Hi a few questions

1. Why do we have to upload it to the site at the end, wont you steal our ideas?

2. How many words should a typical movie script have?

3. Even though i realize this is for 100 pages but is that How many word pages a ,movie script should always have? what is too high and what is too low?

4. What is the best formatting to setup for microsoft word for this, i.e left, right, top and bottom margins? single space, double space?

thanks

I can answer #1 and #4.

1. The page count validation is completely automated. The PDF file is uploaded, page-counted and deleted. If you are really worried, you can scramble it but to be honest I don't find it to be worth the effort. The automatic page-counting robots are illiterate and so will not be able to steal your ideas.

4. Click the Writer's Resources link at the top of the page and you will find a lot of information about formatting your script. For a screenplay/movie, the direct link is here: http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/howtoformatascreenplay

Please note that the final file needs to be a PDF as this is all that the robots can count.

I can give a stab at answering #3.

There are no "always" answers in scriptwriting (or any creative endeavor). If your script takes more pages, go for it. If it's excellent and comes in under 100 pages, don't mess it up with more.

But for SF, 100 pages is the winner's line goal because that's a good number of pages to have for a first draft script. You can tailor it to fit the needs of the industry or whomever you want to sell to--but later.

Oh, you know... one thing I can add which may or may not be relevant in terms of the length of the script is this:

Last fall I was asked to write a stageplay for a local community theater (it was to be their first performance). After a re-write due to casting issues, the script ended up at 31 pages long and ran for about 40 minutes. If you figure that the typical movie is somewhere around 2 hours in length, if I were to make this a "movie length" script, I would have to triple the length of the script, increasing it to about 93 pages (assuming the number of pages per minute remained constant).

This was a one act, once scene script. My pages were "lean" in that I did not spell out the special effects and there were no scene transitions or anything like that; there were short 'suggestions' in the script for the special effects I thought would be best, but since I did not really know what the group would be able to pull off, I left all of that to the director. If I had those in the script, it would have been a larger number of pages.

Not sure if this helps you at all, but it might give a little perspective of at least one example of the length of a script, something you might be able to use to gauge the length you need or want to go for. But as was said by saipanwriter, the length of your script should be dictated by what you need to tell your story.

To answer number 4 - check out the Technology and Software forum... you'll find lots of great tips, and links to some great (free) programs that will do your formatting for you.

You'll also find great formatting tips in the Writer's Workshop tab at the top of the webpage.

The rule of thumb is 1 page per minute of screentime. So a 90 minute movie should have a 90 page script. A 120 minute movie a 120 page script etc.
Of course it is not an exact science, and when you are an established screenwriter you can turn in shorter and longer scripts, and people won't bat an eyelid.
After all, it might be incredibly important for your twist at the end of the film, that we see a photograph with 3 people in an exact pose, wearing particular clothing, with a clock tower behind them and a copy of a newspaper in their hand, at some point early in the movie.
On screen, to not make it obvious, it will last a few seconds, but such is its importance that you may have most of a page dedicated to describing it.
Likewise, you might simply have a line that says something like "Andy and Frank march John forward. He struggles but they are too strong for him." On screen the finished version may be stretched to build the tension, where is he being marched, why is he struggling etc. The script took a line, the finished version could be over a minute.
All that said. Writers wanting to break into Hollywood are told to keep the Spec script between 90-120 pages. Shorter and you don't have enough ideas, longer and you obviously can't edit your own writing. Genres also matter, comedies are expected to be shorter, dramas longer.