Reel Lengths and Film Footage

[sunnyd58]

I have a client who has delivered a reel that is 22 minutes and 57 seconds (5 reel movie). My question is, in order to fit on a 2000ft film reel, the reel should be under 22 minutes and 13 seconds correct?

This film will be released in theaters, I just want to make sure I am correct (or need corrected), before I make the client rebalance all the reels. Are most feature still being output to film at this point, or is the 2000 ft reel a thing of the past?

Thanks for the help everyone!

[georgia]

a 35 mm motion picture reel is 1,000 feet or about 11 minutes at 24 FPS. two of these reels make up what you are referring to as a "REEL". so in theory you can squeeze 22 minutes with no header or tail....

The run time for an exhibition reel will be between 20 and 22 minutes...

so you are basically asking for trouble if you go over 20 minutes for 1 reel, even though you could conceivably go to 22 minutes. You're talking about 23 minutes with no leader....

if your CLIENT is asking YOU for advice... i'd tell them no. If your CLIENT is telling YOU, then i'd advice them to cut the project down by at least 1.5 minutes and then do the best you can.... but i wouldn't make it your fault by telling them it can be done.

or tell them to do a digital distribution....

cheers
geo

[Branko]

The limiting factor is sound negative length, which is 624m. You need at least 3m at each end for safe threading into camera and speeding up, and you also need at least 5-6m to shoot the x-mod test. That will leave you with max 612m. A good engineering practice would be not to go over 600m. That's 21:40 at 24fps.

[sunnyd58]

Thanks so much for the information. Always tough to tell a client what to do without being properly informed.

[Tom Fleischman]

You have good reason to get nervous about over length reel. You don't want that, believe, you don't. Make sure they budget for the time it's going to take to conform and rebalance your mix. The good news is that it will cost less to rebalance than it would to fix it when the track negative stock runs out before the end of the show.

[sunnyd58]

Totally, this is one of the first things we check at turnover, so only some editorial has been done for producer screenings to non "locked" reels. They were not thrilled to rebalance, but understood once I explained. Thanks all the information!

[starcrash13]

I've seen ridiculous reels that are like 2500' or something, but it was assumed that they would either re-balance or cut it way down at some point later.