Yesterday I was reading David Bordwell’s book The Way Hollywood Tells It which as the subtitle says is a look at Story and Style in Modern Movies. Bordwell taught film studies for several decades at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (I think he recently retired.) Roger Ebert has said, “David Bordwell is our best writer on the cinema. I find this book simply astonishing.”
There is much I’d like to write about Bordwell’s book but the one thing I want to mention today is his research on the average length of a movie scene. Over the years of watching movies and reading scripts I had come up with a rough estimate of most movie scenes in American movies lasting between 1 and 3 minutes in length. (I covered this some in “Screenwriting by Numbers.”)
Well, Bordwell has come up with a more definitive answer and points to when this shift began.
“From 1930 to 1960, most films averaged 2 to 4 minutes per scene, and many scenes ran 4 minutes or more… In films made after 1961 most scenes run between 1.5 and 3 minutes. The practice reflects the contemporary screenwriter’s rule of thumb that a scene should consume no more than two or three pages (with a page counting as a minute of screen time). The average two-hour script, many manuals suggest, should contain forty to sixty scenes. In more recent years, the tempo has become even faster. All the Pretty Horses (2000) averages 76 seconds per scene, while Singles (1992) averages a mere 66 seconds. One reason for this acceleration would seem to be the new habit of getting into and out of the scenes quickly.”
David Bordwell
Page 57-58
My guess is the average length of the scenes in Crank: High Voltage that opened this weekend is probably pretty quick.
For more information about Bordwell check out his website on cinema.
Update 2/11/2011: Can’t you have a 5-6 minute scene that just has two people talking? Of course, The Social Network started with a 5-6 minute scene and was nominated for an Oscar. To pull off a 5-6 minute scene of two people talking it helps if your name is Aaron Sorkin.
Screenwriting from Iowa 
[…] Yesterday I was reading David Bordwell’s book The Way Hollywood Tells It which as the subtitle says is a look at Story and Style in Modern Movies. Bordwell taught film studies for several decades at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (I think he recently retired.) Robert Ebert has said, “David Bordwell is our best writer on […] Original Source… […]
great post, ill have to pick up that book
[…] Do Screenwriters Make? 2) Frank Gehry on Creativity 3) Writing “Black Hawk Down” 4) Average Length of a Movie Scene (tip # 21) 5) About Emmy-Winning Blog 6) Screenwriting and Three Cups of Tea 7) Up in the Air—The Novel vs. […]
surely the length of a scene should be as long as it takes to get the point of it accross?
I wouldn’t recommend opening with a very short scene of the one minute or thereabouts length. The hook scene. Then you can start broadening scene length but mixing in shorter scenes. When I read a script (and I read a lot) I lose interest if the opening scene is drawn out too long before the hook is attached. But if the opening scene hooks me quickly ( in and out) with a lot of questions and that ‘need to know’ feeling then I am more willing to read scenes that are of some length before the point is made. But it is true; the trend is that shorter is better.
The proof is in the fact that attention spans are growing shorter. If the screenplay is meant for European audiences then longer scenes are acceptable.
And unless you can open a screenplay with that witty banter between a dating couple that is the opening in The Social Network then I wouldn’t even attempt to open with a 5 – 6 minute scene.It was damn good writing that made that opening catchy. It was a perfect understanding of how we speak and the nature of the main character that made it have a point and made that point addictive to the audience.
Great point J.R.—I think I’ll do some research on films in the last ten years exploring how long opening scenes tend to be. And when, in your words, “the hook scene” appears. I’ll write a post on what I find.
Last night, I just watched the opening of “The Bourne Identity” and it has a literal hook scene in the very first scene when Matt Damon is fished out of the water in the opening minutes.
I’m a big fan of scripts having the hook scene in the opening 10 minutes allowing the audience/reader to know—THIS IS WHAT THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT.
In the case of “The Bourne Identity” we wonder who is the guy just rescued at sea and why was he shot and left for dead in the ocean? (Which just happens to be what Jason Bourne wants to know.)
I feel that if a movie scene is only 3 minutes… then you have to have 30 different scenes for a 90 minute movie… Is that usual? That many scenes?
I’d say between 1 and 3 minutes is average. Not all scenes being 3 minutes. As far as a total average scenes that depends on the genre. But I’d say a good deal fall between 50-70 scenes.