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  • Film & TV Moderators: ghostfreak

How long should a film be?

cakehead

cakehead

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apologies if this is already here somewhere but i didnt look.

just wondering what people think is a reasonable lenght for a movie- it seems that the rule of thumb has been +/- 90 minutes. but with directors cuts special editions etc film duration varies greatly....not always a benefit but sometimes the extra time helps give more depth.
pesonally i think two hours is about the max a film should be....unless its an "epic" that needs more time to get everything in.

and maybe some examples of films folk here feel are too short/long and reasons why?

for me goodfellas is a prime example of a movie that needs to be 145 minutes, doesnt lose interest in it and makes you wish it was longer.

any lord of the rings film for me is too long with too many scenes that while they may be relevant to the story but make the film drag, and could have been shortened somehow. im not for films that are action from start to finish but like something that i can stay focused on.

plenty of fims ive seen that are/seem to be too short, too wrecked to think of an example offhand- but if they were longer would that take something away from them? got one- love donnie darko but if more was explored and expalined i think, for me at leats, it would ruin it.
 
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The general rule seems to be that comedies are shorter and dramas are longer. For a while it seemed like theater owners et al wanted to keep everything under two hourse so that they could move crowds in and out of theaters. But with the popularity of the Lord of the Rings movies and greater lengths for the "critically acclaimed" films, many of these guidelines seem to be changing.
 
As long as it needs to be to resolve the story. :\

Shorter is better sometimes. Think about comedies: both Supertroopers and Club Dread would have been better if they were about 20+ minutes shorter.
 
well there are certain rules for how long a film should be. think kill bill. tarantino basically had to break his original idea down into two films because fours hours or more is thought to be just too long a time for people to endure sitting in a cinema.

i'd say that three hours is the max. and that anything between an hour and 45 minutes, too two hours, is the average length of time that most films tend to be these days.
 
... as long as it needs to be to tell the whole story effectively.


this question reminds me of when students ask professors- "how long does the paper have to be?" to which the professors always respond-"as long as you need it to be."
 
psychetool said:
=>2 hours
Click to expand...
You probably mean <= (less than or equal to)?

xena said:
... as long as it needs to be to tell the whole story effectively.


this question reminds me of when students ask professors- "how long does the paper have to be?" to which the professors always respond-"as long as you need it to be."
Click to expand...
Exactly. That's the only sensible answer really. How long should a piece of string be?
 
xena said:
... as long as it needs to be to tell the whole story effectively.


this question reminds me of when students ask professors- "how long does the paper have to be?" to which the professors always respond-"as long as you need it to be."
Click to expand...

no doubt about that. but at the same time there are certain "guidelines" for about how long a film should be, specifically when you're talking in terms of hollywood cinema.
 
all i remember is the story of a like 6 hour long movie that had an hour and half long meal break in the middle (like they actually showed half the movie, broke for an hour and half and resumed where they left off)

That is one long ass movie.

I like to stick to short movies unless they're real good. I can't focus on a 2 hour long movie if it's boring.
 
i believe one rule is that lengnth should be directly proportional to # of characters involved in a story.
 
no, but if there were more characters than ghandi who were the central focus of the story, it should have been longer.
 
i think that films with complicated plots that are wrapped up prematurely and sloppily are bad films :p
 
Most people do not seem to agree with me on this, but I really hate this attempt lately to make every movie as short as it can possibly be while still telling a story, but giving you no time to really get to the know the characters or become absorbed in the story. Personally, most films I see I would actually prefer to be a little bit longer. Most of the time when I watch deleted scenes on a DVD and the director says it was taken out strictly to shorten the film to a more acceptable length, it just pisses me off. Why take quality scenes out of a movie just to make it shorter? I feel kind of cheated that I missed out on a lot of these great scenes. Take "Kingdom of Heaven" for example. I think that could've been at least a good film had it not been so obviously butchered in the editing process. There must've been at least 40 minutes or so cut out of the beginning of that film. The first hour of that movie represents so much of whats wrong with filmmaking today, IMHO.
 
If its over 2.5 hours it had better be a damn good movie. Nothing sucks more than watching a 3 hour long so-so movie.
 
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