A table read doubles as a stopwatch. Read the whole script start to finish without stopping and you learn how long it actually runs when spoken. That number matters more than any guess you made in a word processor.
Word counts lie about time. A page of dense explanation can run longer than two pages of dialogue because explanation is slow to say and dialogue is quick. Only your mouth knows the truth, so let it tell you.
I keep a timer on the desk for every read, and I start it before the first word and stop it after the last. No pauses, no do-overs. That is the number the edit will actually feel.
Read the clock, not the word count. They disagree more often than you would like.
Most people speak somewhere between one hundred and one hundred forty words per minute when they are reading a script they wrote. That is slower than casual conversation because your brain is processing meaning while your mouth is moving. Plan for the low end and you will rarely run long.
Multiply your word count by the slow pace and you get a realistic floor. If a ten minute script comes in at fourteen hundred words, the math already tells you it will run around ten minutes at a comfortable speed, and you have maybe a minute of slack.
If you speak faster than average, enjoy the extra room, but do not budget for it. Leaning on a fast pace makes a script feel rushed, and rushed is the opposite of what a well-timed video should feel like.
The surprises almost always come from lists and long examples. A bulleted list of five items that looks compact on the page can eat forty seconds once you say each item, pause, and move to the next. Numbers and dates are worse, because your mouth slows down to get them right.
Transitions are another hidden tax. Every time you say some version of now let us turn to, you spend a breath that adds up by the end of a long video.
Once you know the real runtime, you can make a real choice. Trim, split the script into two videos, or accept the length and shoot it as is. What you should not do is discover the problem in the edit, when cutting means re-recording and re-recording means another shoot day.
Write the measured time on the first page and date it. If you revise the script later, time it again, because a small rewrite can add a full minute you never intended to spend. I time every draft now, even the short ones, because the short ones are where I get lazy and assume the runtime is fine. It usually is not. The timer has saved me from shooting a script that would have needed a hard cut in the edit, and that alone makes the read worth the twenty minutes.
A table read puts your script in the air before the camera rolls. Here is what a table read is for and how it saves you time on the actual shoot day.
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