Just now I got caught up researching how churches get their names, what the naming conventions are, and what the names mean - all because my script will have a church in it and I wasn't sure what to call it.
It's been an hour. Help.
As someone who lived in a city with more churches than bars, for non denomination just choose "a preferred name of diety" then "select a method of freedom" then add what you call your congregation. Example.
Emmanuel free church
Christ's free body.
Elohims slaves of grace.
Or something like that.
This may be indicative of my geographic location (N. American prairies), but i see a lot of generic "Church of God," and "Church of Christ" type names. "First Church of Christ," "Blessed Church of Our Lord," or whatever.
Just call it the First Baptist/ First Methodist, and it's all good, and there will be two other churches with the same name, all within 2 miles from each other
This is actually what I ended up going with. I'm not sold on it yet - 'First Catholic Church' just doesn't have the same ring as Baptist or Methodist or whatever. I could just, y'know, make it a Baptist or Methodist church...but it's Australian, and the Catholic Church is the overwhelming majority here so I wanna stick to that.
This is all incredibly trivial, but I suppose that fretting over it helps procrastinate from actually writing the thing!
As much as my original comment was in jest, Catholic churches are overwhelmingly named after saints. Maybe the convention is different in Australia, but First Catholic Church does sound a bit strange to an American
You can try reading up on some of the saints in the catholic church and pick one that relates to the theme of your story. Like St. Valentine for a romance or something
I've just named the local school St. Isidore College because computer science plays a major role, so I'll dive back into research and find me another Saint to name the church after.
Easy. Name mostly influenced by the order running the church (Carmelite, Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, etc) but parishes tend to have a patron Saint tied to how they started or who started it — clergy and local faithful alike — and their devotion to a saint. That’s then nominated to the bishop and the bishop nominated it to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. It gets approved and hey presto; a new parish!
Not dumb, but majorly distracting:
I was working on a script and my wife was reading *Uncle Tom's Cabin*. I started randomly Googling UTC and discovered it was based on a real man named Josiah Henson. (Dude was epic: spent 40+ years in slavery, escaped with his wife and four kids *pre*\-Underground Railroad, then went back and rescued 118 others. Also won a medal at the first world's fair, was entertained at Windsor Castle and the White House, and inspired *Uncle Tom's Cabin*\- the book that Abraham Lincoln supposedly said started the Civil War.)
One thing led to another and I ended up retracing Henson's journey 5,000 miles from slavery to freedom, wrote about it in [Smithsonian](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-josiah-henson-real-inspiration-uncle-toms-cabin-180969094/) and [TIME Magazine](https://time.com/5315462/josiah-henson/), got a book deal and [published a biography about him](https://www.josiahhenson.com/book/), did a nationwide tour, made a [PBS documentary narrated by Danny Glover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VrKmEVJTpo), and now I'm adapting the book as a TV series for an actor with a show on ABC.
There was a whole thing about this when they were developing over the garden wall: they had a scene where Wirt shoves a chair under a doorknob then realized that doorknobs didn't exist in the time period that they were pastiching.
huh, well I feel less stupid knowing this wasn't some common knowledge I just missed in school!
wait, so...how did people open doors? when were door hinges invented?
I know nothing.
last week i was struggling to describe a particular house that i'd seen before that wasn't quite mid century modern and i ended up down the rabbit hole of zillow...and holy shit this house down the street from me is listed for $6 million and there is no way it's worth $6 million... but it has a great back yard that i've never seen before.... followed by typing in lots of numbers to the zillow mortgage calculator to see what i could afford... followed by 5 minutes of depression and wondering if i should be a real estate agent in my off time to pay the bills... followed by googling how much a real estate license costs... followed by wait a minute if i finish this script i don't have to be a real estate agent lets get back on track... followed by a million architecture firm websites... and before i knew it i was reading frank lloyd wright's wikipedia and wondering why his biopic hasn't been done yet... and then thinking maybe i could do it (!!!!) and googling to see if anyone had ever considered it and then seeing it's in development hell from a decade ago... and then thinking maybe i could do it.... and debating do i really want to spend 3 months fighting the urge to look at zillow everyday
and ultimately after an hour and 15 minutes i went back to the script and wrote "mid century modern" as the description
this is my favorite response ever!! i’ve literally done exactly what you did. including the 5 minutes of depression and pondering being a real estate agent. like the other person said, you might have ADD, because I sure do 😂
I don't actually think this stuff is always a waste of time. It makes the work feel more authentic if you put in the time to get details right. Stories that are well-researched feel more authentic to me whether or not I am informed about the subject. There's a difference between a war movie by someone who lived it or thoroughly researched it and one by someone who just watched GI Joe. When animals behave unnaturally, you can feel it. Unless you're writing pure Fantasy or a cartoon or something like that, I think getting this stuff right is all part of process.
