George Lucas says he’ll map out the story this way:
30 scenes x 4:00 or 60 scenes x 2:00.
In documentary we’re usually aiming more toward 90:00 total run time, so what is that? 30 x 3:00? 45 x 2:00? 90 x 1:00? I have no idea how anyone else is doing this, but here are some thoughts on how I am.
Here’s a basic structure I sometimes look at for a 90:00 documentary. Currently this is pasted on top of the Wild Inside edit board:
I forget who created this originally and I forget who gave it to me. Thanks, whoever(s)! Please identify yourselves!
I’m always looking at the math. How many characters? Each one will probably need 3+ scenes if you want to give them an arc (beginning/middle/end). How many storylines? Each beat of every storyline: how many scenes will those take? And so on. I’m mapping this out in pre-production, I’m mapping it out during casting and filming and editing, and I’m still mapping it out when we get to picture lock.
It was the math that alerted me early in production on Mrs. America that we were in trouble. We were trying to make a character-driven but expansive feature-length documentary, but we had too many characters and too many story beats for it. We had barely started shooting, but already the math was not mathing.
We tried cutting characters, but each one turned out to be an essential part of the whole. Then we tried cutting larger sections of the story, but then the story didn’t work. We tried making every scene very short ( ~1:00), but that didn’t work stylistically or emotionally. That’s why we pivoted to a 4-part series. That project is in limbo, which I hate and I want to finish it please. But the math did not lie!
Here’s the Kenny G board. This has 32 scenes. Most are 2-3 mins long. Some are 4 mins, which I’m sure I could have broken into smaller scenes (more cards):
In pre-production, I’ll aim for 30 scenes, and we go from there.
Our first rough cuts tend to have much longer scenes, more like 5-8 mins long. I call these ‘the options cuts’ because we are leaving in lots of redundancies, be that mechanical or emotional or whatever. Over time, we whittle them down to whatever seems essential, and they seem to end up around 2-4 mins.
I think 2-4 mins scenes are considered pretty normal and standard these days in doc (??) but I’m not sure. I do think it’s funny that following my intuition over many years, with no plan and no studying: I ended up completely obeying George Lucas. How do you all do the math?