What's the minimum running time for a feature-length film?
 

I'm trying to remember, but I can't. I think it's at least 72 minutes to be officially considered a feature film. Anyone have an idea and/or a link?

heath

The answer will depend on who you ask. If you check the WGA minimums, they will dictate the running length for Feature payment schedules. Film festivals will have their own length for 'feature' and 'short'... which will often vary from Documentary 'feature' length.

But if you want an answer from somebody, I'll give you a quick one. A 'feature' narrative must be ninety minutes in length.

There, THAT should stir up a hornets nest. Some will say 'eighty', no doubt. I forget what the Academy sets as feature length... that should probably be the answer your looking for. Those are minimums, by the way. With 120 being the optimal 'maximum'... though films are tending a little longer these days.

The shortest I've seen widely released as a feature in a long time had to be the movie phone booth or whatever that was with the over-rated Irish actor that's never Irish in anything he's in :)

Paul

"Men In Black II" runs at 88mins according to imdb

Paul C,

Except for Daredevil! BTW, wasn't there a Woody Allen movie that was 74 minutes or so? And I think Jurassic Park 3 was around 80+ minutes.

heath

I don't think anything under eighty these days would cut it... Again, we might be looking for the Academy's definition. What does the Academy ask for in "Feature Length" submissions for award consideration?

It seems these days the movies that clock in at 2:30 to 3 hours seem to win all the awards. Titanic, The English Patient, Return of the King, etc.

heath

The Hawaii International Film Festival seems to just separate short from feature by the 60-minute mark. Of course, shorts are usually only 15-20 minutes and features are usually 90 minutes or more. I'm guessing that you don't want to fall between about 40 and 80 as your movie would be too long for a short and too short for a feature. I think the 60-minute mark is exactly the wrong amount of time for a movie as it is too much for a simple short movie and not enough time to develop a feature-style story.

60 minutes is a featurette. I really think it's 72 minutes or so.

heath

David Cronenberg's first "feature" Stereo is 65 minutes long.

Really a feature film is anything that gets a released as a standalone film. I think really anything over an hour gets considered a feature and anything under a short. I've seen "short" films that are an hour long. Festivals don't like short films longer that 30 minutes (and some less) because they are hard to programme. It's tricky to put them with a bunch of shorter films and not long enough to warrant it's own slot. A ot of documentaries that aim for broadcast rather than theatrical fall into the 45minute-1hour time slot and it can be tricky for festival prgrammers.

Why does 87 minutes stick in my head?

Well as a screenwriter, a 'feature' length will be considered 80 to 120 pages, with one page roughly one minute of screentime.

My documentary "American Jouster" www.americanjouster.com is 57 minutes long. I entered it in probably two dozen film festivals. About half of them considered it a 'feature' length Doc, and half of them considered it a short. Again, I think Docs are a different breed from narratives in this respect.

I know this - distributors want 90 minutes
 

and lately, they've been complaining that they're having a hard time getting that from most indie filmmakers. I've met a handful of filmmakers that have had to re-edit to hit the 90 minute mark or the distributors wouldn't take it.

I've seen 80 minute movies in the past couple of years. I think this may depend on the distributor. I'm a big fan of 90-110 minute movies; not too short, not too long.

Miami Vice's running time was almost 2 1/2 hours, but around 10 minutes or more of that was END CREDITS!

Heath

Yep - end credits count too! So, if you have a movie that's say, 70-odd minutes long, you can legitmately extend it out with a long end credit sequence. I had to do this with my first feature DEADEYE, which was around 75 minutes long without credits.

We made up many, many funny, fake names to beef up the end credits. I talked with a couple of distributors who said this was fine and in the end it did get picked up.

As for the 90 minutes or more thing, remember that if it's going to be shown on commercial TV to subtract 12 minutes per hour of footage - ie - 12 mintues of commercials per hour.

The reality is, the network will chop down your flick to fit its needs in any event. So, in my mind, even a 75 minute long flick is feature length, at least as far as TV goes...

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

84 minutes

Oh yeah? Well, I'm sticking with 65m.

87 minutes, 12 seconds and four frames...

I think this thread has pretty much illustrated that there's no FIXED answer. It depends on who's asking.

Now that's funny!

I'm convinced - it's 87 minutes, 12 seconds and 4 frames.

Period. Forever. Sticky this.

