Debbie Castanha: In Santa Barbara, California.

I would say don't worry too. The implementation of an idea is covered by copyright, not the idea. I would also say register scripts with the wga AND copyright office. If you believe in your baby it's a small price to pay for some peace of mind. I'm not saying either/both are necessary but from this thread alone you can see there is no consensus on the right path to take so in this case I say hedge your bets and follow standard industry practice. There is a reason every studio and production house do it!

Sorry Oliver but I don't agree. I believe The Script Vault, like all other non Government script registration services, is a scam that simply charges you for storing your script. Hell, I may start up one of those because I'll be able to offer the same level of protection, a timestamp of when I received it from my client which has absolutely no power in a court of law. LoC is legally recognised in the US, all others are not and if you're aiming for the US market, use the LoC, if you're aiming for a Commonwealth market then you don't need any form of registration.

Aray, you're not even covered for that one year with WGA. WGA registration has no validity in court when making a claim.

Philip - You're hired!

Gilbert: Thanks for a great idea :). I saw a great business idea and jumped on it. As soon as I payoff the equipment loan, advertising costs and domain name - www.thetrolltrapper.com, I'm sending you some commission money. And 50% off on any trolls you want whacked... I mean humanely disposed of.

Ask Frodo maybe he can take you on an adventure to find the great False Fraudo, king of the troll trapper trappers.

I'm well, Robert. Thanks. :) ...Yeah, I'm still working on mine as well. I made some story changes, so I'm reworking my outline, plus working on the first draft. I'm a little frustrated as my progress slowed some, but happy with the story. One page at a time, right?! :)

Interesting article Debbie as I am trying a query letter approach right now. LOL I'll let you know how it goes. Beth, I'm frustrated too, but trying to work through it. I have another piece I'd like to work on ( an old play I never finished ) but I want to finish this first draft first. I have generally tried to make my first drafts as tight as possible, writing and rewriting along the way. I am trying to be looser with this one and see where it goes

I read Manny... great fun and well-done : ) Robert, can you IM me, as I'd like to chat with you re your query letter approach?

Thanks, Randy. If your friend wants more specific help, I might be able to consult on his consulting. Rimshot. Off the top of my head, I think I've hired or helped hire 4 technical or subject area consultants in my career in the areas of law enforcement, politics, sports, and foreign affairs.

I've also spoken to a theoretical physicist, but that project didn't come together.

You've been a huge help, Regina! THANKS!

While there's some excellent points made throughout this thread, I feel there's a few axioms that are drowning out some critical practical concerns related to readers. I have an example I'd like to to cite, plus there's a big question we have to ask ourselves here, which I'll get onto in a minute. Firstly, we've spoken about writer distraction in another valuable thread, and here, Regina addresses the issue of reader distraction - which should never be underestimated. We have to remember that specifics may add colour to a story but they also exclude all other possibilities by default. We focus on the 1% at the potential expense of the 99%, and it's a much bigger gamble than this thread makes out, particularly for amateur writers. You hit a studio reader with EXT. CAPITOL HILL STEPS - MORNING on your front page and klaxons are going to start going off in their head, and may not go silent. It's all very well saying a good story will surpass location restrictions, but a reader has to get to that good story first. Let's not forget that some readers, many readers, seem to go into a script looking for what's wrong. Would you open a pitch to an exec like that? We should never, ever, fall into the trap of thinking our story will absolve our failings by default. Secondly, the distraction works two ways, and comes back the other thread I mentioned. It's very easy to open up Google Maps and start playing location scout - hell, it's a lot of fun, it's the closest some of us get to going outdoors! But it's all too easily an indulgence that consumes our precious energy at the cost of focusing on story. What makes a scene good to watch is the dynamic at play behind the characters, not how chic, spectacular, cooky, or romantic the restaurant that's carefully chosen. When I wrote my first screenplay, I was obsessed with location. I wrote a post apocalyptic action movie (mostly car chases) set in the California badlands near the Salton Sea. I chose that area because it's little known that LA sits upon sizable oil reserves which gave my story a political dynamic and I figured a movie set in the desert could be shot anywhere at lower cost, such as Spain. I went super intense, knowing every dirt road that could be used. The story all made technical sense. As I was naive at the time, I uploaded it to The BlackList and bought some reviews. Two were very positive (got spotlighted) but one trashed it - almost entirely because of the location. The reader was clearly sick and tired of post apocalyptic movies set in LA and just kept labouring this point, despite the fact LA got little more than a few references in the opening scenes. What's interesting is they also get the whole tone and time setting of the movie wrong, suggesting those open scenes completely distracted them and set them off down the wrong path. I should have just said desert, saved myself a ton of time, and completely negated that vulnerability. Anyway, back to that big question. If the consensus in this thread and outside of it is that specific locations should only be used if absolutely essential to the story, doesn't that logic mean that any reader who reads a script specifying a location is right to assume that location is essential and, if they see it as a production limitation, write the script off accordingly? I think it may. TL;DR: Believing we have a good story may not be good enough. Beware personal distraction. Consider reader distraction.

