHS.

-------FRANK
--Beth’s coming over, okay? Go!


Now, clearly I committed several sins here. Not one of these stage directions was needed. Any director with half a brain would realize that the ‘business’ of the engine repair would naturally be part of the scene and ask the actors to act out something similar to what I added. And of course if a guy says ‘why?” it’s redundant and pointless to waste 3 lines of script stating that he is curious. (By 3 wasted lines of script, I’m counting the line of action text in question, plus the two added blank lines around it.)

Worst of all, I committed the sin of writing a scene that any experienced reader is going to be annoyed reading. An experienced reader/agent/exec has a intuitive sense of how much should be happening per page, and if the writing is padded like this, the reader/agent/exec is going to dismiss the script pretty quickly.

Once in a great while I’ll see a feature film script submission that has double-spaced dialogue, (which is the correct format for 3-camera sitcoms but not for features.) Or I’ll see a script where the margins got fudged, the font is the wrong size,
or the dialo-
gue margins
are so thin
that you can
barely fit twel-
ve letters in a
line of dialogue.

All these glitches can burn pages faster than is normal. But I’d say rambling scenes with unneeded direction is the most common way space gets wasted in scripts.

The larger problem is not that 90 pages of this would be only 50 minutes if filmed- the real problem is that the agent or exec tosses a script like this after reading 4 pages.

To the other scenario you asked about: 50 pages for 90 minutes of script… that’s actually harder for me to imagine unless we’re talking about one of those very rare submissions that’s essentially formatted like a book manuscript:

INTERIOR, NAPOLEON’S TENT – DAY. NAPOLEON sleeps in his tent in this scene and when he wakes his friend and trusted butler GUILLAUME is at his bedside. Guillaume says “Napoleon, mister Bonaparte, Sir? It is time to wake and study the battle plans for the day, to which Napoleon says “Thank you, Guillaume, please send for Lieutenant Zut-Alors and Lieutenant Lunettes-De-Jaune that I may seek their casualty reports.” Guillaume bows and leaves the tent, leaving Monsieur Bonaparte frowning and in a desultory state of mind.

Now, this could well be a 7 minute per page pace for all I know. But the exec or agent who opens the script and sees nothing but massive blocks of text like this is likely going to not even read past the first page.

I recommend reading scripts in whatever genre you’re tackling as pace references. Whether it’s a slow, brooding scene, or a zippy comic interchange, there’s only so far off the timing can be in the performance. What is ultimately important is that the writer delivers a compelling page. Hook the exec early, keep him/her entertained, and keep a pace consistent with other scripts in your genre, and the ‘accuracy of your run time’ will be a non-factor in the script sale.

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