Yeah this is not legal. It might be the top post here, but all works are copyrighted.
Reminder, unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works is sometimes legal, e.g. fair use.
Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
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Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#62Yeah this is not legal. It might be the top post here, but all works are copyrighted.
Reminder, unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works is sometimes legal, e.g. fair use.
This seems to my non-lawyer eyes like it doesn't have a strong fair-use defense, but I'm not that confident at all.
For anyone curious, these are the factors considered for that: https://support.google.com/legal/answer/4558992?hl=en
Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the line spacing and margins and font pitch are specifically chosen so that 1 page = 1 minute. This is critical . It's also why dialog is written in a much narrower column than description. But also, the typewriter font is "without personality". It gives a neutral almost engineering feel so you can focus on the content without being swayed by the style of a typeface. I think it also conveys a sense of technic…
> Because the line spacing and margins and font pitch are specifically chosen so that 1 page = 1 minute. This is critical. That is quite interesting. Presumably one could check runtime of films in this dataset and see how precise this is.
Films are often edited to be quite different from the shooting script, so it's not necessarily about the end product, it's more about intentions.
The minute-per-page rule is really for two purposes: first to judge the general intended length of the movie (90 min? 160 min?) and therefore budget when shopping it around, and second in order to plan out a shooting schedule -- e.g. if you plan on being able to shoot 3 pages per day to produce 3 minutes of final footage per day.
Screenwriters often actually adjust the length of their descriptions in order to make it one minute per page, since you can't change dialog, but you can add or tighten descriptive language. They'll literally sit with a stopwatch and visualize the shots and say the lines out loud, and then adjust if it's wrong.
But once it goes into editing, then everything flies out the window -- the director and editor figure out what works best with what they shot regardless of what was on the page. Whole scenes frequently get dropped, especially in TV.
Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose all those subtitle sites aren't exactly legal either, but I don't see them going anywhere.
Subtitles can be auto-generated. Screenplays, not really.
> Subtitles can be auto-generated.
Is that legally any different from OCRing a copyrighted book? Or maybe running an audiobook through speech-to-text..
Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#65Any guide on how to read a screenplay? Something that explains the 3a 3b etc on the right
Numbers on the right are production-specific, but you can generally figure out that it's some combination of page number, scene number, and act numbers -- often with new pages inserted without reordering later ones, so 3B sometimes might mean the page between 3 and 4. Asterisks on the right side indicate lines added/changed since the previous revision. Big blank spaces indicate where lines have been taken away. This…
So for Rick and Morty they might be referring to a similarly changing story board document.
Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#66Yeah this is not legal. It might be the top post here, but all works are copyrighted.
Reminder, unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works is sometimes legal, e.g. fair use.
Reproducing a copyrighted work in full as a part of publicly available collection is pretty clearly not, though, otherwise Pirate Bay would be 100% legit.
Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because the line spacing and margins and font pitch are specifically chosen so that 1 page = 1 minute. This is critical. That is quite interesting. Presumably one could check runtime of films in this dataset and see how precise this is.
Films are often edited to be quite different from the shooting script, so it's not necessarily about the end product, it's more about intentions. The minute-per-page rule is really for two purposes: first to judge the general intended length of the movie (90 min? 160 min?) and therefore budget when shopping it around, and second in order to plan out a shooting schedule -- e.g. if you plan on being able to shoot 3 pag…
> They'll literally sit with a stopwatch and visualize the shots and say the lines out loud, and then adjust if it's wrong.
Thank you for these insights. This behavior strikes me as strange since the final product diverges from input. However like many things, the customs and conventions take on a life of their own in industry.
For clarity, 1 page = 1 minute, does that mean how long to read the page or how long that page is on film? I get a little confused by the part about adding descriptions, not dialog. For instance, could they not just leave trailing white space?
Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#68This is brilliant and I've been looking for something like this for a LONG time, thank you! Quick request: the experience would be even better if we could search for words/phrases within the screenplays of a particular episode/series/movie. Many times I randomly have a not-so-popular dialog in my head from a TV show or movie, and then find it incredibly difficult to find which particular scene it was from.
Thank you, I'm glad you like this!
This is a great idea, I will add the full-text search feature.
Although it probably wouldn't work for your particular use case - TV shows rarely release the screenplays for all of their episodes, only a few select ones.
It's very interesting and useful for screenwriters looking to read screenplays to get better at their craft, but it's not enough to do a full-text search over a whole TV show.
Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Films are often edited to be quite different from the shooting script, so it's not necessarily about the end product, it's more about intentions. The minute-per-page rule is really for two purposes: first to judge the general intended length of the movie (90 min? 160 min?) and therefore budget when shopping it around, and second in order to plan out a shooting schedule -- e.g. if you plan on being able to shoot 3 pag…
> They'll literally sit with a stopwatch and visualize the shots and say the lines out loud, and then adjust if it's wrong. Thank you for these insights. This behavior strikes me as strange since the final product diverges from input. However like many things, the customs and conventions take on a life of their own in industry. For clarity, 1 page = 1 minute, does that mean how long to read the page or how long that…
1 minute on film. So it's how long it should take for the actors to read dialog, plus pauses and action shots and establishing shots and everything.
Trailing white space would achieve the same goal but I guess they're trying to be elegant about it. :) But also, if the content takes a minute but doesn't fill a page, it's a good sign that more description will be helpful for the director and cinematographer to know what to do.
Also it's not like every single page has to be exactly 60 seconds, but it should average out to that over a 3-4 page scene.
Re: Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
#70It looks beautiful! I'm just curious -- besides the aesthetics and organization, how is it different from other screenplay sites? Is it trying to be more complete? Or just a nicer site? Also, are you trying to automatically scoop up new content, e.g. from the industry-standard: https://sites.google.com/site/tvwriting/ (It's basically the screenwriter's equivalent of Sci-Hub.)
Thanks!
Yes, I think it will soon be the largest library of the screenplays on the internet (if it isn't already), the idea is to find as many screenplays that are freely available online as possible, and add them to a library that is easy to search and to browse. And make it good looking, with nice UX.