John August

Film Industry

You can’t copyright titles

Film Industry, QandA, Rights and Copyright

questionmarkI am currently writing a screenplay and just curious when you think I should begin legal counsel. I think I need to copyright the movie name especially since I just created a Twitter account using it. Since I’m only about half way done it seems a little premature to begin the process. What do you think?

— Michelle
Madison, Wisconsin

This is an evergreen question, and the answer will never change: you can’t copyright titles.

Copyright is a bundle of protections granted to the creator of a work. It doesn’t cover the pure idea (“Save the Last Dance with dinosaurs”); it covers the expression of the idea (your original, 120-page screenplay Dinosalsa: The Jurassic Dance).

Your title alone simply isn’t enough to copyright. Even a work that is copyrighted (like a novel) has no special protection for its title. If you don’t believe me, do an Amazon search for [“dead of night.”](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dead+of+night&x=0&y=0)

What you’re talking about is trademark, the little TM (or R) that you might see after a title like Transformers. But that’s actually uncommon for movies. Transformers has it because it was originally a toy line. This week’s number one movie, The Roommate, has no trademark on its title. Ditto for True Grit, The King’s Speech and No Strings Attached.

When a movie is inching closer to production, the producers can register a title with the MPAA, giving it some exclusivity. As we started shooting The Nines, we had to clear the title against The Whole Nine Yards and a few others. Likewise, we had to give our blessing to the subsequent movies 9 and Nine.

MPAA title registration isn’t copyright or trademark. It’s a non-governmental system specific to the [motion picture industry](http://www.mpaa.org/faq):

> The Bureau is a voluntary central registration entity for titles of movies intended for U.S. theatrical distribution, and it is intended to prevent public confusion over films with similar titles.

> In order to register titles, filmmakers must subscribe to the Bureau’s registry. There are currently almost 400 subscribers, including all of the major motion picture studios. Subscribers are bound by the Bureau’s rules, which prescribe procedures for registering titles and handling any related disputes.

You can’t copyright your title. You can’t trademark it (most likely). And at this early stage you can’t register it with the MPAA.

But the little steps you’re taking will be helpful down the road. If possible, you’ll want to have the URL and Twitter name for your movie. If your movie gets made, these will be a big help for marketing. Squatters will often snatch them up, so it’s worth trying to grab what you think you might use.

Amazon Studios now slightly less terrible

Film Industry, Follow Up

When it was announced in November, one of the bold new ideas of Amazon Studios was letting any user rewrite any screenplay in the competition. I thought that was an [absolutely terrible plan](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/on-the-amazon-film-thing).

As announced yesterday, the company [seems to agree](http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2011/01/27/exclusive_amazon_studios_december_20000_script_contest_winners_the_alchemis/):

> Also today, Amazon Studios launched a new feature that allows writers to control the level of collaboration on their original scripts. Writers, upon upload or thereafter, will be able to designate their projects as open (anyone can add a revised script to your project), closed (only you can add revised scripts to your project) or revisable by permission (only participants who obtain your permission can add a revised script to your project). This feature has been a top request of Amazon Studios participants.

How many writers do you think will actually choose “open?”

It’s hard to envision why any screenwriter would want to. It only makes sense if you believe that almost everyone is a better writer than you. In the Venn diagram of entrants, the overlap between “ridiculously low self-esteem” and “happy to share prize money” is probably small.

A contributing factor in the change: no one was actually bothering to rewrite other people’s scripts. In a few minutes of browsing, I could only find a handful of projects that had drafts by anyone other than the original writer.

Without the random-stranger-rewrites, Amazon Studios now resembles a more traditional screenwriting competition, albeit one in which the cost of entry is a lengthy and complex option agreement on the project.

The company announced its first two prizewinners, each receiving $20,000. I haven’t looked at either screenplay, but if any readers have, I’m curious to hear your opinions on their merits.

Screenwriting coach Linda Seger served as a judge. That seems right: she’s exactly the kind of “name” that means something to aspiring screenwriters, many of whom will have read her books or attended her workshops. But she doesn’t have a profile within the film industry itself; they didn’t pick her [for her credits](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0781994/).

It wasn’t in any official announcement, but I can confirm Jack Epps, Jr. dropped out as a judge in November, citing philosophical concerns about the deal for writers. That leaves Mike Werb as the only named judge with produced Hollywood credits.

So this is a…success?
—

The studio announced they have 3,000 projects, but on the website today I saw 2,332 scripts. I asked my contacts at both the Austin Film Festival and Sundance Labs for comparisons. AFF received 4,400 scripts last year, and Sundance looks at 2,000-2,500 applications each year.

At least in terms of numbers, Amazon Studio is already in their ballpark after less than three full months.

Bottom line: I think getting rid of the crowdsourcing aspect of Amazon Studios is a step in the right direction, particularly in terms of acknowledging authorship. But most of the deal is still pretty terrible for writers. At the time of my original article, Craig Mazin was [horrified by the financials](http://artfulwriter.com/?p=1103), and as far I can tell, nothing has changed there.

Amazon has a ton of money, and a lot of experience with iteration. Maybe they’ll get this project to a worthwhile place. We won’t really know until they get a movie in production.

Giving up on Blu-ray

Film Industry, Tools

Khoi Vinh [doesn’t recommend the format](http://www.subtraction.com/2011/01/10/blu-ray-blues):

> Aside from the fact that Blu-Ray’s high definition picture is so ridiculously gorgeous, the whole format is demonstrably worse than what came before it.

> [Blu-ray] takes longer to load and menus take longer to navigate than on a stock DVD player. This is doubly frustrating because one of the early promises of the format was that users could pop in a disc and the movie would begin playing immediately, doing away with the interminable trailers that have opened DVDs for the past decade. Not only has that promise been essentially broken, but trailers are an even worse problem on Blu-Ray. Often the way a Blu-Ray disc is formatted, it’s harder to fast-forward through a bundle of trailers than it used to be on a DVD.

On friends’ recommendations, I bought a PS3 as my Blu-ray player. I’ve ended up really enjoying it as a game machine, but in two years, I’ve watched exactly two Blu-ray movies on it.

Remember the showdown between HD-DVD and Blu-ray? Streaming won.

2010, the year in film

Film Industry, Video

I’m perpetually amazed by mega-edits like this one from [@genrocks](http://twitter.com/#!/genrocks), which combines pieces of [270 movies](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wv-PfzG8aGp43ZF-vARPbcJaRRSJWJ8FXlMcQIrOiOo/preview?hl=en&pli=1&sle=true#) from this past year. Who has the time to do this? Are there pharmaceuticals involved?

One thing to consider: These are almost entirely American movies. You can look at this as a recap of the American film industry’s output for the year.

We make a lot of movies.

(/via [kottke](http://kottke.org/10/12/the-year-in-film-2010))