Use this system to write a blockbuster
Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Predator were created this way.
By Jayson Abalos
Movies were once exclusively created on film stock, and film has physical limits. One reel is about 1,000 feet of film, and holds 10 minutes of story material. Most movies consist of eleven reels (around 110 minutes).
But the very first films started as one-reel, 10-minute stories. We built up from that. Filmmakers kept adding reels as they learned how to link more multiple-reel narratives together. In other words, they pieced together the structure of longer films from that smallest physical unit of the single 10-minute story block. And within that single 10-minute reel, the editors would always look for one key moment to hang everything else around. As a result, every reel typically had one popping scene. One key big drama, joke, thrill, scare – pick your genre.
While writers and filmmakers are no longer confined by limits of film reel technology, they’d be well advised to stick to the lessons learned by their forebears. In other words, you need to make sure to have one big bang every 10 pages (every reel) throughout your story, and build the story in blocks of ten minutes
There’s more at stake, more in play, more understood, more anticipated.
When I was watching Back to the Future, I noticed how dialled-in they were to this 10-minute mark. Then I started replaying other films in my mind, and a lot of great films rise and fall to this pattern. Several producers swear by this 10-minute rule, including legendary action producer Joel Silver (Die Hard, Lethal Weapon) who developed some of the most successful action movies in history using his “Wham-O Chart”.
In Silver’s own words: “You need to have an action beat of some sort every ten minutes, every reel, in order for the audience to enjoy the experience. I created the Wham-O Chart to show over the course of the script, every ten or twelve pages, what that action beat would be.”
And within each reel, there’s a progression to a climax on the tenth page, a consequential re-start on the eleventh page, building to a new climax at the twentieth page etc. Each reel is more exciting than the last. There’s more at stake, more in play, more understood, more anticipated.
As an experiment, when you plan out your next script, don’t look at your pages as pages; look at them as reels. End each narrative sequence by the end of every reel, every tenth page. Write to that beat, creating 11 awe-dropping units of story, one reel after another.
Jayson Abalos
Professional data analyst by trade, Jayson Abalos works at Crafty Apes as a Technology Specialist focusing on enhancing production efficiency through bringing the writer's world and the film editor's world closer together.
Connect with Jayson on Facebook or Linkedin, and discover more about his work on his website. Linkdin address: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayson-abalos-07362689/
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