Average Length of a Movie Scene (tip #21)

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.

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #70 (James Dickey)

“I don’t believe the American public will believe, itself, what comes up on that panavision screen next March.”
James Dickey in a letter to a friend
while the movie Deliverance was being shot

Since I mentioned both director John Boorman and Liberal Arts in the last few days that lead me to the writer of Deliverance, James Dickey. It took Dickey ten years to write the novel and he also wrote the screenplay for the 1972 movie that would be his only feature film release. (Though he did also write the TV version of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.) 

Dickey was born and raised in the Atlanta area and was an athlete in high school and began writing poetry while serving in the Army during World War II flying combat missions in the South Pacific. He didn’t want the girls back home to forget him. After the war he attended Vanderbilt and earned a B.A. in philosophy and minored in astronomy and then went on to earn an M.A. in English.

After school he taught at what is now Rice University before being recalled to active duty in the U.S. Air Force due to the Korean War. He later worked as a copywriter in Atlanta and in New York where he said he was “selling his soul to the devil in the daytime and buying it back at night.”

He published his first book of poetry in 1960 and appointed in 1966 he as the Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress.  In 1977 he was invited to read his poem “The Strength of Fields” at President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. And just to top off an interesting life, he played Sheriff Bullard in Deliverance. 

Though Dickey’s popularity exploded after the movie Deliverance was released he taught and wrote poetry until he died in 1997. His limited role with Hollywood  may have something to do with the stories of the behind the scene drama of the Deliverance location shoot that sometimes matched the drama on-screen of Burt Reynolds and his buddies little boating adventure. In short, Dickey was banned from the set.

Dickey was like many a classic southern writer – greatly talented and greatly flawed. Given to drink and sometimes hard to get along with Dickey was an exaggerator and liar on par with the father in the movie Big Fish. (While Dickey was in many flight missions over the South Pacific during World War II he was never the pilot he claimed to be.)

Dickey’s oldest son, Christopher Dickey, an accomplished writer and speaker (who also has a website and blog) , wrote the book Summer of Deliverance about his father and the film. (Christopher worked on the film including standing in as Ned Beatty’s character in the famous pig scene.)

Christopher also has done us all a favor by setting up the blog, James Dickey: Deep Deliverance, devoted to his father and his writings. And where I found this quote from a You Tube link where James says in a distinctly slow southern draw:

“To anyone who reads my work, I would like to have it deepen him and make him more aware of possibilities… of the mystery of things, and the strangeness of the creation — the universe. Although as much as I write about death, disease, and mutilation, and so I on, I essentially consider myself an affirmative poet. I remember hearing that Beethoven once said, ‘He who truly knows my music can never know unhappiness again.’ I would like to think it had some effect of that sort.” 

And as a side note here’s something interesting to ponder from one of Dickey’s letters, “I heard from John Boorman day before yesterday, and he says Marlon Brando is definitely going to play Lewis (Burt’s character) in the film version of Deliverance. I certainly hope so, for that would bring Nicholson in, and after that the rest would be easy, provided we don’t get Brando’s and Nicholson’s heads bashed in on some of those rocks up in north Georgia, which is quite easy to do.”

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting & Liberal Arts

I took the above photo at Calvin College after my screenwriting talks this week. It’s part of Calvin’s Crossing, a pedestrian bridge designed by architect Frank Gorman that spans a little over a football field in length connecting the main parts of campus with the DeVos Communications Center over one of the busiest roads in Grand Rapids.

While the bridge has a practical purpose for Calvin students, it’s a fitting metaphor for all writers, filmmakers, and video producers. Too often creative folks distance themselves from the other disciplines of life. (You could call it a superiority complex.) In fact, there is a growing trend for young filmmakers to just go to film schools that only teach film and digital video production. (Technical skills are always easier to develop than writing. Which is why there are many beautifully photographed movies with shallow stories.)

