Many actors have gone on to have successful careers as writers, producers and directors as well. It’s almost a natural progression in the industry. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck even won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Good Will Hunting, a script they wrote together.
If you’re an actor and you’ve decided to also try your hand at screenwriting – congratulations! It’s a big undertaking and I wish you the best of luck. More importantly, I want to encourage you to make sure your ideas and your drafts are protected. Often novice screenwriters will share their ideas with others to get feedback, which is a great idea and essential to producing well-written project. However, whether you have a treatment or a fully evolved script, it’s important to have your work copyrighted and registered with the Writers Guild of America before you share your ideas, or your script with anyone.
Recently a Elite Casting Network member interested in pitching a television show to a major network posted his idea to the forum to get feedback from other members. Ideas, concepts, treatments and scripts that haven’t been registered – especially if they’re good ones – are extremely vulnerable. You never know when someone may decide to take your idea and pass it off as their own. And unfortunately, this does happen in the industry.
Each year the Writers Guild of America registers more than 55,000 pieces of literary material. In the event that someone tries to pass your idea off as their own, having your material copyrighted and registered serves as legal evidence that the idea is yours and can be used to pursue the matter in a court of law. You do not have to be a member of the Writers Guild of America to have your work registered.
To register your work with the Writers Guild of America, visit www.wgawregistry.org. To copyright your work with the United States Copyright Office visit www.copyright.gov.
Once you’ve protected your work, visit http://www.EliteCastingNetwork.com and get feedback from other members on your project.
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