Screenplay density?

Sharp teeth

Registered
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
25
Reaction score
1
I was wondering, since script formats assure that each page should be around one minute, how do you assess this? I feel like my scripts are pretty dense in that I don't get wordy or give details that don't matter. I feel like my 102 page script would be a two and a half hour film... Maybe I'm over exaggerating.
 

cornflake

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
16,171
Reaction score
3,734
I was wondering, since script formats assure that each page should be around one minute, how do you assess this? I feel like my scripts are pretty dense in that I don't get wordy or give details that don't matter. I feel like my 102 page script would be a two and a half hour film... Maybe I'm over exaggerating.

I don't see how that'd be possible.

Get some friends to do a table read and time it.
 

D-N-K

Registered
Joined
Oct 4, 2013
Messages
18
Reaction score
0
I feel like my 102 page script would be a two and a half hour film... Maybe I'm over exaggerating.

If there isn't a lot of dialogue in the movie, it's possible. You can write "he stares out at the ocean". It's a short sentence but you can film him staring out for 30 seconds or more. It depends on your imagination, how you have the scenes in your head.

I read that the script for "The Place Beyond the Pines" was like 150 pages, yet the original cut of the movie was three and a half hours long and I think that's from a draft cut down to 115 pages. Later they cut the movie to a 140 min. If you watch that movie, there isn't a lot of talking in the first part of that movie.
 
Last edited:

bifferspice

Registered
Joined
Aug 16, 2013
Messages
10
Reaction score
0
one comment/query i have about screenplay density:

i heard readers don't like dense scripts, with loads of action and no dialogue. (needs lots of white on the page, etc)

but i also read (in alexander mackendrick's fantastic book "on filmmaking") that you should find ways to show your film visually rather than in dialogue. go through all your dialogue and find out if there's a visual way you can say any of it, and reduce the dialogue accordingly. ideally you should be able to understand a film reasonably well in a foreign language with no subtitles, if you use the medium to its strengths.

i love the sound of mackendrick's advice, but that would end in a really dense looking script, that could be script perfection, but no £$£!er would read it! :D
 

brianjanuary

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
552
Reaction score
26
Location
chicago, IL
Screenplays should be visual, with lots of white space on the page. Sometimes half a page of dialogue can be edited down to a single expression on a character's face.
 

nmstevens

What happened?
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 25, 2006
Messages
1,452
Reaction score
207
I was wondering, since script formats assure that each page should be around one minute, how do you assess this? I feel like my scripts are pretty dense in that I don't get wordy or give details that don't matter. I feel like my 102 page script would be a two and a half hour film... Maybe I'm over exaggerating.

The minute a page figure is an overall average. It doesn't mean and has never meant that every single page should time out to be a minute long.

That obviously doesn't make any sense. Some pages of a script might include a major battle scene that could take five minutes. Others might consist of a handful of brief dialogue exchanges that could take twenty seconds.

It's the overall length, the average of the dense pages and the thin pages that tends to result in the minute per page figure.

And yes -- inevitably some scripts are going to be on the thin side and some on the dense side, but there's nothing you can really do about it other than to write the script.

For instance, the recent, ALL IS LOST, which contains essentially no dialogue was only 31 pages long, but it's 31 pages that's all action.

NMS