A one-hour drama is generally five
Acts two, three, and four are the middle part or conflict section, and Act five is the third part or resolution. With this five act structure, the only hard part is finding where to place the halfway event. If act three and act four are short, the halfway point may fall at the end of act three.
Generally speaking, hour-long episode scripts can be anywhere from 45-63 pages, although a majority of the time you want to stick with 50-55 pages. The basic sense of it is that one page equals one minute, and with a 60-minute show, you obviously need to account for commercial breaks.
Most acts include three to five scenes, and most TV shows have four acts, so that's anywhere between 12 and 20 scenes in a single episode.
Half-Hour-Long TV Pilot Act Breaks
With half-hour-long television series episodes, you will break the story down into three acts.
Typically, a one-hour drama consists of a teaser and 4 acts. There are some, like Enterprise, that have a teaser and 5 acts and still others that are only 4 acts, like Alias.
Scripts should always roughly be a page to a minute, so you should expect pilot scripts to be 45 - 60 pages. 45 - 60 pages equals out to about 45 minutes to an hour of screen time.
A 30-minute show is usually between two to three acts, and it can depend on what type of show it is and what platform hosts it. For example, a show on HBO doesn't have to deal with time restraints necessitated by commercials (which also act as natural act breaks), whereas a show on ABC or CBS does.
The first two episodes are the first act, and the last episode is the last act, and the middle is the rising action, structured just like a movie.
Most TV shows run anywhere between 10–100 minutes. With the average “hour-long” show running for about 42 minutes and the “half-hour” shows running from about 22 minutes to the full 30, minus commercial breaks (remember commercial breaks?).
Half-Hour Teleplay Page Counts
The pages per half-hour vary greatly by show, but most fall between 20 and 40 pages. This range is based on the average length of an episode of television, which is about 22 minutes for network primetime dramas and 10 minutes for cable.
Turn-On is an American sketch comedy series that aired on ABC in February 1969. Only one episode was shown, leaving one episode unaired, and the show is considered one of the most infamous flops in TV history.
The Simpsons (1989 - Present)
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. In the United States, dramas produced for hour-long time slots typically are 37 to 42 minutes in length (excluding advertisements), while sitcoms produced for 30-minute time slots typically are 18 to 21 minutes long.
A 30 minute sitcom actually only has about 20 minutes of screen time. The other ten minutes are taken up by commercials and credits. Writing and filming a 20 minute story is far simpler than writing a 30 minute story. That's not even really enough time to tell a full story.
A one-hour drama is generally five acts of a show. It's a one-hour drama separated into five parts, probably about 55 pages, although they can be longer. I think my pilot for Grey's Anatomy might have originally been 72 pages long. They tend to be long.
Scripts. This is the first step to familiarize yourself with the hour-long format on the page. Most TV drama pilots are between 55 and 65 pages and are broken down into acts. Traditionally, these acts allow for commercial breaks on network (and some cable) TV channels.
The four-act structure divides a story into four major parts: the setup, the rising action, the crisis, and the resolution. It's a modified form of the three-act structure, which lumps the rising action and the crisis together in a hefty second act; the four-act structure separates the two.
In screenwriting, one page of your script is usually equivalent to one minute of screentime. So if you're looking to make an average, 20-minute long short film, you'll want your short film script to be about 20 pages long.
A half-hour sitcom may take up to four hours to tape. Take some warm clothing as the studio will be air-conditioned.
Feature film scripts usually run between 80-120 pages for an approximately 1.5 or 2-hour movie; each script page corresponds to approximately one minute of screen time.
The three-act structure is a model used in narrative fiction that divides a story into three parts (acts), often called the Setup, the Confrontation, and the Resolution.
The rule John is referring to is that a film based on a (properly formatted) 90-page screenplay will be roughly 90 minutes long.
Data used per hour, per device:
Standard definition: up to1 GB. High definition: up to 3 GB. Ultra high definition (4K): up to 7 GB.