At Calvin the communication center is where the video and radio studios, the video and film theater, and the video editing suites are all located. But Calvin is a liberal arts school so students head over the bridge to fill their minds with art, literature, languages, philosophy, politics, history, mathematics, religion and science with an emphasis on knowledge and truth rather than livelihood.

The knock on a liberal arts education has always been in line with it doesn’t prepare you for any job except to maybe teach. But if you look at the info where liberal arts grads end up you might conclude that liberal arts majors are prepared for just about every job. Margaret W. Crane wrote in the article For the Love of Learning, “a liberal arts background prepares you to think, analyze, and contribute meaningfully to the world around you.” 
 


While speaking at Calvin this week one of the things I mentioned was when I was a student at the University of Miami a professor told us film school students that you don’t go to school to learn to make films, you go to school to learn what make films about.

Screenwriter/director Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) did go to UCLA for his Master’s work in film studies, but he did his undergraduate work with an emphasis in pre-seminary at Calvin College. While later rejecting the doctrine, he has credited Calvin College with teaching him to think.

When Suzanne O’Malley, who’s written for the TV show Law & Order, taught a seminar a couple years ago at Yale College called “Writing Hour Long Television Drama” where the class came together to write a 47-minute television program. Something a little different at the liberal arts college.

“We’re drawing from The New York Times, from Shakespeare, from Sun Tzu, from [John Lewis] Gaddis, one of the professors here, looking at all different kinds of serious work and blending that into our plot and story line,” she said in a Yale Daily News article by Andrew Bartholomew.

And just to connect all the dots. Yale is actually made up of 12 residential colleges and the one O’Malley taught at was Calhoun College, which is actually where actress Jodie Foster graduated from with a B.A. (with honors) in literature — after she was nominated for best supporting actress in Taxi Driver. She went on to win two Oscars after graduating from Yale. (Maybe a liberal arts degree should be a requirement for all child actors.)

So at least for Schrader and Foster their undergraduate liberal arts backgrounds haven’t hurt their now pushing 40 year careers in Hollywood.

Even if you’re out of school (or never went to school) read and study widely because it will add richness to your writing and your life.

Text and photo copyright 2009 Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #69 (John Boorman)

The great thing about traveling is it allows you to toss new stuff into your creative blender. To learn new things and to see new things. For instance, though I have traveled to all 50 states here in the U.S. I did something yesterday that was a first for me and a nice surprise. In flying from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Minneapolis, Minnesota yesterday I flew over Lake Michigan.

Not a big thing, but after being landlocked all winter — looking out at the blue water and the blue ski was a nice change of scenery. Enough so that I pulled out my little digital camera and took the above shot. (The blue under the wing is actually the lake.)

One thing I learned while in Michigan was five time nominated producer/director/writer John Boorman has written several books. (“Money Into Light: The Emerald Forest: A Diary,” “Bright Dreams, Hard Knocks,” and “Adventures of a Suburban Boy.”)

Boorman is most known for his films Deliverance, Hope and Glory, and Excalibur. And at age seventy-three he is still at it, currently in production in an animated version of the quintessential Midwestern tail The Wizard of Oz.

Just this morning I found a quote from Boorman that is apparently well known but that I had never heard or read:

“What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.”
                                             John Boorman

So I came back from Michigan with a new vision to read Boorman’s books and see the films of his I haven’t seen and revisit those I have.

 

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting from Grand Rapids

“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?”
                                         Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro)
                                         Taxi Driver
                                         Written by Paul Schrader 

No Bobby, I’m not talkin’ to you. But I did spend a couple days talking to students (and a few visitors) at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan the last couple days and the above photo was one of the movie posters hanging outside the video theater where I spoke.  Calvin’s most famous film alumni is Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader.

I would like to thank Prof. Bill Romanowski for the invite and and all the support staff, other professors, and students for the opportunity to speak, as well as the sponsorship by the Gainey Institute and Communication Arts & Sciences department. It sure is more fun to talk about this stuff than write about it.