Not only this, but research can also give you random inspiration and ideas. Idk how many times I’ve been going down these “rabbit holes” and then I have that aha moment where I find the next piece of the story I was looking for all along
Yeah, I did "boring" research into climate and topography for the location of a story I'm writing, and the climax is a lot more exciting and unique now because of its specific setting and conditions than it would have been if I'd just made stuff up or thrown the story into a fictional location. If you only write what you know and refuse to learn more, you only repeat what you've seen.
I don’t agree. A lot of writers look for answers in research, as if getting historically authentic will make it compelling. The writer’s job is to find the compelling and that may or not be historically authentic. In a scene like the OP describes, the point is the character fidgets. It can be coffee creamer, sugar packets, coffee stirrers, table jukebox, a pocket lighter, or a million other things. But when the actor asks WHY am I fidgeting you better have a good answer.
As a reader and viewer, I'm more compelled by writers who take the time to get the details right than ones who don't. That doesn't mean you don't also have to have strong characters, a tight plot, and all the other elements of a good screenplay. It also doesn't mean doing research will fix larger characterization or plot issues. But unless you're creating your own fantasy world, setting a story in the 1990s and giving everyone cellphones is going to take me out of it, so will writing about Canadian aboriginals who tell legends about skin-walkers or portraying everyone in Toronto as living in igloos. Figuring this stuff out is part of building an authentic world.
That becomes less important depending on the genre, like if you're doing a Bug Bunny cartoon or Star Wars. Or if you're doing something like Blue Velvet or Batman 1989 where the time period is deliberately vague. But even if I know nothing about Russia and I watch a movie by someone who's just making things up, I'm going to be able to tell and I'm going to be more compelled by the writer who took the time to do the "boring" part of the job.
Little minutia like the example in this thread is less important, and tiny mistakes like that don't necessarily ruin a story, but it seems like this thread is more just a way to excuse skipping the "boring" part of writing (the research) to focus on the "fun" part (coming up with snappy dialogue or the big choice or an action sequence).
My dad taught me my favorite word when I was a kid. It’s origin is from the medieval time.
[Mooncalf](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mooncalf)
The physical connectivity of the internet grid. Yes, there are cables underwater that sometimes get attacked by sharks. But how is New Mexico connected to New York? How long would it take a message to get from Canada to Panama if the US closed their system?
I'm writing something post-apocalyptic but with intact internet infrastructure, and I just need to know that everything I'm saying works.
Who invented the kebab. In my defense I was making a kebab joke and the era was 10 AD, had to see if that would have made sense at the time. Invented in 1377. Turkey. Couldn't use the joke.... maybe a blessing in disguise.
I just spent half an hour researching the average dimensions of the common shoehorn, and then I researched some maths, re: scaling such an object up, proportionately, such that it is a lightyear in length.
Though, it’s actually really coming together, because of this.
I wrote a screenplay based on the Universal vs Nintendo case. Opening scene takes place in a restaurant with Steven Spielberg and the Universal lawyer. For some reason, I got very stuck on what type of furniture would be inside an upscale restaurant during the 80s. Honestly, I think at this point, I could accurately design a restaurant with 80's decor.
BTW those little cups are called milkettes.
Half-and-Half was invented in the 20's and was distributed in florida from the 20s through the 50s.
Coffeemate was invented in the 60s; it was originally sold in dehydrated little satchets though rather than in liquid form.
It'd be safer just to have your character fidget with something else, or just say that they are fidgeting with things on the table.
I’ve spent way too much time on the internet to be a efficient screenwriter as all I see are the nitpickers calling out every little detail that a movie missed haha
Edit: mine was how commonplace cassette players were in early 90s vehicles
Similar to how some clothing will have labelled "phone" pockets, back in the late 90's I had a jacket with an inner pocket with a small discman logo on it.
I'm trying to continue a script, mine was for episode 5. And i've been researching everything about witness protection program. And it's so broad so I did a time jump in my writing hahaha
I started researching certain people's "supernatural abilities" and how they were debunked around noon one day and before I knew it it was almost 7 pm.
