What's the policy of using halloween costumes in a screenplay? Are certain costumes in the public domain or does the writer have to be as general as possible?

Gabe

@Ripley

Are you wanting to use a specific costume, for example, say have a character in a superman suit with an authentic "S" logo?

Ghostie

Yeah, like Michael Myers or batman characters.

You can use whatever you want for a "costume". You can NOT try to have the same "character" in your script/film. Does that make sense?  

DISCLAIMER; I'm not a lawyer, Gabe.

Angry Bear sounds right.  As long as you're not trying to sell or market your script/story based on the character itself (which I don't think you are...) you should be fine...

but like I said, I'm no lawyer.  Oh.  You can always go the web and ask one who specializes in these types of matters, as well.

Ghostie

Thanks.

Hey pia can you please give a example of that?

My understanding is this:

Man wears Michael Myers costume - good

Michael Myers kills someone - bad

Yes Michael Myers was nEver used in the screenplay. It was mostly the shape but I decided to use it here for a qu ickI'm sample Lol

Gabe

Quoted from Mr.Ripley Man wears Michael Myers costume - good Michael Myers kills someone - bad

You got it.

Someone dressed up like MM kills someone - ok

MM's exact same character as the movies, kills someone - you're toast.

If the costumes are readily available to buy for Halloween then it's ok. If you dress someone up like MM and try to present him as the real thing, that's not good.

Btw, I did some extensive research into this with my Pumpkin Nightmare short film. I used some of the footage from the old Frankenstein film in my short. The only thing that Universal was really serious about was the bolts on the monster's neck. His face is everywhere around Halloween, but no bolts in the neck for the masks and pictures.  

You learn something new everyday.

Thanks Pia and Ghost. Hope everything's good with you two.

Back to writing.