It's an accepted rule of scriptwriting that in a film, two minutes is a long scene, and three minutes is probably too long unless you're going to break it up with some serious action. In soap opera, scenes are often under one minute. You need to keep up the pace or audiences will get bored.
On the stage, you can run to ten minutes quite easily. In fact, it's perfectly possible to do an entire play in a single scene. That's one of the things that makes plays "stagey".
But what about short films? I've got a script that involves just two people, talking together in a room. It takes me about seven minutes to tell that story with dialogue and get across the characters, the situation, and the plot. Despite rewrites, I can't cut it down any further without losing something vital. I've tried adding in a different scene I can cut to half-way through, and that doesn't work. I've run out of ideas. The scene is what it is, and it don't wanna change. That makes it far too long by standard "film" rules. But do shorts have different rules? Is a seven minute scene OK if that's all there is to a film?
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2 comments:
Just a couple of observations.
Are we talking a scene or one continous take for a scene?
Overall I believe that we as an audience can be trained to watch or recieved scenes in a particular way. I think in some instances it may be a product of the era and certain limitations of tecnology.
I remember that there was a time in early sound films when the actors could not be far from the "hidden" microphones and cameras were held "hostage" in sound proof booths. Both of these limitations created a style and accepted length to a scene.
On "Raising Cain", I watched DePalma shoot a 10 minute take with a steadicam. He would have gone longer, but the stedicam operator could only carry a 1,000 foot load of film which equaled ten minutes.
Our society at times changes what we think is the right way to "read" a scene. Each generation has a different style. Compare a long scene in Shakespeare to a contempory fast paced scene. Both can work, but both are products of their time.
And what about a ballet that can have a wonderful long scene?
I think one answer to your question could be: Is the material up to it's length and is the performance (both by the actor and the technique used to convey it) able to sustain an audience's interest.
Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, interest in a scene may be in the head of the deliverer and beholder.
I think you should allow the scene to last as long as you feel it is still doing it's job. You'll know when it is too long.
By a scene, I mean "a continual narrative event in a single location with no cutaways". What I have is a story that takes place in one set (a one-room flat) with just two actors, over the course of about seven minutes. I'm planning to use plenty of cameras, not a single continuous Rope-like take, and the action moves around the set, so the scene falls naturally into three shorter blocks.
That would be fine on a stage, but it seems long for film, and seems as if it ought to something to break it up.
What I plan to do is get my actors to read the scene, and then see if they can carry it off successfully. If not, hey-ho, it's time for another rewrite. Or maybe they'll come up with ways to change the script.
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