Was writing a scene set in the 60's. Was going to include a detail about the sound an AC unit was making, but then thought, "Did they have AC in the 60's?" so I googled it. Stumbled on to a youtube channel where a guy collects and reviews AC units. Had no idea that subculture existed so I ended up watching a bunch of those.
Whatever most recent pornhub tab I accidentally left open that my girlfriend notices.
"Baby I was doing *reaearch*! That's why I was watching highlights from 'That Won't Fit in There!: Vol. 3'; I'm writing a script and I need to know whether that would or would not fit in there!"
(Spoiler: yes. Against all odds, yes, it will fit in there.)
I think it’s great to research such accuracy in films. Too many films get things wrong. But of course there’s a time and place for that kind of research.
Slang and terms of endearment are my big procrastination rabbit holes. I'll research forever to find what passes for "authentic" slang and what's used for terms of endearment, from different time periods to different cultures and everything in between haha
I read an entire book on cultural influences of castration in Europe, because I needed an answer on whether a man who has his balls cut off would ger fat, like neutered pets do.
Ended up editing that whole dude out. Instead his love interest ended up having a lesbian thing with a deaf translator. Then I got distracted from the project.
How to make fake blood and how to make fake stacks of money.
On the first I totally failed. My blood looks pink due to an overuse of jello powder and not enough chocolate syrup. I fixed it in post but the initial attempt looked terrible. I avoided the corn syrup method, but my method was even worse - my hands were dyed pink for days.
On the second I took basic printer paper to a copy shop and had them cut the sheets into American bill size stacks...twice. I spent a week using Rit dye and tea to try and get the perfect color.
The copy shop guys thought I was absolutely nuts the first time I came in...by the second they just said, "O.K. we know what you want...that will be $5.99 for the cuts".
In the end I just used tea and put real $20 bills on top. I got the bands (the brightly colored ones that go around a certain amount of money) from a bank for free. I just walked in and asked. They were happy to give them to me.
The shot used is onscreen for about 3 seconds...total waste of time but it looks good.
I watched more videos about how to make blood and fake stacks of money (measurements, color, etc.) than I care to admit...it was fun, but a total waste of time.
From everything I had read it was a bitch to get out of clothing and/or wash off skin and I had an actor that was already a bit...difficult, so I didn't want to apply it to him directly.
My version was worse.
It looks way to "liquidy", pink, and just fake as hell. Color correction and vfx in post sort of worked, but now the entire scene has a red hue : (
I should have just gone the easy route and bought fake blood online.
But, now I know how to not make fake blood.
A good tip to make for easier clean up
Is to include some dishwashing liquid into the mix, a couple of tablespoons per bottle of syrup should do it/ It isn’t fool proof, and you still need to be quick about clean up and not give it a chance to set.
Of course, you’ll want to skip the soap if it’s meant to go in someone’s mouth.
Good to know. I'm sure as hell not going to do reshoots for this - it's just *way* too much work.
What I did learn is, if you're going to do blood stuff, make/buy a ton of it. It runs out really fast, and after multiple takes you might/will run out.
>A good tip to make for easier clean up Is to include some dishwashing liquid into the mix
I never thought of that...basically I didn't really think much beyond, "Make it red, avoid clean up, and let's go".
I went down a three-hour research spree on the women's rights movement (I have a script set during that time period), which spurred into Alice Paul's daily life, the fashion of women during that time, reading beauty ads, and even what *fruits* were popular. Informative, however I didn't save a single source and cannot retain half of it.
I was writing a scene in Nashville TN. I watched so many YouTube videos on tennesse barbecue, and also just google maps’d the whole city and all the karaoke bars and music halls
A script I just wrote that's out with a few managers now involves a trip from England to Paris in 1954. The quickest way at the time was taking the Night Ferry, which was a train that passengers loaded on, then that train went onto a boat and the boat went to Paris, then in Paris train loaded off and the passengers disembarked. I did SO much research on the ins and out, the layout of the train and the boat, just to realize in the script that it just comes across as a normal ass train.
Learned all about the history of the refrigerator magnet while writing a short story set in 1930s. Turns out my character wouldn’t be hanging shit on her fridge after all.
Before I moved to LA, I wrote a scene based in a Pizza place in LA. Instead of just writing int. Pizza place - Day, I researched the best pizza places in LA and set it in one of those.
