How long will my film be?
The industry rule of thumb is that one page of a correctly formatted screenplay runs about one minute on screen. It holds because the format is fixed: 12-point Courier, set margins, about 55 lines on a US Letter page. A 10-page short runs about 10 minutes and a 100-page feature about an hour and forty.
It's an average, not a promise. Quick-fire dialogue often plays faster than a page a minute, while a half-page of action ("they fight their way to the roof") can take three minutes to play out. Set the pace to match your script, and treat the result as a planning number until you've timed a read-through or a cut.
Why the page count is in eighths
Crews divide each page into eighths, roughly an inch each, and measure every scene that way: a short exchange might be 3/8, a big set piece 2 4/8. Schedules use eighths to plan how much can be shot in a day, often four to five pages on an independent shoot. The calculator counts pages with the same rules as MoviePro's Script Editor, so they match.
Typical lengths
- Micro-short: 1 to 3 pages, for social media and 48-hour challenges.
- Festival short: 5 to 15 pages. Shorter shorts are easier to programme.
- Academy short: 40 minutes or less, including credits.
- Feature: 90 to 120 pages; comedies and horror tend to the short end, epics to the long.
- TV: about 30 pages for a half-hour, 50 to 60 for an hour-long drama.
Where to go next
Write or tidy the script in the free screenplay editor, then plan the shots in the shot list template. The course lessons Script breakdown and Scheduling and budgeting show how page counts turn into a shooting schedule.