I not only got to meet a lot of eager students, but had lunch yesterday with a New York actor who’s recently been on Law and Order and had a director from L.A. sit in on one of my seminars. (He was in town raising funds for a film that would take advantage of Michigan’s 40%-42% tax incentives.)

Those tax incentives are bringing a film called The Genesis Code not only to Michigan, but they will be shooting part of the film at the Calvin College campus. But Michigan is learning quickly about Hollywood’s ways as people have gotten excited about films starring people like Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Mantegna and Robert Duvall scheduled to shoot in Michigan only to see them postponed for one reason or another.

It was an interesting time to be in Michigan because not only is Detroit hurting because of the decline in auto sales, but the whole economy of the state is effected because many of the smaller cities are made up of manufacturing plants that produce parts for the  automobiles that people aren’t buying.

So people are both excited and skeptical about the possibilities of a film industry bringing jobs. Enrollment at schools and colleges that teach film and video is up. I saw people shooting footage around the Calvin campus including this young fellow that I snapped a picture of as he was in action. This kind of thing is happening all over the country. 

While at Calvin College I learned that they have a few other grads who are working in the film industry, but the most impressive to me is Jeannie Claudia Oppewall. She’s is a four time Oscar nominated production designer/art director who’s worked on two of my favorite films, Seabiscuit and Tender Mercies.

And for what it’s worth, she’s worked in Iowa twice on The Bridges of Madison County and the yet to be release Ellen Page film Peacock. And just to come full circle she was once married to Paul Schrader.

Schrader’s divorce played a part of his state of mind before writing Taxi Driver, as did Jean-Paul Sartre, “Before I sat down to write Taxi Driver, I reread Sartre’s Nausea, because I saw the script as an attempt to take the European existential hero…and put him in an American context.” Schrader has also said that part of the inspiration for picking a taxi driver to represent loneliness was based on the  Harry Chapin song Taxi about a taxi driver who used to dream of being a pilot and one night gives a lift to his old girlfriend.

…And me, I’m flying in my taxi, 
Taking tips, and getting stoned, 
I go flying so high, when I’m stoned.
                                          Taxi
                                          Harry Chapin 

Before that song was a hit in 1972, Chapin had actually written and directed a documentary called Legendary Champions which was nominated for an Oscar in 1969.

And lastly, AFI lists “Are you talking to me?” as the 10th most popular movie quote of the last 100 years. So yes, it is possible to be born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan and to write a screenplay that leaves an imprint on film history. (Though it’s okay to start out with slightly lower aspirations.) 

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #68 (Ed Burns)

When Ed Burns came on the scene in 1995 with his film The Brothers McMullen he was the independent hero of the year. That film was made in the $25,000. range with a loan from his father who was tired of hearing Burns complain about his screenplays not getting made.

The Brothers McMullen won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in ’95 and went on to make over $10 million, which was very impressive until 1997 when The Blair Witch Project with an original budget around $35,ooo grossed well over $100 million.

But Burns has outlasted The Blair Witch gang in the long run. He’s not only directed nine features but he’s picked up work acting in movies and TV shows including Saving Private Ryan. Because his style of writing is more in the style of Woody Allen he’s a little off the radar because his films tend to be dialogue driven films.

But he continues to build his career brick by brick and find innovative ways to distribute his films. In 2007 he became the first filmmaker maker make a feature straight-to-iTunes release. You can hear an interview with Burns speaking about that film, Purple Violets, on NPR. In that interview he talks about the drop in art house audiences over the years due to TiVo, My Space, You Tube and the other ways that people are finding entertainment these days.

So I thought it would be good to go back and look at a quote from Burns about his life before The Brothers McMullen found its way to Sundance and before he found himself acting in a Steven Spielberg movie.

“I wrote seven screenplays that nobody wanted. I’d turn on the light, and there would be thousands of cockroaches. But that was the least of my concerns, because we also had mice and rats.”

