Thread: How many scenes?

For a 90 - 110 minute screenplay, would you say 50, scenes (give or take) is about right? I'm just shooting for a number here in order to lay the thing out before I start writing.

Nothing is etched in stone, just general ideas of what I'm trying to accomplish with the scene and they can very well get switched around or dropped altogether. Just a way for me to mull the whole thing over a bit before I start typing.

There is number of scenes to work from, anymore than there is a "right" number of chapters in a book.

The highly acclaimed "My Dinner With Andres" and award-winning "Swimming to Cambodia" consist of ONE scene each, as I recall.

Some, hip, MTV-styled flicks can run through ten scenes in 20 seconds.

Well, for my first effort, I thought I'd try and just do it in a standard way. Some as yet unknown inspiration may strike me to do something off-beat; but for the time being, I'll keep things somewhat conventional. I'm sure there is a number of between 1 and 300 but, I'll stay on the beaten path for the time being. Walk before you run type of thing.

I just thought that for a movie of the 90 - 110 minute length, 50 or so was a figure to work with.

I'm sure there is a number of between 1 and 300 nope

Work with page count. Try to come in around a hundred (Even THAT you get a flood of "no it's a different number these days" responses)

But I'd say don't even think about number scenes.

Yeah, it really depends. But I do suggest keeping scenes as short as you can. I have a rule that VERY few if any of my scenes are longer than two pages. Why? Becuase people get bored who are used to those 10 scenes per 20 second MTV stuff. It also helps me from cramming too much in a scene or from letting my characters sit and chit chat over nothing important. So, yeah, by that math, at LEAST 50 would be good, but I'm betting you'll use more.

Well, I'm not typing anything until I have a pretty good idea of how these scenes are going to work and fit together. I'm not going to just start writing without an idea of the layout of this movie. So it would be hard for me to "shoot for 110" pages. But yea, 110 is what I'm thinking. It will probably be more than 50 scenes though.

Some will be 2 minutes, some will be 30 seconds, maybe less. So who knows.

So it would be hard for me to "shoot for 110" pages.

That's the way it works. What else? Try to shoot for x number of scenes of X time elapse and then add them up?

Don't WORRY about this shit. Worry about the shape of the script and bringing it in under 120 pages and over 90. That's enough to sweat, actually.