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

Once I'm done trimming and adding F/X to my film, I hope the official running time is around 85-87 minutes! I'm still convinced the official running time is around 72 minutes or so.

heath

70 minutes
 

That is the official requirement for a feature length film at Sundance and quite a number of other festivals. I've heard 70 mins a number of times in the past also. I'm thinking the logic being: it is over a hour, yet short enough that it would cost less money to get it done. Perfect for indie movies.

Personaly, I would rather watch a dynamite 70 min feature to an okay 80 or 90 min feature.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines Feature length as anything over 40 minutes.

Actually, just check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_film

Like I said, depends on who you're asking and what their particular needs are. SAG says 80 minutes. That's what they will base their pay and compensation rate on. WGA says a feature script is80 -120 pages, at a page a minute

Different film festival will have different definitions for 'feature'.

Speaking of page-per-minute, despite knowing my film is all dialogue, I thought the 105 page script would've been at least 95 minutes. I was stunned when it came in, with most of the titles intact and about 3-4 minutes still to cut out (LOOOONG scene), at 83 minutes!

heath

Yeah, it's just a guideline. It is more accurate when you have a good mix of dialogue and action. If the script is all one or the other, it will skew it a bit.

I agree, Richard, but of all the shorts and features I've been involved with, this one skewed more than I ever thought possible! I wonder if KICKING AND SCREAMING (Noah Baumbach) had a longer script, page-wise, than it ended up being, despite the scenes cut out?

heath

here is the running time answer.
 

Hi Everyone,

So regarding feature and short films running time. Well if you have a film that is shorter than 40 minutes, than it's a short film. if it's over 40 minutes, it can and most will be, considered a feature film.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,[1] the American Film Institute,[2] and the British Film Institute[3] all define a feature as a film with a running time of 40 minutes or longer.

The "Centre national de la cinématographie" in France defines it as a 35mm film which is longer than 1,600 metres, which comes out to exactly 58 minutes and 29 seconds for sound films, and the Screen Actors Guild gives a minimum running time of 80 minutes.[4] Usually a feature film is between 90 and 210 minutes; a children's film is usually between 60 and 120 minutes[citation needed]. An anthology film is a fixed sequence of short subjects with a common theme, combined into a feature film.
The term evolved from the days when the cinema-goer would watch a series of short subjects before the main film. The shorts would typically include newsreels, serials, animated cartoons and live-action comedies and documentaries. These types of short films would lead up to what came to be called the "featured presentation": the film given the most prominent billing and running multiple reels.

Animated films are considered feature and are often quite short. It gets blurry there.

Consider early Disney animated films, or, for example, a good border example, The Nightmare Before Christmas at 76minutes.

90 minutes is standard, obviously, so around 90 is right.

But the bottom line is hard to say.

40 minute is way too short to be an official cutoff where anything over that is a feature, but it might be a good minimum line.

I think the ultimate definition is very simple: a feature film is one that can be featured in front of an audience in a marketable performance as a stand alone.

In fact, Grindhouse creates a weird example. Double feature, perhaps, but, really, would that mean they were both shorts? Each was over an hour, correct?
So...


I'd say it is just that... anything that will hold an audience's attention for an evening, etc.

Standalone sufficient event to draw the audience to pay the full price for a film (in most cases).... or, considering the independent world, something imitating this. (And so it gets more vague.)

I believe it's 72 minutes; the more I research, that's the number that comes up.

heath

And if a great "short" at running time 71:35 were to pop up and be played in major theatres internationally and draw in audiences to pay full ticket prices.... then... still a short?

I think any numbers are just guidelines or rules *but only of companies* for what they will consider a feature. Film festivals must decide, the awards groups must decide, and so must distributors. But just like a language, it's something that changes based on culture and popularity and can't be defined with a specific number.

Paramount (arbitrary company) may only accept 72 minutes plus, but I can guarantee they'd love to release a 71 minute feature that will be popular and sell out theatres.


To use an analogy-- this is just like the "official widescreen" aspect ratio. What is it? 16:9? 2.35:1? 4:3? 3:1? Circular?
Early films were basically square (not sure on the exact dimensions), and in some cases even used vignetting to create strange shapes, at least for some scenes, such as circles. In order to make a BIG experience to attract viewers once TVs came out, they started to make wider and wider screens. And now there's 2.35:1 for the BIG pictures. But the smaller ones use a more standard format, depending on the country of origin.


It was said that the max is 120, so the minimum is 72? Just like the max, then, can that be broken? Star Wars, Titanic, Harry Potter and LOTR all were well over 2 hours and this causes scheduling issues for theatres. But you didn't see any theatres refusing to play these. Why? Supply and demand. It's how the film industry works.