Wow, great post, CJ, and thank you for sharing the "Salton Sea" personal example! I'm going to add a few comments. I hope they aren't confusing after CJ's post, which I believe is completely clarifying. From CJ: "What's interesting is they also get the whole tone and time setting of the movie wrong, suggesting those open scenes completely distracted them and set them off down the wrong path. I should have just said desert, saved myself a ton of time, and completely negated that vulnerability." -Here I'm focusing on CJ's phrase "suggesting those open scenes completely distracted them." -One important thing to add. I'm being reductive, so please forgive the concise description. For "Hollywood" readers, we give your first pages the highest level of our attention. They're the litmus test. If the opening feels viable, you get a lot of benefit of the doubt. If the opening did not feel viable, you have lost a ton of our optimism. Both affect the rest of the read. -In fact, at the request of former S32 Education Director Shannon, I taught a class on S32 about script openings. -For low priority scripts (e.g. writing samples), if we like page 1, we will read page 2. If we like page 5, we will read page 6. Maybe we get to page 10 or even to page 30. If we don't find the openings to indicate a viable script, ideally, we may ask an intern to cover the script so we don't have to read it ourselves. If the coverage is good, then we can pick up the script again. If the coverage is not good, well, you know what happens right? -So yes, the opening dictates the entire read and how your script is treated. Topic 2: I'm scared to even bring this up, as I don't want to confuse the issue. If you "search the Lounge," you will see that both CJ and I feel it's typically OK to put well-known songs into appropriate scripts. (I believe I'm accurately representing CJ's view.) I think a judicious use of 1 (maybe 2) songs can add to the reading experience. Key word: judicious. I'm not saying you should be the Music Supervisor. I believe CJ used the great example of "Rocky Mountain High" in FINAL DESTINATION. Why is this OK? Because a song is in one discrete place in the script. It simply suggests a tone/feeling/irony in that scene, and it really can be swapped out with another song or with an original composition. Whereas, the city can pervade the entire script. The point is that when you add an element that pervades the entire script, you have to treat it differently than when adding an element that impacts only one moment. An element that pervades the entire script can have a global implication. (Btw, I would say that less than 5% of scripts I recall have a specific song title dropped in, so again - judicious.) Topic 3: It's nearly impossible to give a blanket answer that satisfies all situations. Like Peter Fleming said, Black Hawk Down is and should be location-specific. Some stories aren't. Some cities/locations have a stigma/challenge/over-familiarity attached to them, others don't. How often does a city affect my read? Your read? It depends on the situation! :-)

At the end of the day, everything is relative (as usual). If CJ's script would have found a producer who wanted to shoot a post-apocalyptic film based in the Salton Sea area, then CJ's script would have had a chance with that producer. I could see how some people would have made the comments that they made to him on blacklist, too. Answering CJ's question. Yes, we should expect it to be written off accordingly. We are suppliers of a demand, and if someone demands something other than what we supply - "bye-bye, supplier...your script does not meet my demand." And that goes either way: whether a producer needs a site-specific script, or whether a producer needs a generic-site script. My answer correlates to the "Banker's Box Theory of Selling Scripts." Some producers have very set reasons on why they want a script based in a specific setting/location. Some don't. One producer at a major studio told me once "I need an action script set in Chicago," which I unfortunately didn't have, and I already had a good relationship with him. It's always nice to be able to pull a script out of your Banker's Box of Scripts and say, "hey...I got exactly what you're looking for!" The key takeaway is this: most producers already know what they are looking for, and if you're lucky enough/smart enough/close enough with one/some/many and can find out exactly what they're looking for...well...you're farther ahead in the game than those writers who don't know exactly what they're looking for. And some producers are of course kinda open to anything that is good; that they like; and that they think could be a good ROI. You can see on Inktip how many producers are seeking scripts in specific locations, and how many aren't. That's probably the best barometer for us on this topic. I think it's about 1 in 3 that already have a specific location request. Reasons for that are probably more practical-based than anything else. They might have film credits there. They might have access to crew and cast there. They might have access to locations there. They might have some great visual ideas for there, etc. etc. As writers, we have to fill needs that go beyond our own ideas and notions. We're serving them, and they're not serving us. And if we're lucky enough to have already written a site-specific script that somebody needs and wants, that's great. It's always a crap-shoot in writing a site-specific script, but isn't writing any type of spec script always a crap-shoot? Good luck, shooters - and stay off the Hard Eight, that one's already been written by Paul Thomas Anderson. And Debbie....I'm certainly not saying you're wrong for the Santa Barbara settings: that's your choice and ultimate gamble. Everything is always relative. Good luck with that script, Debbie.

