ForresterW

Official feature length minimum runtime?

Can anybody tell me the official minimum runtime for feature length film?

Thank you

Scott Weinberg

Sixty minutes = a feature film. I'm looking for an online source to back this up, but I'm fairly certain I'm right.

Mark Philp

Somewhere in the dark archives of my brain I seem to recall reading that back in the early days of movies a feature was considered any film that ran five reels or longer. A reel in those days was about 10 minutes so we're talking 50 minutes or so. Back then when the studios were cranking out a lot of "B"s many of them only ran between 50 and 60 minutes so I guess that makes sense. I don't know who decided this or how "official" it was.

ChrisBEA

For some reason I thought it was a weird number like 72, but I can't remember where I remember it from.....

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george kaplan

Oddly enough, it appears that the Academy Awards defines feature length as over 40 minutes.

See rule 2a

"Movies should be like amusement parks. People should go to them to have fun." - Billy Wilder

"Subtitles good. Hollywood bad." - Tarzan, Sight & Sound 2012 voter.

"My films are not slices of life, they are pieces of cake." - Alfred Hitchcock

"My great humility is just one of the many reasons that I am vastly superior to everyone else." - Ramrod Clerk

Ray H

I know Dumbo's only 64 minutes. Probably the shortest movie I've ever seen.

ForresterW

Sundance say...

70+ minutes for movies

50+ minutes for documentaries

Ernest Rister

The obscure Disney animated feature Saludos Amigos is *I think* 47 minutes long. If the Academy defines a "feature" as a film that runs over 40 minutes, that might be why Saludos Amigos is listed as an "animated feature" by Disney, one of the few that was nominated for three or more academy awards.

MatthewLouwrens

That would explain the presence of films like Sherlock Jr on the AFI 100 Laughs list, despite having a running time of only about 45 minutes.

AFI Top 100 lists:
100 Movies, 100 Thrills - Completed
100 Laughs - 24 to go - last seen: The Freshman
100 Passions - 39 to go - last seen: Breakfast At Tiffany's
100 Heroes & Villains - 10 to go - last seen: Tom Powers in The Public Enemy
100 Songs - 45 to go - last seen: "Moon River" from Breakfast At Tiffany's
100 Quotes - 19 to go - last seen: "Toga! Toga!" in Animal House
100 Years of Film Scores - 3 to go - last seen: How the West Was Won
100 Cheers - 43 to go - last seen: Philadelphia

TOTAL (458 movies) - 145 to go - My AFI movie list here.

My blog / Films watched in 2005 / 2006 / 2007 / 2008.