Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows

In the same vein I would argue that authors need to pay for the hard work of this gentleman distributing their work. they are profiting from the publicity for free

Humans are mostly driven by feelings. Even their thoughts are driven by feelings. That's why there is such a broad support for copyright violations. "Oh wow, free stuff! This feels good! This is good!".

I'm not sure that screenwriters or studios care to much about this kind of distribution on the web. Screenplays for Oscar-contending movies are usually distributed widely and freely prior to voting, including via widely-known, industry-friendly blogs, and I don't know that anyone has any problem with this (unlike copies of the actual films distributed to voting members of the Academy). The scripts listed here are often available at a variety of long-established sites on the Internet. Yes, some screenplays available in book form, usually with added value content, such as production or behind-the-scenes photographs, commentary and analysis, etc. Hard copies of screenplays have been sold at comic and pop-culture shops, though I'm not sure how these are distributed or who benefits from them (beyond the shop).

Screenwriters advise other screenwriters to read existing screenplays, and the best source for someone wanting to read a lot of screenplays is the Internet. As someone who is trying to learn about screenwriting, availability of produced screenplays is a critical resource...and I simply am not aware of screenwriters or filmmakers demanding these already-produced screenplays to be taken down.

scarf so thin it's not even visible..

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.

These are all key characters or visual elements, often capitalized when introduced for the first time. Ultimately, convention is left up to the individual screenwriter, so you will find inconsistencies in application of capitalization.

Highlighting people/props the first time they appear and/or if they should be especially prominent, and key actions.

E.g. notice how in the second example Dopey is only all-caps the first time, not when he is mentioned again 2 sentences later. And "FIRES" is highlighted, but "ejects", "turns to" are not.

He walks past shelf upon which we see Chekhov's GUN . .

Reminder, unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works is sometimes legal, e.g. fair use.

I'm hoping I won't get into too much trouble, since:

- The intention of this library is to be a free educational resource for screenwriters, it's just a hobby project that I'm not making any money off of.

- I'm simply collecting and organizing the screenplays that are freely available online already (just with a nicer UI/UX, and with more convenient searching/sorting/filtering functionality).

- On the about page I have left an email people can use to submit a takedown request, if they want to remove their screenplay from the library.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm hoping this is enough to qualify for "fair use", or something like that.

Until I saw this site, I had no idea how much detail was written in scripts.

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.

The two authors I have heard of doing this are Joan Didion (who typed out entire Hemingway novels) and Hunter S Thompson (who did the same, using both Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald as models). I always wondered if they arrived at this seemingly not very efficiient method independently, or if there was some antecedent. Do you know of any others?

https://earlybirdbooks.com/books-that-inspire-joan-didion

https://www.openculture.com/2017/06/hunter-s-thompson-typed-...

I also wonder if the producers make the script available to anyone?

On any given production, a ton of people have to have access to the script. Outside of production, scripts are handed over for various purposes, including promos, archiving etc. And then there are business like The Black List which are primary source of not originally (studio) comissioned scripts.

Form what I've seen, ONCE the material's out / production over, not many fucks are given if the script is out there as well. Now, is it legal? Who knows, depends where it came from probably. Heat would be on if it's a script in or before production, but it also varies.

I don't know how people get screenplays originally, I'm just searching and organizing ones that are freely available online already.

Oh, thanks a lot for letting me know! The website got to the front page of HN, and I ran out of my free tier limits on Vercel, had to upgrade to the pro account.

Already fixed.

Great idea!

It's not:

> No portion of this script may be performed, or reproduced by any means, or quoted, or published in any medium without prior written consent of SONY PICTURES TELEVISION INC. * 10202 West Washington Boulevard * Culver City, CA 90232

Cease & Desist Notice coming in 3...2...1

It's probably posted without permission, but I don't think there's a strong incentive for rights holders to pursue copyright enforcement.

Screenplays are often meant for circulation, albeit in smaller circles within Hollywood and film industry personnel (producer and director mainly). The money is recouped when the finished film screens.

Of course, you can always buy the screenplay for personal reading to support their creators. It's often on Amazon. I used to read some at my library.

It's not technically, but movie and TV pilot screenplays circulate a lot before they get produced, because the creators want people to read them in order to fund/produce them. They're often rather different from the final shooting script.

On the other hand, scripts for TV episodes after the first generally have to be "leaked", which doesn't happen very often. But again, once it's out on the internet, the cat's out of the bag.