If you can break the rules well enough not only will they cease to apply but you may even change them.


But of course I'd agree that 72 minutes is a good guideline for a feature film that you want to have released.


I think a more accurate representation of this would be the average length and standard deviations (for those who want to deal with a bit of math).

Basically, that means that about 100* minutes is the average, and 85 to 120 is standard. Anything outside that range becomes rare and an exception, though by no means explicitly disallowed. 75 minutes and 135 become infrequent though not unheard of, and 70 / 160 are quite rare. Then there are weird exceptions perhaps 50 minutes and 300 minutes (though I don't know if any of these actually exist, but it's irrelevant as this is a possibility.)

(*These numbers are approximations based on quick guesses, so this is an example, and perhaps we can calculate the real numbers to get a better idea.)


EDIT: I looked through listings on imdb, and it's difficult to decide exactly what to count for this, but here's a simple example:
http://us.imdb.com/Sections/Years/2007/top-grossing
10 movies of lengths: 129, 100, 87, 110, 112, 138, 168, 144, 92, 140. Average: 122.
So, clearly the "120 minute max" is thrown out.
However, if you want to discount the epic films (POTC 3, Spidey 3, HP 5, and [arguably] Transformers), then numbers are lower and the average is 105.
Of just those, we can approximate some rough ends to the average spectrum [this being a select portion of the 'population' of data], at 87 and 168 minutes (though 168 is extremely long and movies shorter than 87 minutes exist but just weren't in the top ten [something else to consider]).


Is a feature still a feature if released only on TV? Just festivals? Not at all? Does a short become a feature if it's popular in theatres?


Anyway, it's a fluctuating business, and rigid rules can't apply. Averages sure can, though.

Personally I don't like seeing rules as limits, and I'm not scared to break them if it will be effective. Most big success stories in film can relate to this, too. (And, sure, plenty of failures too.)


Few individuals/companies in this industry would hesitate to break a rule if it made them money. Doesn't mean it's easy to break the rules effectively, though.

Out of curiousity, I followed Daniels lead and started picking years and Academy Award Winners on IMDB.com and checking for length. I was surprised to find how many exceeded 120 mins...even in earlier years like 1957 for instance. But perhaps thats a self selecting limitation. The shorter 'B' movies wouldn't be in the awards listings.

From this we may infer that the award winners tend longer... except for comedies.

And I couldn't find one for 72 minutes at all.

I think Woody Allen had a movie (wish I could remember which one) that was 72 minutes, and that's where I heard about that rule. He had to make it EXACTLY that time.

Also, people doing TV shows (30 minute ones with commercials) had to cut their stuff down (or in some cases add to it) to get the shows to 22 minutes or so. I recently worked on an infomercial that had to be 28:30 precisely.

heath

TV shows have a particular reason for being that length. There are, however, variations, such as the weird new trend to have "2 hour" premieres (about 1:30 of actual content).

Movies, though, are based on popularity. No set schedule for them. Theatres schedules around the films.

As for the 72 minute Woody Allen film, that's reasonable. But that is also older, and it's a new faster age when things aren't so set in stone. FX are expensive... or are they? You can't make a movie without a professional crew. Or can you?
Etc.

In the early days of film, they couldn't show a dead mouse, so Of Mice and Men had a bird instead of a mouse... odd.

Anyway, give it time. (Or maybe 72 minutes is a magic number that will never get improved upon.)

I'd say anything over 65-70 minutes is feature-length. But a lot of fests call movies 40-60 minutes "featurettes." Er, not a lot of fests, only the ones that accept movies that long. Off topic: most fests seem to like shorts that are no longer than 15 minutes.

heath

According to the 78th Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences rules:

a. feature length (defined as over 40 minutes)

Mike

http://www.oscars.org/78academyawards/rules/rule02.html

I think what these posts have illustrated is there is NO OFFICIAL length. I doubt there's a festival out there that will consider a forty minute film, "Feature Length"... and I doubt you'll see a film of that length stand alone on a bill in a theatre. Try entering a forty minute film under a feature category, and arguing with the judges that it IS a feature. THEY get to set the gategory lengths, and they are not strictly consisitent from festival to festival.

Television lengths are a 'closed format'. Features are cut to fit in the time slots with the adds stuck in. Sitcoms and Dramas are also shot to fit in a known time frame.

I cut my doc American Jouster to EXACTLY fit the PBS requirements of a SPECIFIC series, and it's considered both a short and a feature when I enter it in festivals at 56:30.

Like I said, it all depends on who's asking.