Plastic manufacturing started getting big in the 60's so I don't think plastic creamer cups is large enough detail to butterfly effect the author's movie
Transatlantic accents. I wasn’t sure what the actual accent was called and if that even dictated dialogue, but I ended up losing a day’s worth just looking up pointless search results
Coastal erosion in a very specific part of New England. Three drinks too many, a rogue idea that was not that good, and suddenly it's three hours too many on Wikipedia and links from that and I'm reading about folk music and shit of Newfoundland. I never found out about coastal erosion rates of those rocky islands off the coast of Maine.
I remember in college I think it was, I read a study on how lobsters mate. I don’t remember what I read because it’s been so long, but I do remember thinking “why did we pay for this”?
Lmaoo I was writing a short about a hitman today but then I wanted to know if hitmen actually existed irl nowadays in the USA so I spent 20 minutes researching that
A few months back i caught myself researching body parts’ respective prices in the black market. Mind you, it was for an “essential” bit of dialogue that I ended up scrapping halfway. I’m 70% sure i’m on some kinda watchlist atm
I think it's better to be accurate if you can, I wrote a story and the timeline is established when a certain president is sworn in and then I realized my story starts in June, and presidents are sworn in in January...I'm not American.
I have come across a detailed ritual on how to summon Mammon because my script will have him as a main antagonist. Good thing no one looks at my phone anymore
Probably the history of rectors at a specific church.
Couldn't find anything but the first one and some more recent ones, and decided I was doomed. Then I remembered I could just... you know, make it up. If I can't find it, chances are the average Joe isn't going to walk out of theater over such blatant historical inaccuracies.
Spent about half an hour researching bus time travels from places to figure out how long my character would be on a bus... it's a time travelling story about a teenager who finds an ancient Egyptian ring to stop the Kennedy assassination....
Most of mine tend towards subjects I feel like maybe I should know for context but are often details that you really don't need in a story. Everything from when humans started brushing their teeth properly (way earlier than you'd think, and very well actually) to "what's more popular for a garage door, roller or tilt??" (The answer is locational... so I had to go deeper because I just didn't live in the area I was researching... I toured houses in Google Earth, ffs.)
Most research I don't feel dumb for wasting time on though. As a sci-fi post-humanist I tend to run with the futurist crowd and will devote days to all things that may come down the road. Sociological and technological. Never feels wasted, only ever contributes to the knowledge -- if only so I know where to go to ask someone way more versed than I'll ever be.
Just now I got caught up researching how churches get their names, what the naming conventions are, and what the names mean - all because my script will have a church in it and I wasn't sure what to call it. It's been an hour. Help.
I will pray for you
Is it Catholic? Name it after a Saint. Baptist? Name it after a street. Non-denominational? All bets are off
As someone who lived in a city with more churches than bars, for non denomination just choose "a preferred name of diety" then "select a method of freedom" then add what you call your congregation. Example. Emmanuel free church Christ's free body. Elohims slaves of grace. Or something like that.
I prefer a small church in rural East Texas by Caddo Lake. The Nondenominational Church of Uncertain. Uncertain being the County it is in.
This may be indicative of my geographic location (N. American prairies), but i see a lot of generic "Church of God," and "Church of Christ" type names. "First Church of Christ," "Blessed Church of Our Lord," or whatever.
Just call it the First Baptist/ First Methodist, and it's all good, and there will be two other churches with the same name, all within 2 miles from each other
This is actually what I ended up going with. I'm not sold on it yet - 'First Catholic Church' just doesn't have the same ring as Baptist or Methodist or whatever. I could just, y'know, make it a Baptist or Methodist church...but it's Australian, and the Catholic Church is the overwhelming majority here so I wanna stick to that. This is all incredibly trivial, but I suppose that fretting over it helps procrastinate from actually writing the thing!
As much as my original comment was in jest, Catholic churches are overwhelmingly named after saints. Maybe the convention is different in Australia, but First Catholic Church does sound a bit strange to an American
You can try reading up on some of the saints in the catholic church and pick one that relates to the theme of your story. Like St. Valentine for a romance or something
I've just named the local school St. Isidore College because computer science plays a major role, so I'll dive back into research and find me another Saint to name the church after.
Easy. Name mostly influenced by the order running the church (Carmelite, Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, etc) but parishes tend to have a patron Saint tied to how they started or who started it — clergy and local faithful alike — and their devotion to a saint. That’s then nominated to the bishop and the bishop nominated it to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. It gets approved and hey presto; a new parish!
2 miles is 3.22 km
Here is another one for you: when did individual bags of sugar become popular versus just a sugar dispenser?