So production companies try to prevent scripts getting leaked, but don't really go after anyone once they're already out.

Plus acting studios use all of these in classrooms for training actors. So even if you did get the episodes "taken down" from websites, they're still circulating in classrooms in NYC and LA.

Of course, if you leak a non-pilot episode before the episode airs... let's just say don't ever expect to work in Hollywood ever again. ;)

Thanks!

It is built with Next.js and hosted on Vercel.

That's all there is to it, there's no database, just a big json file that contains all the courses.

Don't ever judge a pilot screenplay -- those circulate sometimes for many years before a show gets produced, and modified heavily before a show is picked up.

On the other hand, episodes after the pilot would usually be shooting scripts.

Obviously final episodes don't always match shooting scripts, but the difference is usually in making cuts or slight reorderings, not adding new material.

Screenplays are different from scripts right? The screenplay an episode or movie is based off of may be significantly different from the script and the final product.

Screenplays are the interface, scripts are the implementation.

Thanks, I'm really happy you think this is useful!

This is just a small hobby project I have done over a couple of weekends. I don't have huge plans for it, I just want to keep finding more screenplays and adding them to the library, to make it even more useful to people.

Maybe I'll enable users submit their own screenplays and add them to the library (and create a new category for unproduced/spec scripts). Technically, they can do that already by sending me an email, but if there's interest I can make that process more convenient.

Also, I'm thinking that maybe it could help me build a discord community of aspiring screenwriters, where we'd brainstorm ideas together and exchange feedback about our work. Like an online writer's room for exchanging ideas and advice.

I have done that for my other hobby (writing adventures for roleplaying games like DnD), and it worked really well, it's very fun, and people love it:

https://rpgadventures.io/writers-room

It would take a lot of time and energy to run, but it could be helpful and worth doing, so I might do that if there's some interest.

If all that is desired is the spoken text, most subtitle sites have fairly accurate copies of the official subtitles or even better than original subtitles for stuff that is very popular. For instance sometimes I see homophones for the correct words or abbreviated text versions for rapidly spoken speech even in the official subtitles for streaming shows. Websites like subscene.com and opensubtitles.org are pretty active.

The website is built with Next.js and deployed on Vercel.

It's so fast because Next and Vercel do a lot of smart optimizations with the code and the images.

Also, because the screenplays are not stored in the database, just one large local json file, so the server doesn't have to make an extra request to the database.

Thanks, I hope it will be useful to people!

Thanks!

I think this is a good idea, and I think it wouldn't be all that difficult to convert pdfs into text. At least some of them, since some are represented as text and some are just picture scans, which would be much more difficult to deal with.

I will look into this!

I don't know, but I would think getting a screenplay to a good movie and reading along with it while watching it would be a start.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.

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 complicated system is because pages are constantly being replaced/inserted and distributed as they're rewritten, without re-printing the entire script -- not just to save paper, but because people are writing personal notes/highlights/etc. on pages and you don't want to lose those.

It works on Firefox (Mac) for me

works on Firefox just fine

I see this getting the OLGA treatment too. Nice idea but won’t last long.

It’s a thing. Screenplays started in old Hollywood, pre-Depression era, when typewriters had mono space courier font. It stuck.

I believe they use a font that works well for time. So each page covers approximately the same amount of screen time.

Probably a bit of tradition there too.

If you look at the software designed specifically for script/screenwriting, it almost always produces scripts that look like that, even the very latest modern software. Examples are celtx and Final Draft.

Why? Maybe convention, maybe superstition, maybe readability. Coders also like monospace fonts in their IDEs. In fact, the font I'm using to write this comment (on HN) uses a monospace font haha!

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 technical precision. Every comma, every dash matters. Screenwriting is incredibly precise. In comedy, the exact punctuation is as critical as the words.

(BTW, multicam comedies like Friends are double-spaced and follow a different formatting and speed-per-page. The double-spacing is to allow for handwritten changes and notes.)

The film/television industry is very conservative in some ways. Productions methods have stayed the same for nearly a century, often for very practical reasons. 12-point or 10-pitch Courier, the basic typewriter font, along with certain formatting rules, was found to produce a page of screenplay that equaled about a minute of screen time. Nothing has happened over the past 100 years to change that, so no one wants (or needs) to mess with an industry standard, which in this case might as well be a universal language understood by actors, producers, directors, etc. at least in the English-speaking entertainment industry. Thanks for the formatting, including the font used, everyone reading the script has the same idea about running time, scene lengths, character names, etc.