The Power of the Public Domain

Having trouble coming up with an idea for your next project? Try the public domain. Stories and content in public domain are available for anyone to use. Sounds like a great resource, doesn't it? Public domain material won the Academy Award for Best Picture this year. 12 Years a Slave was based on a public domain memoir of the same name by Solomon Northrup. Anyone could have used it for movie source material. The Bible is in the public domain. This week a big screen version of Noah is opening, starring Russel Crowe. Son of God, based on the public domain New Testament, is still raking in bucks at the box office. All of Shakespeare's works are in the public domain. Perhaps you didn't like Joss Whedon's version of Much Ado About Nothing and want to film your own. Go right ahead. Walt Whitman's poems are in the public domain. You can take "Song of Myself" and create a web series of two minute videos until you've put the whole poem on line. Want to adapt any of Mark Twain's works for the stage or television? Start typing today. The public domain is full of time tested content that's been popular for centuries and can still work today. In general, any work published before 1923 are in the public domain in the U.S. That's a lot of content. Someworks published after 1923 may be in the public domain if their copyright wasn't renewed. Some works created long after 1923 are in the public domain -- for example the 1968 version of Night of Living Dead is in the public domain. So is His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. However, for works published after 1923 in particular be careful before you use it. Check with the U.S. copyright office to be sure. Here's their web address: www.copyright.gov. It's important to make sure that the material using is actually in the public domain before you use it. It is possible to copyright a particular version of public domain material. 12 Years a Slave, the book, is in the public domain, but the screenplay and the film adaptation are copywritten. If you print a version of Shakespeare's Hamlet with your specific notes about the script, that version of the play can have a copyright. If you compile all the poems of Walt Whitman into one book, that book can have a copyright, even if the individual poems don't have one. That being said, if you want to quote from Whitman's poem "Oh Captain My Captain," as Robin Williams did so memorably in Dead Poet's Society, you don't need permission to put those quotes in your screenplay. The works I mentioned only scratch the surface of what's available in the public domain. Other content available includes all of Greek and Roman drama and poetry, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Moliere's plays, Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels and stories, and the songs of Stephen Foster. Think of the public domain as a vast source of free ideas that you can adapt for your own content. If you have questions about what can and can't be used, it's best to consult an entertainment or copyright attorney. There's power in the public domain. It contains content hundreds or even thousands of years old that continues to thrill audiences to this day. It can be a great source for your work if you use it wisely.