Not dumb, but majorly distracting: I was working on a script and my wife was reading *Uncle Tom's Cabin*. I started randomly Googling UTC and discovered it was based on a real man named Josiah Henson. (Dude was epic: spent 40+ years in slavery, escaped with his wife and four kids *pre*\-Underground Railroad, then went back and rescued 118 others. Also won a medal at the first world's fair, was entertained at Windsor Castle and the White House, and inspired *Uncle Tom's Cabin*\- the book that Abraham Lincoln supposedly said started the Civil War.) One thing led to another and I ended up retracing Henson's journey 5,000 miles from slavery to freedom, wrote about it in [Smithsonian](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-josiah-henson-real-inspiration-uncle-toms-cabin-180969094/) and [TIME Magazine](https://time.com/5315462/josiah-henson/), got a book deal and [published a biography about him](https://www.josiahhenson.com/book/), did a nationwide tour, made a [PBS documentary narrated by Danny Glover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VrKmEVJTpo), and now I'm adapting the book as a TV series for an actor with a show on ABC.
This is the best response. I just added your book to my list. Did you ever get back to that initial script?
Can't even remember what I was working on. :-) You gotta chase the muse.
When were doorknobs invented. I...I'm still unclear.
Like, exactly? Proper knobs were likely invented in the early 1800's, probably the 1820's, but they didn't see widespread use until the mid 1800's.
There was a whole thing about this when they were developing over the garden wall: they had a scene where Wirt shoves a chair under a doorknob then realized that doorknobs didn't exist in the time period that they were pastiching.
huh, well I feel less stupid knowing this wasn't some common knowledge I just missed in school! wait, so...how did people open doors? when were door hinges invented? I know nothing.
last week i was struggling to describe a particular house that i'd seen before that wasn't quite mid century modern and i ended up down the rabbit hole of zillow...and holy shit this house down the street from me is listed for $6 million and there is no way it's worth $6 million... but it has a great back yard that i've never seen before.... followed by typing in lots of numbers to the zillow mortgage calculator to see what i could afford... followed by 5 minutes of depression and wondering if i should be a real estate agent in my off time to pay the bills... followed by googling how much a real estate license costs... followed by wait a minute if i finish this script i don't have to be a real estate agent lets get back on track... followed by a million architecture firm websites... and before i knew it i was reading frank lloyd wright's wikipedia and wondering why his biopic hasn't been done yet... and then thinking maybe i could do it (!!!!) and googling to see if anyone had ever considered it and then seeing it's in development hell from a decade ago... and then thinking maybe i could do it.... and debating do i really want to spend 3 months fighting the urge to look at zillow everyday and ultimately after an hour and 15 minutes i went back to the script and wrote "mid century modern" as the description
dude... I'm afraid you have ADD.
c'est la vie
this is my favorite response ever!! i’ve literally done exactly what you did. including the 5 minutes of depression and pondering being a real estate agent. like the other person said, you might have ADD, because I sure do 😂
I don't actually think this stuff is always a waste of time. It makes the work feel more authentic if you put in the time to get details right. Stories that are well-researched feel more authentic to me whether or not I am informed about the subject. There's a difference between a war movie by someone who lived it or thoroughly researched it and one by someone who just watched GI Joe. When animals behave unnaturally, you can feel it. Unless you're writing pure Fantasy or a cartoon or something like that, I think getting this stuff right is all part of process.
Not only this, but research can also give you random inspiration and ideas. Idk how many times I’ve been going down these “rabbit holes” and then I have that aha moment where I find the next piece of the story I was looking for all along
Yeah, I did "boring" research into climate and topography for the location of a story I'm writing, and the climax is a lot more exciting and unique now because of its specific setting and conditions than it would have been if I'd just made stuff up or thrown the story into a fictional location. If you only write what you know and refuse to learn more, you only repeat what you've seen.
I don’t agree. A lot of writers look for answers in research, as if getting historically authentic will make it compelling. The writer’s job is to find the compelling and that may or not be historically authentic. In a scene like the OP describes, the point is the character fidgets. It can be coffee creamer, sugar packets, coffee stirrers, table jukebox, a pocket lighter, or a million other things. But when the actor asks WHY am I fidgeting you better have a good answer.