Sure I would love to read your work. That first 16 pages would be great. Did you know you can post your screenplays on Stage 32 under loglines? It's the lower horizontal bar .

Wonderful. I suppose I know that I can post them... but this particular work is brand new and I haven't even registered it so I'm a bit unsure about posting it now. Thanks again for giving it a go! (How might I shoot you these first pages? And is PDF alright?)

PDF is fine. And C.Y.A. it is only $35 to US copyright your script. I did it for mine . The whole thing takes 5 minutes. And you get a registration number right away. No screenplay is ever 100% safe from a producer lacking scruples, but it is always better to play it safe. Then you can register your script with WGA for $25 it protects the content, not the title. Anyway. We are both in the same boat with over 100,000 spec scripts uploaded to WGA each year and only a few 100 or so produced it is still a long shot. That is why here in NYC I am exploring the independent route. Sure I would love it if a major studio bought one of my scripts. But I live in reality land. Not on Fantasy Island. I may be 63 years old but I know I thing or two about business. And this is showBUSINESS. You will have to forgive my edge this Afternoon. We are under 2 feet of snow, nothing is running and the Pizzeria won't deliver so I am stuck here with some cans of Goya beans, And worst case scenario I will have to walk a block for the only restaurant that opened today which is a B grade Chinese restaurant. So you are not getting me at my best. However those suggestions I made a few sentences ago are valid. Anyway best wishes.

Do you have your work posted on Stage 32?

Debbie: Looks get altered via a facial prothesis: new teeth, new cheeks, etc. Find a local make-up artist who specializes in HORROR. Even when "scary" is not the goal, these people really know how to change a look.

Thanks LindaAnn! I'll look around. Good idea :)

Melissa I'll look it over. You can send me your first few scenes. Jay

Hey guys, I got two responses right off and we're in the process of swapping scripts. But if you can hang tight I'm always open to reading for other enthusiastic writers. I will message you both Kris & Tao.

And thank you Jay! That's very kind of you, and I find your desire to help out very uplifting. I got more responses than I had intended and I'm very grateful for that.

Is this actor a character in a screenplay? (usually not a good idea - for the very reason you are asking this question... a screenplay about the film business needs to be 100% accurate because it will be read by people in the business. You know how some movie about cops that you thought was great is hated by cops because the writer got everything wrong? Same thing with a script about the business, except the people who will be reading it and making the decisions are "all cops". Plus - they tend not to make money.) Best way to do research is first hand - ask an actor who has done this. Best way to find out about any job is to ask the people who do it.

Thanks much to all for the great feedback. It's an interesting point you make here William. You've heard that saying "Write about what you don't know?" JK. But in fact, I did choose to write about something I don't know about, and it may or may not work out. I happen to think it's probably credible enough and a great story. Still tweaking it here and there, but again, I think I will post it elsewhere to see what the actors think.

If you're reaching a roadblock like this it might be worth trying to get around it creatively. Perhaps make the character themselves ignorant to the process, maybe avoid all those business conversations and only show the conflicts they create afterwards.

If this is a logline, it is all internal - things that we can not see on screen. Loglines need to focus on the things we see on screen.

wow thank you all fpr the tips

May be cliche, but what about his "inner demons"...

Call the town whatever you want, but I would recommend describing the region authentically whether they film there or not. Sure, not everyone has been to Kansas, but most people are familiar with it — "The Wizard of Oz" anyone? The Midwest has a very distinct topography. Kansas is located in the Great Plains. If you want "green rolling hills" then perhaps set it somewhere other than Kansas which is widely known to be flat farmland. It's more like "rolling wheat fields" or maybe it has an "undulating surface." Lol! However, the far eastern third of the state does have some hills and forests. Perhaps set you story in that part of the state.

As Dan said, assuming it's a spec, you can describe it any way you want such as "small town in Kansas but looks more like Vermont" but bear in mind if it's picked up and made, that description / town / state may not remain. Just make sure you're not too attached to the elements of your story that you'll resist a change.

THAT'S what I'm talking about! Great advice, friends :)