Shots, Scenes, Sequences

Thanks Ken, my questions must look overly simple but I was getting tired of looking for the answer. Just to be clear, making cuts in a sequence does not turn the piece into multiple sequences.

I understand that shots, scenes, and sequences can be any length. Is there some guide lines as to how long they should be or is the script the source that dictates their lenghts?

The current interpretation is that a series of scenes that take place in continuous circumstances constitute a sequence. This can mean a series of scenes in a given locale, or at a point in time.

Cutting between scenes becomes a necessity because one can tell only so much of the story from a given point of view before having to move the camera to another vantage point. The cut negates the unnecessary/distracting travel that would be involved in moving the camera to that place and then back again.
Example: two people having a coversation--one looking out a window, the other on the ground. If there were no cuts in this set-up the camera would have to physically move from one speaker to the next. This would render the viewer sea-sick and would be a distraction. Hence we cut from one to the other and use the convention of the cut as the means of transitioning our focus from one character to the other.

The length of the scene is determined by the natural timing involved in a scene. This is often a intuitive thing.
If the situation calls for a linger shot on the scene then let the camera linger. If the situation requires cuts between objects of attention, then cut to each as required.

A rule of thumb is that benign situations tend to linger, and active sequences tend to have quicker cutting. These are not hard or fast rules though.
The untrained/ignorant audience registers camera work and cutting unconciously--unless it draws attention to itself.
Do properly a twist on the above can create certain emotional effects.

John Woo's Hard Boiled has a scene involving one long unbroken take in the midst of a gun battle. The characters start out on one floor, shooting opponents on one floor, work their way to a elevator, step in and proceed to another floor. The camera follows along and they step onto another floor after a pause for the elevator to travel and then continue on the shooting spree. There are no cuts AT ALL in this almost 1-2 minute long scene--but the camera does go slo-mo in spots.
Its a breathtaking bit of cagey filmmaking because the lingering camera on the heroes notches up the intensity to great heights. I've explored that scene with the idea of cuts installed and, to my mind, it would half the tension.

Here's the interpretation I teach:
IN ANIMATION a shot is equal to a frame of film. It is the image we see from the camera's POV. The shot can move ( pan ) to take in another image, or part of the image and that new POV is also a shot--thus making two.
Once we CUT from that shot, to another--the change constitutes a new scene. As before a scene can have several shots, with the camera moving to look at different settings and circumstances. In Animation, everytime you cut, you cut to a new scene.
A scene tells of a happening, an event. It is akin to a sentence in a story.
A sequence is a series of scenes cut together serially to create a story vignette, or a chapter of a story.
A fight scene, car chase, dance scene are all examples of sequences--particularily if they have some length. Brief examples of those events inseted in the events of some other scenes does not make those other events their own sequence, but plants them as accents within the sequence they are in.

Example: man dying in a alley, juxtaposed by a child being born in a hospital.

In LIVE-ACTION, the difference I've noted is that a scene is a set-up in a given locale and cuts are possible between shots. The term "shot" in live-action, is what we call a "scene" in animation. Thus, the camera can cut from subject to subject in a given scene and those cuts would be from shot to shot.

Make sense?