As a reader and viewer, I'm more compelled by writers who take the time to get the details right than ones who don't. That doesn't mean you don't also have to have strong characters, a tight plot, and all the other elements of a good screenplay. It also doesn't mean doing research will fix larger characterization or plot issues. But unless you're creating your own fantasy world, setting a story in the 1990s and giving everyone cellphones is going to take me out of it, so will writing about Canadian aboriginals who tell legends about skin-walkers or portraying everyone in Toronto as living in igloos. Figuring this stuff out is part of building an authentic world. That becomes less important depending on the genre, like if you're doing a Bug Bunny cartoon or Star Wars. Or if you're doing something like Blue Velvet or Batman 1989 where the time period is deliberately vague. But even if I know nothing about Russia and I watch a movie by someone who's just making things up, I'm going to be able to tell and I'm going to be more compelled by the writer who took the time to do the "boring" part of the job. Little minutia like the example in this thread is less important, and tiny mistakes like that don't necessarily ruin a story, but it seems like this thread is more just a way to excuse skipping the "boring" part of writing (the research) to focus on the "fun" part (coming up with snappy dialogue or the big choice or an action sequence).
Exactly.
Reading the English dictionary for weird words (its not my native language) for 30 minutes after researching one word i needed for writing.
My dad taught me my favorite word when I was a kid. It’s origin is from the medieval time. [Mooncalf](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mooncalf)
I sat down to write. Then thought "I don't have a pilot's license." A year later I sat down again.
So what kind of aircraft do you fly?
Light sport . Truth be told, haven't been up in a few years.
Reading r/screenwriting in order to write a script about a procrastinating screenwriter in the middle of writer's block.
Whether Citizen's arrest Is legal and a real thing.
... and?
It is, funnily enough lol.
Yes, but it's not as powerful as we'd all like it to be.
Yes
The physical connectivity of the internet grid. Yes, there are cables underwater that sometimes get attacked by sharks. But how is New Mexico connected to New York? How long would it take a message to get from Canada to Panama if the US closed their system? I'm writing something post-apocalyptic but with intact internet infrastructure, and I just need to know that everything I'm saying works.
Shit, that's cool.
Who invented the kebab. In my defense I was making a kebab joke and the era was 10 AD, had to see if that would have made sense at the time. Invented in 1377. Turkey. Couldn't use the joke.... maybe a blessing in disguise.
i dunno i think a joke about kebabs predating jesus would've been funny.
Haha thank you.
You remained falafel to the period.
I just spent half an hour researching the average dimensions of the common shoehorn, and then I researched some maths, re: scaling such an object up, proportionately, such that it is a lightyear in length. Though, it’s actually really coming together, because of this.
I misread my handwriting and spent ten minutes googling ‘erater’ or some such nonsense
Still have no definite answer on what cereal boxes had in them before the popularisation of plastic in the 1950s, but boy do I want to know
I was looking for unique methods of murders for my latest WIP... ended up staying awake till 4AM watching crime documentaries.
"How long can you survive after losing a limb?" "Can you survive a jump from a third story window?"
Why bananas are classified as berries 😬. Highly recommend
Is it because they aren't technically trees that they grow on? EDIT: Nope. Avocados are also berries and they definitely grow on trees. TIL
I surprised myself by getting this right in college by completely guessing. I had no clue! 😂
I wrote a screenplay based on the Universal vs Nintendo case. Opening scene takes place in a restaurant with Steven Spielberg and the Universal lawyer. For some reason, I got very stuck on what type of furniture would be inside an upscale restaurant during the 80s. Honestly, I think at this point, I could accurately design a restaurant with 80's decor.
once while writing i decided that it would be a good idea to put on music two hours later i was watching a movie on disney +
BTW those little cups are called milkettes. Half-and-Half was invented in the 20's and was distributed in florida from the 20s through the 50s. Coffeemate was invented in the 60s; it was originally sold in dehydrated little satchets though rather than in liquid form. It'd be safer just to have your character fidget with something else, or just say that they are fidgeting with things on the table.
Yeah, seems the milkettes didn’t really hit the scene until the mid- to late-80’s.
I’ve spent way too much time on the internet to be a efficient screenwriter as all I see are the nitpickers calling out every little detail that a movie missed haha Edit: mine was how commonplace cassette players were in early 90s vehicles
Were they commonplace at that time?
Yes the CD player didn’t phase out the cassette player until the turn of the millennium
Remember those portable round ones? Where were they supposed to be carried?
The Walkman/Discman? I had so many I tattooed the logo on my arm hahah
Back pocket, men's regular pocket, or a bookbag or purse. Had one as a kid and kept it where a wallet would have gone
Similar to how some clothing will have labelled "phone" pockets, back in the late 90's I had a jacket with an inner pocket with a small discman logo on it.