Echoing again the process it often takes finding your voice and for your words to make it to the screen. Finding the audience to watch those words on the screen is a whole different process altogether. The good thing about Burns’ commitment to his style of writing and filmmaking is I think his best work is yet to come and he’ll probably be making films into his 60s & 70s.

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #67 (Bill Broyals Jr.)

“Cast Away is designed to be entertainment, but one that is making a sincere attempt to get to something deeper.”
                                          Bill Broyals
                                          screenwriter, Cast Away , Apollo 13, Flags of Our Father

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The Greatest Story Ever Told (part 2)

“Movie storytelling is about redemption–the recovery of something lost or the attainment of something needed.”
                                                               Brian Godowa
                                                               screenwriter, To End All Wars 

“All main characters are wounded souls, and the stories we tell are merely an acting out of the healing process.”
                                                               Richard Krevolin 
                                                               Screenwriting From the Soul 

 

Director Martin Scorsese was once told by a priest friend that his films were “too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday.” In his films, characters like Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) and Jake LaMotta (Raging Bull) are wounded souls with no hint of redemption. No hope of resurrection. (Though the real life Jake LaMotta has said that the film changed his life.)

But there are plenty of films that somewhat mirror the Christ story of death and resurrection, of transformation or redemption, or even the concept of laying ones life down for another. Though one could argue there are similar themes throughout history (and Joseph Campbell does) it’s hard to miss the Christ metaphor in a film like Gran Tornio when Clint Eastwood is positioned in a Christ-like pose at the end of the film.

And it’s impossible to miss the Christ-like imagery of Tim Robbins on the poster of The Shawshank Redemption, taken from the climatic moment in the film when he emerges free from prison (death) on his way to paradise (life). 

Audiences never tire of stories of  transformation because I think that is one of the chief reasons we go to films. Yes, we want to be entertained, we want to eat popcorn, and we want to escape. But deep down inside we want to have purpose and meaning in our lives and art acts as a conduit to give structure to what often seems like a meaningless life. It points to the mysterious. 
                                    

 “Stories are equipment for living.”
                                          Kenneth Burke 

 “Stories are the language of the heart.”
                                          John Eldredge 

So while yesterday on Easter Sunday I pointed to the many films that actually portrayed Christ figures such as in The Greatest Story Ever Told, today I’ll point to films that show a Christ-like metaphor in their central characters, or have themes of transformation, sacrifice and/ or resurrection. (And like yesterday this is just a partial list, but the ones that seem to have lasting appeal.)

ET
The Lion King
Tron
On the Waterfront
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Sling Blade
Cool Hand Luke
Schindler’s List
The Natural
Babette’s Feast
Hoosiers
Cinderella
The Beauty & the Beast
An Officer and a Gentleman 
Tender Mercies 
Braveheart
Superman
Spiderman
Iron Man
The Matrix 

Roger Ebert has an interesting read called In search of redemption and talks about  the kind of films that made him want to be a film critic. He talks about films with “human generosity and goodness.” And he even closes with a nod to Juno.  

Now if you’d like to take a deeper look at spiritual side of films then Paul Schrader is your man and I recommend his book Transcendental Style in Film as he looks at the films of Ozu, Bresson and Dryer. Schrader is the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, The Mosquito Coast, and The Last Temptation of Christ. And he’s a graduate of Calvin College.

If you happen to be in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area tomorrow night (4/14/09) I will touch more on this in a talk I’m giving at Calvin College. Schrader is not Calvin’s only connection to Hollywood. Phil Oosrerhaus was an assistant to the Wachowski Brothers on The Matrix as well as an associate producer on the sequels. 

As I pointed out in Screenwriting from Michigan there is a lot going on there film-wise. There were 32 features shot there last year including Eastwood’s Gran Torino. I also look forward to giving a screenwriting talk there on Wednesday. 

 

copyright 2009 Scott W. Smith

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The Greatest Story Ever Told

The movie The Greatest Story Every Told is not considered a great movie. Nor is it the greatest movie made on the life of Christ. Nor is it the biggest box office maker on the life of Christ. Nor is it the most viewed film on the life of Christ. But you have to agree it’s the boldest title ever given a film.

