Secondly, there are differences — Adventure and Action films are the closest to the page-per-minute rule, while Comedy and Horror are the furthest from it. This raises the question of what is different about the contents of movies between genres. In practice, some genres are more likely to contain longer or more frequent lines of dialogue than others.
Last year I conducted a large research project into over 10, feature film screenplays submitted to script competitions and to professional script readers. Using that data we can get a sense of how each genre differs. The chart below shows the percentage of scripts which were taken up by dialogue. There are some similarities to the chart above i. Action and Comedy being on the opposite end of the spectrum and some differences i. This shows us that there are some differences, but they are not huge.
Therefore, perhaps the differences are to found in the Action blocks. I wanted to test the theory that dialogue is fairly consistent i. To do this, I took 64 scenes which were almost entirely dialogue and looked at their screentime in the finished movie. The chart below shows what I discovered, namely that pages and minutes were less correlated in these scenes that within the complete dataset of all scripts.
I have added an orange line to indicate where one-page-per-minute would be, revealing that two-thirds of the scenes had a ratio of over 1. Crucially, the standard deviation a measure of how different a set of numbers are from each other among the scenes was 0. This reveals a couple of important things about our rule:. Some Action blocks are extremely descriptive, while others are spartan, but overall they more or less average each other out.
This was never meant to be a scientific rule, just a helpful heuristic. So what do you think? Should we still be using it? Screenwriters — have you found this rule to be useful or does it have negative effects on your work? When I sent John the results of my research he asked me to add this note:.
These findings largely match what I expected: that the page-per-minute rule of thumb mostly stems from the observation that most screenplays are around pages and most movies around minutes long. Unfortunately, too many folks in the film and television industry have internalized one-page-per-minute as an axiomatic Truth.
So any script that is longer than pages is automatically perceived as being too long. Screenwriters waste time making tiny edits with the goal of moving page breaks to bring their scripts under this artificial limit. Is there an opportunity for computer-generated running time estimates? With machine learning, I can imagine systems that better predict how words on the page will reflect minutes on screen.
Ultimately, running time is a factor of film editing. This analysis was done on feature films, but every TV show faces similar issues.
However, long-running shows have the advantage of knowing how their specific show works. My hunch is that every NCIS script falls in a narrow range of scenes and pages because they know what they need. If you are interested in reading more data-led analysis of screenwriting topics then you may enjoy the following articles:.
Thank you to John August for the question and for his notes during the process. My methodology was that I started the research by collecting as many scripts of produced films as I could. I ended up with over 1, PDF screenplays from a variety of sources including ones I already had, leaked scripts, those published by writers and those published by studios during awards season. I was surprised at just how many scripts available online were incorrectly formatted.
Some were clearly wrong i. After narrowing the scripts down to just those which fully match the formatting guidelines, we had PDF screenplays in US letter format. I sought out finished scripts, not transcripts. By contrast, a transcript is often just a list of the lines of dialogue spoken, written down from the finished film.
A transcript is vital for certain post-completion activities, such as subtitling, translations and accessibility, but it is not a film script and is not what screenwriters are hired to create. Technology is there to make our lives easier, though I applaud you for having an interest in learning about professional screenplay font.
If you think your script is a bit thin, you may need to add a bit more, but every page you add means more money needed to produce the film. If you write a great 80 page script, you may just have a screenplay that will both excite production teams, but also viewers with small bladders. Story structure is a much more difficult topic to nail down when compared to formatting, so buckle up. Many screenwriter, directors, and viewers find that classic story structure leads to formulaic moviemaking.
So why is this still the best way to have your screenplay produced as well as a really helpful tool for writing your screenplays? Production companies, studios, producers, and executives have poured years, and maybe even decades into learning the business of feature films, and the vast majority have used classic story structure.
One of the non-negotiable support documents you want to create is a screenplay outline. This is where you can create your own roadmap, with all of the considerations you personally care about for your script. Script outlines often present the scene page count, overall story beats, and the relationship each scene has with the other scenes in your script.
Many are curious how long it should take a screenwriter to write a movie script, and while it will always depend on a personal schedule you will be best served by setting up a rigid, professional writing schedule.
The time shrinks with each screenplay because you become more and more familiar with the overall process like any other craft or job. The next step is to create your title page for your screenplay. This is a somewhat interesting, albeit brief topic of discussion. Part of this comes from the fact that screenwriter used to add personal info on the page. There are some nuanced screenwriting practices that may seem correct, but can actually confuse or hinder the physical production. This is an ironic moment where screenwriters actually hurt productions with proper formatting.
These should generally be avoided unless the time of day is absolutely integral to the story because your script will import into production planning software and create stripboards that instruct the production to schedule the actual shoot times during a very small window of time. Most morning and sunset scenes are filmed whenever and however a director and production team can figure out because planning your entire day of filming around hours of available light is a great way to lose a lot of time, money, morale, and built up trust.
What about the rules with action lines? Screenwriters like Quentin Tarantino will sometimes include character motivations or aspects of the film that will not be shown on screen. Generally, this practice is frowned upon in screenwriting. When you read movie scripts and screenplays you quickly learn that many screenwriters play fast and loose even with script writing format, however, they all get pretty close and predominantly use their somewhat liberal interpretation of script writing format to help readers visualize the scenes in a way that keeps a good pace, flow, and rhythm.
Now, if you want to learn how to write a script that will be used for actual production, also known as a shooting script, you might as well write your screenplays in a way that is totally production friendly.
Now you understand how to write a movie script, make sure to take a look at How to Become a Paid Screenwriter. Our post is full of helpful lessons you can apply to your own professional screenwriting career. Write and collaborate on your scripts FREE. Create script breakdowns, sides, schedules, storyboards, call sheets and more.
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It's tough out there. The Social Network screenplay thrust social media and the future of online friendships into the spotlight.
It netted Aaron Sorkin an Academy Award and became one of the most successful movies of the year. So what can we learn from how it looks on the page? Skip to main content. No Film School. By Jason Hellerman. June 25, The top and bottom margins are between. The left margin is between 1. The right margin is between. The extra inch of white space on the left of a script page allows for binding with brads , yet still imparts a feeling of vertical balance of the text on the page.
The Courier 12 font is used for timing purposes. One script page in Courier 12 roughly averages 1 minute of onscreen film time. Experienced readers can detect a long script by merely weighing the stack of paper in their hand.
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