Saturday, November 05, 2005

Q. What is the average page count of a one hour drama? I am working on a spec for Supernatural and I've timed out the show at 40 minutes. I thought that a drama should fall between 47 and 50 pages, but the WB material seems shorter.

It depends on how chatty the show is. West Wing scripts run 67-70 pages easy. I've read that Gilmore Girls scripts can crack 75 pages. On Charlie Jade, on the other hand, a more laconic show, we tried to hit 52 pages. It also depends on the level of detail of action description. If you're speccing a show, you need to know what that show's page count typically is. There is no general answer.

Sitcoms have a different format, with double-spaced dialog. And they're very talky. So half hour sitcom scripts can run over fifty pages.

Me, I like a chatty, long script. A few extra lines of dialog here and there don't make a script longer to shoot. It's extra locations that kill your production schedule. I'd rather have more dialog for the editor to play with. And that means a longer script.

12:09 PM

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