GlossaryWhat are eighths in a script?
Definition. Scene length is measured in eighths of a page: a page is divided into eight parts, so a scene that fills half a page is 4/8. Schedulers use eighths because they add up cleanly when a shoot day is built from many scenes.
Updated 2026-10-12. Every screen is Spring Pro running Midnight Diner, our demo production.
How to count them
Measure each scene from its heading to the end of its last line, in eighths of the page it sits on. A scene of two lines is 1/8. A scene that runs a page and a bit is 1 1/8. Write it as a whole number and a fraction.
In Midnight Diner
The film adds up to 2 1/8 pages across 7 scenes. Scene 1 is the longest at 4/8, and scene 4 is the shortest at 1/8.
Questions
Why not use minutes?
A page of script is roughly a minute on screen, but pages are what a schedule adds up, and eighths make the sums exact.
More about script breakdown
What each scene needs is listed once, by the people who know, and every other document should read it.
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