should you worry about the number of scenes?

[victortiti89]

In my two scripts I had 118 scenes(in both), but in my current project, I'm at scene 121 and still got a few more scenes to write. It's a sci-fi set in the distant future, with more locations(eg: floating cities, evil human leaders, various Earth locations, etc.), unlike the previous ones. Should I worry about this or not? Thanks for answering!

 

[rayw]

Who's paying to shoot all this crazy sh!t?


If it's your nickel then you can write whatever you think you can budget for building sets and moving cast, crew, and equipment around to to achieve your vision.

If it's someone else's nickel, well then... don't be shocked and amazed if they "creatively consolidate" (or cut) some of that.


Screenwriting is like making blueprints for a house.
Making up stuff on paper is one thing. Paying for it to be built is something entirely different.


Write your story.
Nothing off the shelf, spec pie-in-the-sky, is going to match the director/producer's asset resources.
Stuff's going to change for artistic or practical reasons.

You're making fabric, not clothes.

 

[directorik]

Should I worry about this or not?

You should not even THINK about this.

 

[dlevanchuk]

The right amount of scenes is the amount that tells the story. Even if there 500 scenes. I it nesesity to tell tr story - then there is 500 scenes.
Can you eliminate some of the scenes? Do they contain just an overdone description of your setting? If u ll remove re scene from the story, will the story still make sense? If yes - get rid of it.
Writers job is to tell the story. It's up to the director HOW to tell it.

 

[Firm1]

Yeah, I mean it has nothing to do with the number of scenes. Rather, its about telling the COMPLETE STORY .

However with that said, its important to understand that the more pages you write, the more complicated things will be for everyone involved in the film, including producers. So as a rule of thumb, its best to try and low ball it as much as humanly possible without ruining the essence of the story. If you can trim it down and get rid of some scenes then by all means do it. But, if you gotta add more you gotta add more. The point is, you want to have enough scenes to tell the story but not too much so as to drag the story and make the audience bored. Avoid redundancy and make sure you're always getting straight and to the point.

 

[directorik]

So as a rule of thumb, its best to try and low ball it as much as humanly possible without ruining the essence of the story.

Is this your suggestion for every writer in all cases? A general rule of thumb?

Seem really short sighted to me. And creatively restricting.

 

[Firm1]

Is this your suggestion for every writer in all cases? A general rule of thumb?

Seem really short sighted to me. And creatively restricting.

No, I'm just saying that the idea is to make the proper number of scenes for whatever story you're telling. If its a big story like King Kong or Dark Knight Rises, then you gotta have a lot of scenes. But, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be conscious of how big you're making it. Both of the movies mentioned above could have easily been pumped full of other scenes but that would have only made it boring and redundant. Then, you might as well make it into a tv series or a trilogy. Its not that its good or bad to have a lot of scenes, its just that its bad to drag a story on and have unnecessary scenes, regardless of how creative or cool they are. At the end of the day, its about the story, not about layering it with creative scenes.

The number of scenes is entirely dependent on how big you want to make it, so its more or less irrelevant. But, you gotta trim the fat where the fat needs trimming, for budget's sake and for the integrity of the story. That's why I like to progress stories in the appropriate tempo. If it needs building up, add more scenes to show it, but if you can move the scene along faster, do it.

 

[FantasySciFi]

There are no hard and fast rules. A teacher once pointed out an interesting fact. I find is true in my own writing and many of the scripts that I've read is that, which is, that most scripts have almost the same number of scenes as pages. So roughly each page is a new scene. Action scripts tend to have more scene changes but I've found it's generally a good approximation. It's an observation, not a rule. So if you have a 200 page script, 211 scenes is right on par. If you have three scenes per script page, that's probably very ambitious. That would be roughly 20 second scenes (1 page = 1 screen minute) for just over an hour. That would be taxing as a viewer.

However there is a difference between a "scene" and a location. I can have a limited number of filming locations but have to refer to them over and over again. It is the number of locations, not the scenes, that is the financial issues.

 

[Dustin Bowcott]

I think we should always write with budget in mind. Amount of scenes does not matter, it's the amount of different scenes that have a bearing. 30 scenes in a hospital is fine because they can all be filmed at once.

 

[harmonica44]

Plus scenes are different lengths. In The Dark Knight, there are a lot of scenes and many don't go over a minute, but in Rope, the whole movie is one scene. It's very relative.

 

[Shanked]

This is actually a great question. I'm sure it might bother some purists who believe art should be unfettered. And in many case, I agree, art should have no rules.

But commercial art...

Selling your art in today's marketplace means you gotta follow some rules. If you're looking to sell your completed work, whether as a script or a movie that's made from your script, you have to know that modern audiences are accustomed to a certain rhythm. And if you figure out that rhythm, you can make decent money as a writer.

The first thing I wanna point out is that the word "scene" has different meanings in film. In a screenwriting program, a "scene" is pretty much anything with its own slughead. That means establishing shots and little snippets within a montage. Those all get tallied in the scene count. I'm hoping you're not asking about THAT number because that number can fluctuate wildly depending on genre, writing style, and usage of montages. The pertinent definition of "scene" is the word that refers to a conversation, or a fistfight, or a car chase, or a prowling-through-a-home moment, etc. Each of these things will have several slugheads in it, but these things are all one scene each. Right? Now that this is clear...

Rather than answer how many scenes you should have, I want to introduce two separate questions:

1) How long should most scenes be?
2) How long should the entire movie be?

The answer to the first question is around 1.5 to 2.5 pages. And from there you can go up or down, depending on the nature of the scene. Yes, some scenes are perfect for a half page total! And some scenes deserve 8 full pages! Very true. But, in general, the default rhythm, call it the pulse of the audience, sits at around 2 pages. The key is that you write and you innately FEEL the scene should come to a climax, rather than looking down and seeing your page count requires it. When you get that innate feeling, you'll start to sell your work. The best way to acquire it is to watch movies and then read the scripts of those same movies.

As for how long a movie should be, the answer is roughly 90 to 120 pages. Beginners should aim for 90. Books will tell you 105 or 115 or even 120 but these bloated numbers will keep you lovingly unemployed. The sad rule of Hollywood is: NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SHIT. So if you pleasantly come in with a nice compact script, you will have a much better chance of the readers actually reading the whole thing.

If you combine these two answers, you should get a rough idea of what your total scene count should be. If you just want to express yourself through film, you can ignore this entire post. But if you're trying to sell stuff, you gotta learn the quantifiable rhythms. And I should also state that if you're a Shane Black or an Akiva Goldsman, you can violate every convention there is, because producers will trust your name. But if you're a nobody and you want someone to give you $122,000 for a measly little PDF document, you'll need to deliver a familiar product to them. They're scared -- producers -- and they need a familiar rhythm to feel secure about purchasing your wares.

They'll also need an impactful story, but that's a separate thread.


Shanked

 

[SEAM]

Less is More... that's my advice.
Shooting scenes is cheap on paper, expensive in practice. Like some of the responses here, the correct number of scenes is like the correct length of a piece of string. What you might find, however, is that the more scenes you try to cram into a 90 minute feature film, the less the audience is likely to follow. You need to give them time to digest and understand what you are presenting them with.
That said, audiences have a built-in expectation of what they're going to get from a feature. If you don't set up the story within the first five minutes and put the protagonist at a cross-roads within fifteen, you are running counter to expectation. As long as they are fully engaged, it won't matter if you don't hit the timings and turning points. But, if they're confused, it doesn't matter what you do - you've lost them.