How long are your action scenes?

[avid-dreamer]

Hey people. Every page is equivalent to 1 min in a screenplay..well not dialogue, of course. I want to know how long your action scenes are...in pages that is. Thanks!!!

[icerose]

It really depends on the action sequence. Some are longer than others. They fall as long as they need to be and I try really hard to follow the rule Get in late get out early. That way you aren't overly extending your scenes.

[dpaterso]

You mean shooting or fighting type action?

Sometimes just 1 line. Sometimes longer. Whatever length the scene needs to be.

Why don't you read some produced action (http://www.imsdb.com/genre/Action) scripts to get a feel for this?

-Derek

[Plot Device]

I was told a good rule of thumb is that no INDIVIDUAL SCENE should be any longer than 7 pages (and that is a LONG scene!). And this applies to ANY genre in all of film history.

Meanwhile, a SEQUENCE is another situation entirely. A SEQUENCE is a series of scenes strung together to be a composite whole. Such as a "chase sequence." A lot of films have chase sequences that go on for ten or even twenty minutes --or even longer than that! Look at "The Blues Brothers Movie" or "Gone in Sixty Seconds" or "The Italian Job" for some killer chase sequences that just would not stop.

But an individual SCENE (be it two people talking, or two people kung fu fighting) should top off at and absolute max of 7 minutes.

[NikeeGoddess]

Why don't you read some produced action scripts to get a feel for this?

what he said.
and then read some more scripts b/c one or two is just not enough.

[avid-dreamer]

Ok, I've been doing some reading like you all suggested, starting with Gone In 60 Seconds. I went straight to the car chase scene and what I found was not what I expected. Here, take a look:

Nope. The Sphinx drives on... Into yet another

DIRECTOR'S CHASE SCENE

This one even cooler than the last ... And once they've eluded all
of the police, The Sphinx pulls over to the side of a DARKENED
STREET...

MIRROR MAN
What are you doing? I'm gonna die!
Is this the norm? I mean, should writers leave the chase scenes to the director or map them out? :Shrug:

[nmstevens]

Hey people. Every page is equivalent to 1 min in a screenplay..well not dialogue, of course. I want to know how long your action scenes are...in pages that is. Thanks!!!


Everyone should understand that the "page a minute" rule is *an average* -- a screenplay *averages* a page a minute.

That doesn't mean that each individual page equals one minute per page.

It means that over an entire screenplay, you're going to get something like a minute per page equivalence.

But really, these days, I don't even know that that's true. In actual fact, if you shoot every scene in a hundred page script, you'll end up with a first cut that's quite a bit longer than a hundred minutes.

So probably, the reality is more like a page is close to forty-five to fifty seconds -- but that's harder to remember and you know what? Who cares?

NMS