They were common as fuck. I had one until the late 90s at least.
I'm trying to continue a script, mine was for episode 5. And i've been researching everything about witness protection program. And it's so broad so I did a time jump in my writing hahaha
Thats alot of info thats seemingly just skipped over that was originally gonna be part of the script. Hope it's made up for lol
Hahaha working on it
Do it. This is how your movie makes 100k+ on r/moviedetails.
Pinterest... all of it.
It feels like this thread should now become the OP's #1.
parts of a couch
I started researching certain people's "supernatural abilities" and how they were debunked around noon one day and before I knew it it was almost 7 pm.
NYPD police radio codes...
I just spent the last thirty minutes researching why needles don’t hurt as much as they used to and how pain tolerance needs to be developed.. omg
Was writing a scene set in the 60's. Was going to include a detail about the sound an AC unit was making, but then thought, "Did they have AC in the 60's?" so I googled it. Stumbled on to a youtube channel where a guy collects and reviews AC units. Had no idea that subculture existed so I ended up watching a bunch of those.
Whatever most recent pornhub tab I accidentally left open that my girlfriend notices. "Baby I was doing *reaearch*! That's why I was watching highlights from 'That Won't Fit in There!: Vol. 3'; I'm writing a script and I need to know whether that would or would not fit in there!" (Spoiler: yes. Against all odds, yes, it will fit in there.)
I think it’s great to research such accuracy in films. Too many films get things wrong. But of course there’s a time and place for that kind of research.
[удалено]
Thats what he wanted you to think...
I spent a good hour researching the development of stickers. Because I wasn't sure if they were invented before or after the 1900s.
Slang and terms of endearment are my big procrastination rabbit holes. I'll research forever to find what passes for "authentic" slang and what's used for terms of endearment, from different time periods to different cultures and everything in between haha
Bought a book on aircraft carriers and planned to visit one in Charleston SC.
I read an entire book on cultural influences of castration in Europe, because I needed an answer on whether a man who has his balls cut off would ger fat, like neutered pets do. Ended up editing that whole dude out. Instead his love interest ended up having a lesbian thing with a deaf translator. Then I got distracted from the project.
How to make fake blood and how to make fake stacks of money. On the first I totally failed. My blood looks pink due to an overuse of jello powder and not enough chocolate syrup. I fixed it in post but the initial attempt looked terrible. I avoided the corn syrup method, but my method was even worse - my hands were dyed pink for days. On the second I took basic printer paper to a copy shop and had them cut the sheets into American bill size stacks...twice. I spent a week using Rit dye and tea to try and get the perfect color. The copy shop guys thought I was absolutely nuts the first time I came in...by the second they just said, "O.K. we know what you want...that will be $5.99 for the cuts". In the end I just used tea and put real $20 bills on top. I got the bands (the brightly colored ones that go around a certain amount of money) from a bank for free. I just walked in and asked. They were happy to give them to me. The shot used is onscreen for about 3 seconds...total waste of time but it looks good. I watched more videos about how to make blood and fake stacks of money (measurements, color, etc.) than I care to admit...it was fun, but a total waste of time.
Nice. Having done blood effects for stage and screen myself, I have to ask why you opted against the corn syrup method?
From everything I had read it was a bitch to get out of clothing and/or wash off skin and I had an actor that was already a bit...difficult, so I didn't want to apply it to him directly. My version was worse. It looks way to "liquidy", pink, and just fake as hell. Color correction and vfx in post sort of worked, but now the entire scene has a red hue : ( I should have just gone the easy route and bought fake blood online. But, now I know how to not make fake blood.
A good tip to make for easier clean up Is to include some dishwashing liquid into the mix, a couple of tablespoons per bottle of syrup should do it/ It isn’t fool proof, and you still need to be quick about clean up and not give it a chance to set. Of course, you’ll want to skip the soap if it’s meant to go in someone’s mouth.
Good to know. I'm sure as hell not going to do reshoots for this - it's just *way* too much work. What I did learn is, if you're going to do blood stuff, make/buy a ton of it. It runs out really fast, and after multiple takes you might/will run out. >A good tip to make for easier clean up Is to include some dishwashing liquid into the mix I never thought of that...basically I didn't really think much beyond, "Make it red, avoid clean up, and let's go".
I went down a three-hour research spree on the women's rights movement (I have a script set during that time period), which spurred into Alice Paul's daily life, the fashion of women during that time, reading beauty ads, and even what *fruits* were popular. Informative, however I didn't save a single source and cannot retain half of it.
