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I doubt that 'Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity' paid for the film rights; I'd guess that if you take the basic idea rather than specific details then you'd be fine even if the story isn't old enough to be public domain.

It's at the low end for a horror movie, but not unprecedented; you may have some room to expand the story a bit, but I don't think you have to. Of course if you shoot it and it ends up 70 minutes long you might have a problem :). In that case you may do best to put together a cast, crew and...

The trailer made me want to barf; so I have precisely zero interest in seeing the movie.

Re: PAL vs. NTSC Either shoot and edit 24p then speed it up by 4% to 25fps, or shoot and edit NTSC and release it on an NTSC DVD. 99+% of European TVs can display NTSC or have their DVD player convert for them.

What kind of video card do you have? Avid doesn't really work with ATI cards, for no good reason that I can gather. As for import, I've certainly imported .avi and .m2t (MPEG-2 transfer streams) into Xpress Pro, though not for some time. Which version are you using?

Good advice. I agree, I've seen some really awful footage from low-end 'HD' camcorders, but both XL2 and XHA1 should give good pictures within the limits of the recording format.

Well, if you're never going to show it to anyone else, you might theoretically need the rights, but in reality no-one is likely to care. If you're making it for your film school and film festivals, you can often negotiate a cheap rights deal which will only allow it to be shown in such...

One potential issue is that batteries are far less efficient in cold weather; you might need to take them off the camera between shots and warm them up (e.g. by sticking them inside your coat).

Avid is the same; you can just drop DV footage into an HD timeline and it will be upconverted for you.

Yep. Maybe, for example, you want to be a writer and think making coffee on a low-budget movie won't help, but you never know when one of the other people you're working with is looking to produce their first movie and picks your script for it as a result, or whatever. Or, better yet, works...

Unfortunately my disk is on the other side of the Atlantic! I just brought the installer file on a USB drive and the CD key when I moved to Canada. I guess you could see whether you can register it on the Final Draft site; if so, it's presumably OK. If not, you can report the seller to them :).

BTW, I just thought I'd mention that in three months my laptop has lost its activation twice now for no apparent reason. I start it up, run Final Draft, and it tells me I have to activate... which I can't do since it's also activated on my desktop system and both activations are used up (one for...

Dunno, but it sounds dodgy; mine came in a cardboard box, I think with a basic manual and some other odds and ends (it's in the UK right now, so I can't check). Is there a CD key with it?

For that shot, you'd just shoot both actors in front of the same background and then morph one into the other. When morphing was big about ten years ago there were specialised programs for it, I presume most effects programs can do it today.

I have (or had, I left the speakers behind when I moved) a 7.1 system for my PC, but I don't think any movies on DVD use it; it's mostly for 3D games.

I'm surprised that 70 minutes is long enough; I was watching a movie a while back which was just over 80 and lots of people on the Internet were complaining that it was short.

And you're highly unlikely to sell a story idea in any case; you can't make a movie from an idea, you need to turn that idea into a script.

You can often rent smoke machines; I've never used one myself, so I'm not sure how safe the smoke is that close to actors. One low-budget fantasy feature I worked on was perpetually smoky due to using burning torches for lighting, but I think that's best avoided :).

Register it with the WGA. Anyone in the business should understand that and is unlikely to try to rip you off if it is registered.

In a big chain, the manager probably doesn't have the authority to allow you to shoot there; you might get lucky if you can ensure you don't show anything that would identify the store, but my experience is that they'll want you to go through their corporate HQ for permission in most cases. For...