From UGO Screenwriter's Voice
(http://www.screenwriting.ugo.com)

Article by Darwin Mayflower

By Darwin Mayflower

Huge caveat: this is my personal opinion. If you see anything here in this list that contradicts something you find advantageous, then immediately disregard it. Save for one category, this is all subjective. There simply is no "correct" way to write a script. What I present to you now is nothing more than things I've seen, over and over, in the thousand or more scripts I've read through the years. And while I think that lends this a certain empirical soundness, you must always listen to the voice that is most important: your own.


http://screenwriting.ugo.com/screenwriting/top11commonmistakes.php

Here's an old post (almost three years old) that's pretty good. Check out the dude's article.

Excellent suggestions! Let's hope they hold with SOME people... :(

I guess another that I often hear is don't reference copyrighted material in your work. Certainly not a 'top 10' item but apparently one that is often violated... You see this alot in short films on the internet.

Incidentally...I have a question regarding copyrighted material. I know you can't play a song by the Who in a scene without permission, but what about a scene where a bar band is covering the song? My guess this is a no-no as well, but I'm confused about what gives a cover band permission to do this, but not in a film? Any thoughts?

Thanks.

quote:

Incidentally...I have a question regarding copyrighted material. I know you can't play a song by the Who in a scene without permission, but what about a scene where a bar band is covering the song? My guess this is a no-no as well, but I'm confused about what gives a cover band permission to do this, but not in a film? Any thoughts?

Those kinds of issues are a bit of a gray area, but for the most part you can not publicly perform (or put in a film) a copyrighted song (regardless of who is performing it) without some kind of permission.

That having been said, it will be much easier and cheaper to get clearances for a bar band covering a Who song than the actual Who performance itself. But both instances will cost something.

Selecting the songs in the film is not our job -the music supervisor does that. We just write the script.

- Bill

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wcmartell,

the #10 fact really stands out with me, it really bothers me when I see mistakes in movies based on poor research by the writers

Bad research bothers me a lot too but it doesn't always make nice movie unsuccesfull. Best example is Titanic. There are a lot of hostorical facts completely wrong. Use of flashlights, paintings made twelf years later, fishing in a lake that was dry a the time. All movies have mistakes but Titanic has the most check it on http://www.moviemistakes.com

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mr Wendal,