How long is a feature film?

[Scotness]

I always took it to be about 90 minutes minimum - though I'm sure I read about one film that was 70 minutes being touted as a feature - what do people think the minimum running time in order to be classed as a feature should be?

Scot

[onsuper8]

Many low budget "features" released in recent years in the UK scrape in around the 70-80 minute mark, its a commercial decision as to ultimate likelihood of success.

Its a bit like music albums... LP's used to be 45 minutes, EP's 20 minutes, singles 10 minutes, now we have CD's - who can tell. Longer doesn't mean better. I'd rather have a punchy 60 minutes, than a ploddy 100.

[Arnie]

I know a ton of animation films clock in at 76 minutes, so I just figure 75 is the minimum for something to be seriously referred to as a feature.

[mattias]

there's actually a definition: 2000 meters. 72 minutes. what people think is a feature is a different story. many lesbian zombie features are less than 60 minutes and very few mainstream films are under 90, phone booth being the exception to prove it i guess.

/matt

[reflex]

there's actually a definition: 2000 meters. 72 minutes. what people think is a feature is a different story. many lesbian zombie features are less than 60 minutes and very few mainstream films are under 90, phone booth being the exception to prove it i guess.
/matt

Woah.

камрад! Красивейшая тень красного цвета.

That's quite the shade of russian red you've got going on in your avatar, comrade. For a moment, I didn't realize it was you.

[ccortez]

If you like definition by exclusion, many festivals will say that anything 60 minutes or longer is no longer a short.

[mattias]

pensaba en cuba. :-)

/matt

[mathis]

lesbian zombie features

Sounds interesting. Any recommendations?

[mattias]

maybe you think i'm joking, but this is a very popular genre. at least in the u.s. ("lesbian" i'm told avoids the x-rating) but i would think germany too. sadly we don't get many of them here in sweden. check your local cult or even porn video store.

as for recommendations, how about "lost tribes" by matt pacini and you'll get to see some super 8 at the same time. too little of both gore and nudity from what i hear, but still sounds interesting. only available on ntsc vhs unfortunately.

/matt

[timdrage]

In Japan they often have 60 minute features... including one of my favorite films Tetsuo... they still have double bills over there... though cinema isn;t very big any more... straight to video is much more popular + thriving than here tho; Eg. Miike Takashi's astounding output.

[marc]

I remember that movie "Casper" that came out in the 90's and staring Christina Ricci was about an hour and 20 minutes long which struck me as very short at the time.

[Actor]

I think in the U.S. the ratio of program to commercial time is 2:1 during prime time, i.e., a half hour of TV consists of 20 minutes of programming and 10 minutes of commercials. That means an 80 minute movie would fill a 2 hour slot. So 80 minutes sounds like a good number to work with.

Now I'm going to have to dig out my stop watch and time a half hour of TV.

Whatever the ratio is, networks will re-cut a movie to get the run time down to fit in a time slot with the max FCC allowed content/commercial ratio. ("Edited for time!" I hate that.) And I'd swear that movies shown late at night have more commercials than content.

Anyway, if your movie runs 83 minutes, figure that 3 minutes is going to end up on someone's cutting room floor.

[BK]

From my experience at work dubbing hollywood features for broadcast, most are around the 90 to a 100 minutes mark. I think the duration is purely for commercial reasons from the distributor - how many cinema showings per day, especially true in Hong Kong films.

The longest feature film that I ever sat through at the cinema was " Out of Africa" I remember it was almost 3 hours long, and I emerged dazed and with a very sore butt!

Bill

[mattias]

I think in the U.S. the ratio of program to commercial time is 2:1 during prime time, i.e., a half hour of TV consists of 20 minutes of programming and 10 minutes of commercials.

most american tv series that are shown on swedish state television, which doesn't have commercials, are 45 minutes (see also the 24 dvd. it's a little silly when the dvd display says 44 minutes (pal is faster) and the on screen clock dramatically approaches the next hour) and i think tv movies are usually 95 minutes. this can still mean that you're right if you consider that there's extra commercials between shows, meaning the ratio gets lower the longer the program is.

/matt

[Actor]

I've noticed that the "complete nth season" DVDs often include "deleted scenes" and the reason given for the deletion is "for time." Jeez. It seems like if there was no dramatic reason for deleting the scene in the first place then for the DVD they could put it back in.