what is a scene?

For me it's the basic unit of a screenplay. you can subdivide it or lengthen it but it's still the building block of a movie.

Some say that all scenes have three acts to them: a beginning, middle, and end. A set-up, a turning point, and a resolution. I don't know if I completely agree with that. But there should be a complete "feel" to them. Not that they can't end in a crisis or can't end in a cliff-hager. But I believe they need to justify their very existence in the same way as an entire verse to a song would. But to push the analogy of a song verse--some parts of a song are a special type of verse called a "bridge" that is a deviation from the rest of the song's pattern. And a bridge is indeed a complete entity, and yet also tends to be somewhat discordant.

To me a scene is a series of events that aren't broken up. Some are super short, some are a good seven minutes or perhaps more, depending on the movie.

In Bad Boys 2 (first thing that popped in my head) when they are in the electronic store trying to get the tape decoded, is one scene. Everything that happens from the time they walk in to the time they walk out is one scene IMO. That's how I look at it anyway.

i tend to subscribe (at least try to) a variation of this definition.

EDIT: oh yeah, same with me on beginning, middle, and end. smallest unit that keeps the story moving forward.

A long or short moment during which something happens.

-Derek

preyer said:

that may sound like an ultra-dumb question, but i'm curious to see if there's any interpretation going on.

so, personal explanations welcome beyond the 'division of a play, film, novel, etc., representing a single episode.'

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The simplest explanation that I can come up with is that a scene, in a motion picture (we're not talking about any other medium here) is sort of like a paragraph.

Not literally, because in prose one can have many paragraphs in what would be a single scene in a movie but rather in this sense.

A paragraph generally embodies a "single topic" -- it has a beginning, a middle, and an end -- and it generally is part of something larger such that it can often only be understood in terms of that larger unit -- a story, an essay, a novel.

They can be long or short, but generally there's an upper limit before you've exhausted that 'single topic" aspect which will naturally tend to break a paragraph apart. Same with a scene.

So you can have a scene that's the equivalent of a paragraph like this:

"From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “House of Usher.”

Or, you can have a scene that's the equivalent of a paragraph like this:

"She was dead."

NMS

preyer said:

would this, then, be one or two scenes? in 'the untouchables' (with kevin costner and sean connery) there was a bit after their first gun battle where maloy (connery) storms out of the cabin and picks up the corpse on the porch left behind by ness (costner). pretending that the gangster was still alive to scare the accountant guy, maloy threatens the gangster then blows the back of his head off. so, are there two scenes, inside the cabin and on the porch, or is that one scene?

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As I recall, that was two scenes. They're inside the cabin, then Malone goes outside to an external scene where we see him pick up the dead gangster. Then we go back inside the cabin as Ness sees Malone and the gangster through the window. If the external scene was shot on location and the cabin interior was a shot in a film studio, I'd presume some neat editing put the two scenes together.

Now, my question for you: why do you have to know this? Why can't you just think of it in terms of INT. CABIN - DAY and EXT. CABIN - DAY ? That's two scenes! There's no analysis required.

-Derek

Think of it as a short sequence composed of related scenes, if that helps. But technically it's 2 different scenes. Maybe the cabin interior was shot in a studio in Burbank. Maybe the cabin exterior with its panoramic background was shot on location near Moose Jaw. See the separation? And the reason for splitting what appears at first to be one scene, into more than one scene? Possibly two different film units were involved. Yeah sure there's no way I can know all that, I'm kinda guessing, tho' I may well be right. But as spec writers, all we have to do is write INT. CABIN - DAY and EXT. CABIN - DAY and not worry about the technical stuff, or how many scenes add up to a sequence.

-Derek

I suspect the cabin was built on location after they scouted the bridge.

preyer said:

why does anyone need to know anything they don't need to know, d? curiosity. it's funny, because i probably would call that one scene.

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You are talking, really, about two different things.

One has to do with matters of dramatic unity. In principle, what you are describing consists of "continuous action at one location" -- that location consisting of the inside and outside of a cabin, with people moving continously in and out of it.

So in that sense, one really should think of it as one continuous scene.

But *technically* -- because it is so common, in movie production, for interiors, even in scenes where there is continuous action of the sort you see above, for the exteriors to be shot in completely different places and often weeks or months apart from the interiors, which are generally shot on sound stages that permit for maximum control, that, when writing scripts, those divisions -- between interior and exterior, are pretty much always broken out as separate scenes -- even if you're literally following continuous action that runs straight from inside, to outside, and back to inside again.

So it is really an exception to that underlying rule that's made for technical production reasons.

NMS

If I were writing it: one scene with two locations.

I'd use a mini slug to move the camera outside or back inside.

But it's one dramatic unit, neither one can stand on their own- they're dependent on each other to tell a complete section.