Let’s begin our exploration of the world of movie production by taking a moment to wrap our heads around the sheer enormity of a feature film and the logistics that will be involved in bringing one to life.
First off, let’s take a look at a typical feature film script. If you like, head over to a website such as Drew’s Script-o-Rama.com and download the shooting script for your favorite move – or better yet grab the script for Jaws (1975)) – then print it out on paper. Yes, actual paper. If you cringe at the thought of using up that much print stock on ONE copy of a script then you’re not going to handle the rate a feature film burns through money very well. Maybe just close your browser window and move on?
Still here?
Good! Let’s get started.
Our first question is; how many pages long is the script you downloaded? Go ahead. Count them up.
Your answer will most likely be somewhere between 95 and 140 pages. A typical answer is 120. In fact, let’s just go with 120 pages as standard for reasons that will be clear very shortly.
Feature film scripts are written in a very particular format which we will learn all about, but for now all you need to know is that that particular format leads to a very useful rule of thumb.<.p>
One page of a screenplay equals about one minute of time in the finished film.
So a 95 page script will produce a movie that runs about 95 minutes. A 140 page script gives us a 140 minute film. And magicaly enough a 120 page script gives us a roughly 120 minute (or 2-hour) feature film.
Now a 2-hour film on a low budget is pretty rare these days (they are usually much shorter), as is getting an audience to sit through that much screen time, but as a tool for examining the logistics of film production 120 minutes works just fine. Consider it a “worst case scenario” so all the numbers we talk about shortly will be the higher end of what we need to deal with in the real world of shooting your 88 ½ page first film.
Now on to the logistics of actually shooting a 120 page script. Our next question is, how many days to we have to do it? And the answer is 20. Why 20 you ask? Because that’s the day that your location’s hospitality, your cast and crew’s good will, and your once empty credit card balance will all run out simultaneously. Don’t push for day 21. You won’t get it.
Trust me.
20 days represents 4 work-weeks or a lot of weekends; either way it’s pretty typical and it makes the math a whole lot simpler. We don’t even need a calculator for this one:
120 pages in 20 days of shooting equals six pages per day
We simply shoot six pages of script a day for 20 days and the film is done. Well, it’s in the can. Well it would be if we were still shooting film. It’s actually on a hard drive somewhere; but you get the idea.
So now head back over to your sample script and randomly turn to any page near the middle. Find the first complete scene on that page and start reading. Read for five more pages. That’s what you’ll need to do in a day. Every day. For a month.
Still excited? If you printed out Jaws (1975) you probably can’t wait to start shooting. If your own script is a little less compelling at this point don’t worry. We’ll fix that shortly as well.
So how hard could it be to shoot six pages of script in a day? After all that’s just six minutes of footage right? Absolutely wrong. It’s more like an hour. Why?
Because the rule of thumb says one page of script equals one minute of SCREEN time. That’s one minute of finished, edited movie. And unless you’re shooting Rope (1948) it’s going to take more than a minute of raw footage to make a minute of finished film. About 10 times more.
We call this disparity between raw footage and finished film length a “shooting ratio.” It is simply the minutes of raw footage compared to minutes of finished film. We’re assuming a 10 to one shooting ratio for our film. That’s 10 minutes of raw footage for every one minute of screen time. Why a 10 to one ration? Again because the math is easy. (Don’t start thinking I have issues, I’m actually stellar at math, but you didn’t come here to watch me set up differential equations.)
So if each day we get six minutes of finished film what is all this extra footage? Well for one thing, scenes are rarely just one camera angle. We start with a wide shot of boy meets girl, cut to a closeup of boy as he sees how gorgeous she is, cut to a closeup of girl as she pretends not to notice him noticing her, cut back to a wide shot for that awkward hesitation moment where she plays with her hair just so to diffuse the tension, cut to… got it? Lots of angles.
Also, actors really suck and can’t get things right the first time. So you need more than one take. (But don’t worry, everyone else on the shoot sucks too. It’s not easy being perfection right out of the gate.) The game here is not to worry but to move forward as swiftly as possible once you have the footage you need.
Ok, so now for each day we have:
Six minutes of finished film per day = 60 minutes of footage shot (at a 10:1 shooting ratio.)
And how long is it going to take to shoot that 60 minutes of footage? All day of course. As much time as you have, that’s what it’s going to take.
And how does all of this math affect the shooting of our feature film? Well imagine those 20 days of shooting, those six pages a day, that 60 minutes of footage, and all those hours ticking by. If we have a cast of 20 people plus a crew of 20, we suddenly have 40 people to be transported, equipped, fed multiple meals, dressed, blocked, rehearsed, prepped, etc. Your job as a film producer is to do all this as efficiently as possible.
But your job as a screenwriter is to write a script that makes that easy to do to begin with. More on that topic to come…