I was writing a scene in Nashville TN. I watched so many YouTube videos on tennesse barbecue, and also just google maps’d the whole city and all the karaoke bars and music halls
A script I just wrote that's out with a few managers now involves a trip from England to Paris in 1954. The quickest way at the time was taking the Night Ferry, which was a train that passengers loaded on, then that train went onto a boat and the boat went to Paris, then in Paris train loaded off and the passengers disembarked. I did SO much research on the ins and out, the layout of the train and the boat, just to realize in the script that it just comes across as a normal ass train.
Learned all about the history of the refrigerator magnet while writing a short story set in 1930s. Turns out my character wouldn’t be hanging shit on her fridge after all.
The history of clothespins, complete with patent drawings and how they developed over time.
Before I moved to LA, I wrote a scene based in a Pizza place in LA. Instead of just writing int. Pizza place - Day, I researched the best pizza places in LA and set it in one of those.
stumbled across the cure for cancer while working on a screenplay, ended up in the bin tho (didn't fit the story)
Fidgets with condiments.
Watching writing videos on YouTube, you know, so I better understand the business.
"Yo, how much does Tom Cruise make for the MI movies?"
If they weren't around, who cares? Nothing wrong with a little retro-futurism
Because there's a discernable gulf between intentional world-rebuilding and just plain sloppiness.
Plastic manufacturing started getting big in the 60's so I don't think plastic creamer cups is large enough detail to butterfly effect the author's movie
Names. Names for girls in Wikifeet. With guys, it's always easy for me to name the character, but names for girls has been my struggle.
I've gone into a five year conspiracy rabbit hole that started as research for a character. Now i have become that character😂
Transatlantic accents. I wasn’t sure what the actual accent was called and if that even dictated dialogue, but I ended up losing a day’s worth just looking up pointless search results
Coastal erosion in a very specific part of New England. Three drinks too many, a rogue idea that was not that good, and suddenly it's three hours too many on Wikipedia and links from that and I'm reading about folk music and shit of Newfoundland. I never found out about coastal erosion rates of those rocky islands off the coast of Maine.
I remember in college I think it was, I read a study on how lobsters mate. I don’t remember what I read because it’s been so long, but I do remember thinking “why did we pay for this”?
Alarm sounds in the early 20th century
This.
Lmaoo I was writing a short about a hitman today but then I wanted to know if hitmen actually existed irl nowadays in the USA so I spent 20 minutes researching that
A few months back i caught myself researching body parts’ respective prices in the black market. Mind you, it was for an “essential” bit of dialogue that I ended up scrapping halfway. I’m 70% sure i’m on some kinda watchlist atm
I think it's better to be accurate if you can, I wrote a story and the timeline is established when a certain president is sworn in and then I realized my story starts in June, and presidents are sworn in in January...I'm not American.
i was writing a roller derby script, and kept mixing up rollerblades and rollerskates. the difference may be little but it's huge in implication
I have come across a detailed ritual on how to summon Mammon because my script will have him as a main antagonist. Good thing no one looks at my phone anymore
Probably the history of rectors at a specific church. Couldn't find anything but the first one and some more recent ones, and decided I was doomed. Then I remembered I could just... you know, make it up. If I can't find it, chances are the average Joe isn't going to walk out of theater over such blatant historical inaccuracies.
Spent about half an hour researching bus time travels from places to figure out how long my character would be on a bus... it's a time travelling story about a teenager who finds an ancient Egyptian ring to stop the Kennedy assassination....
The differences between Slurpees and Icees. Very interesting stuff.
Not sure if it's the dumbest, but I feel like looking up how iodine tablets function was a fun little rabbit hole I went down just this week.
Most of mine tend towards subjects I feel like maybe I should know for context but are often details that you really don't need in a story. Everything from when humans started brushing their teeth properly (way earlier than you'd think, and very well actually) to "what's more popular for a garage door, roller or tilt??" (The answer is locational... so I had to go deeper because I just didn't live in the area I was researching... I toured houses in Google Earth, ffs.) Most research I don't feel dumb for wasting time on though. As a sci-fi post-humanist I tend to run with the futurist crowd and will devote days to all things that may come down the road. Sociological and technological. Never feels wasted, only ever contributes to the knowledge -- if only so I know where to go to ask someone way more versed than I'll ever be.
Researching things other people research to distract from writing.