Easter Sunday seems like a fitting time to look at Christ in the movies.

From Christ as a character first appearing on film in 1898 in The Passion Play of Oberammergau, to D.W. Griffith’s epic Birth of a Nation in 1915, to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in 2004, to three films in ’09 that feature Christ there doesn’t seem to be any limit to the fascination over Jesus Christ. He has been the subject of many a film and has attracted some of top filmmakers including Scorsese, Pasolini, Zeffirelli, Goddard and George Stevens.

While there are 44 films with James Bond as a character, there are according to IMDB 276 films featuring Christ. (Though I should mention The Devil/Satan/Lucifer/etc. is featured 497 film and TV programs.) Here’s just a partial list of films with a Christ character: 

The Last Temptation of Christ
Jesus of Nazareth
The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ Superstar
Godspell
The Gospel of John
The Miracles of Christ
The Miracle Maker
Hail Mary
Ben Hur
The King of Kings
The Robe
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Jesus of Montreal
The Book of Life
Intolerance
The Passion of the Christ
Jesus (2000)
Jesus (1979)

That 1979 film version of Jesus according to the New York Times is the most viewed motion picture of all time. It’s estimated to have been viewed more than 5 billion times. Though the actual number who have seen the film is debated, but there isn’t any debate on it being the most viewed film ever. This is largely do the the efforts of The JESUS Film project, a Christian organization who has not only translated the film into over 300 languages but has teams of people that take the film into churches, cities, towns, and villages around the world showing the film everyday.

The film was written by Barnet Bain (based on the Gospel of Luke), directed by John Krish and Peter Sykes, and stars Brian Decon. Not exactly household names so something else must be drawing all those viewers. 

From a storytelling perspective, even if you don’t believe in the resurrection of Christ (or the existence of a historical Christ) you have to look at all the movies (and books, songs, videos, and TV programs) that have flowed from this figure and think there must be something to this being the greatest story ever told.   

 

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting from a Frozen River

“I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer…”
                               Jimmy Buffett 
                              Son of a Son of Sailor 

Just about everything about writer/director Courtney Hunt’s debut feature film, Frozen River,  goes against the grain. You don’t hear much about women writers & directors over forty launching a career by shooting a movie in sub-zero temperatures and telling a story about the working poor. (Actually, you don’t hear about anyone trying that — any age, male or female.) Maybe this is a new niche market.
 

Hunt tells the story of woman in upstate New York who is trying to better her life. Her goal is a simple — a new double wide trailer for her family by Christmas. Well, it would have been been simple if her wayward husband didn’t have a gambling problem. When he takes off with the deposit installment  payment for the trailer it leads her  into another world. A world of illegal immigrants. And she takes us along for the ride.
 

In one sense it is a world far from Los Angeles. Along the Canadian boarder where the St. Lawrence River divides Massena, New York and the Mowhawk nation of Akwesasne. Yet in another sense, it is a world related to California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida. Places that have a long tradition in dealing with illegal immigrants.
 

When raising funds to make this film no one considered this a high concept film. Which is one of the reasons it took years to make. She actually made a short film of the subject first and that helped open some doors. The lesson here from a screenwriting perspective is Hunt was persistent. And she not only got her film made, it got distributed and she was honored with an Oscar nomination (as did Melissa Leo for her fine performance as the main character).
 

“Frozen River does what too many independent American movies only pretend to do: Takes you to an unnoticed corner of our country and shows what it’s like to actually live there.”
                             Ty Burr
                             Globe Staff

That really captures the essence of what Screenwriting from Iowa…or wherever you live outside L.A. is all about.

Updated 4/12/09: Just learned that Courtney Hunt will be a part of  Roger Ebert’s Eberfest April 22-26,2009 in Champaign, Illinois. Read more about it on Ebert’s blog.

 

Scott W. Smith

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