Hello all. I was just curious in finding out before I act upon it if it is alright to post scripts on this site that you were inspired from an outside source specifically another person. To explain it further,  if you enjoy a story that a friend tells you and you adapt it into a script under proper consent, can you post it here - of course properly crediting the friend who gave you the idea.  

Gabriel

how exactly do you mean Gabriel?

Something like : a friend tells you a joke, and you create a script?

Or inspired by an urban legend that was told by a friend?

You wouldn't need to credit him actually since those stories are often public domain :p

For example, a friend tells you a story such as a dream he or she had and you like the story so much you want to adapt it into a script. You will have to properly credit him or her since he or she told you. I was just curious if this site accepts scripts in that fashion. I hope I explained it well.  If not then let me know.

Gabriel

He is just a source of inspiration you know,

I don't think that would be a problem.

For instance if you hear a conversation in a café and write a film about it, it doens't matter.

you can say "inspired by..."

Alright, thanks rpedro.

This site accepts submissions of any kind be they adaptations or fan fiction regardless of the source or proper rights. The only thing you would have to worry about is whether you possess the rights to produce or sell such a thing apart from this place.

If you check almost any thread on copyrights, I've said this on nearly every one of them. It applies to this too. You cannot copyright an idea. If someone tells a story that inspires you to write something else, as long as you don't use that story's exact plot or characters, you can write whatever you want without fear of repercussions. The key word here is EXACT.

To clarify this "exactness", I'll give an example of both sides of the fence. First, the plots that are too close: The Clonus Horror (79-ish) and The Island (2005, I think). The Island is practically a remake of Clonus even though the Island's writers claim to have never seen Clonus. If you watch these two back to back, they do almost exactly the same things, have exactly the same premise and plot and nearly everything. As a result, the Clonus people took The Island people to court.

However, in 1996, you have Armageddon and Deep Impact. Both of these films are about a killer asteroid that will destroy the world, but both of these movies use different approaches to the same material. I'm sure the producers of each were not happy with the other, but neither could do anything about it. Movie history is ripe with these examples because it's not illegal to use an idea.

How many slashers do we have that feel like exactly the same plot? Those are plot points. Sign posts in a storyline that occur essentially the same way regardless of plot. These play out almost the same way in any story of a particular kind. Most "chick flicks" use exactly the same basic plot points too, but take different approaches to getting there. How far does this go back? At least to "It Happened One Night" of 1934.

So, ideas: ok. Plots: not ok. Characters: not ok. Plot points: ok.

If someone tells you a dream they had, in all likelihood, this is not a complete story at all, but something you would have to work with until it became one. If you want to be swell, you can credit this friend, but you don't have to.

Thanks, George Wilson. I had some ideas about scripts based on movies, but I was unconcerned about the one pertaining to my question. And I appologize for the title of the selection. Thanks again.

Gabriel

Don't worry about the title. It took me a few minutes to figure out a good way to condense your question into something short enough. We fix those all the time, so we've become rather adept at it.

Now if you want to use an idea that's been in a movie, the situation gets a little bit stickier depending on what you do with it. Now, granted we have Snakes on a Plane that hit theatres on about the same day that Snakes on a Train came out on video. There are a myriad of copycat movies out there that noone can touch because they did not break the cardinal rule of doing this sort of thing: they did not use the original script; they used the idea ONLY.

If you have a movie that you think absolutely sucks, but you just love the idea behind and wish that someone had done it right...then you actually have free reign to use the idea...within good sense and logic. Some movies have trademarked items within them that you cannot use without rights. This means that writing about an alien space object/weapon that everyone wants is ok...writing about a HALO shaped alien weapon that has a planetary atmosphere, on the other hand, is not ok. See the difference? Everything in the Star Wars universe is trademarked, so no lightsabers, X-wing fighters, or Luke Skywalkers can be used.

Some may consider doing this to be hack work or the lowest form of writing, but remember that Shakespeare did pretty much the same thing, and he's considered one of the greats. You think Romeo and Juliet was original?

Yeah and in the days now where every movie that comes out is compared to some previous film, it is almost impossible to have a fresh and original idea.  I mean there are movies out there that I don't like, but when critics and people claim rip-off as soon as it comes out it's getting a little redundant.

For example the film The Guardian that just came out is already compared to Top Gun, rather a complete rip off.  How many other ways can you spin a story about an up and coming recruit?  Of course there is going to be a superior officer.  Of course there will be conflict and friction between the two.  Of course there is going to be a final rescue that requires one to save the other.  I haven't even seen the movie but I can tell you that probably is close to the way the film pans out.  It's called drama.  But to call someone's work rip off is preposterous.  It's actually unfair in my eyes.  Someone had to come up with that idea and write it down on paper.  Don't invalidate their credit because it is similar to something else unless it is truly is copying something else without giving approriate credit.    

I just saw a great French action movie called District 13 and from the reviews I've seen it is being called a rip off of Escape from New York because the ghettos of the city were "fenced in".  Some rip off.  I guess we can't write anything about a fenced in city anymore folks.  You will be ripping off that great gem of the film that is John Carpenter's Escape from New York.  Oh and if you didn't get it that was a sarcastic sentence.  

Oliver Stone's Scarface screenplay was based off a 1932 film of the same name AND a novel.  No one cries about that being a remake.

I'm just getting sick and tired of everyone thinking they are a critic.  Because the first thing they do is compare it to something else previously made.  What's the point of writing original stories anymore?  You almost better off sticking to adaptations of novels or something.  That way you get less rip-off credit, which is pretty ironic if you ask me.

Oh and George an Academy Award question for you.  I am not too good on its history but when a film that was based off a novel wins a screenplay award, does the novelist get the Oscar too?  Or is it just the screenwriter.  Because I could have swore when Brokeback Mountain won the short story writer didn't get shit, when she's the one that came up with the actual story.  All they did was transfer it to script format.  

An Oscar only goes to the person involved in the film, or the screenwriter(s). What is being judged is not the original work, but the quality of the adaptation. If the original is good enough, it would win its own prize...pulitzer or something.

Moving a story from page to screen is actually a very complicated process. As screenwriters, we don't give it enough credit. There have been a few attempts to adapt Stephen Donaldson's Chronicle of Thomas Covenant, and Donaldson was asked if he was going to pen the screenplays for them. He said he isn't a screenwriter, and really wouldn't know how to do it.

J.K. Rowling has been a consultant in the Harry Potter movies for the screenwriter Steven Kloves. He is a screenwriter and she is a novelist. The crafts are completely different and adapting from one to another is not an easy thing to do.