Library Guides: Film and Television: Find Film and TV scripts

Find Scripts in the Library Catalogue

Search by:

Title of the film or television program/series
Author
Subject Heading eg Motion Picture Plays Television Scripts Television Plays
Keyword - Limit format to Printed Books (otherwise you will get DVDs and other formats as well) - Type in screenplay and other keywords from title, author etc. You may like to use other useful keywords include: shooting script or film scripts

Browsing the shelves

Most film scripts are held on the shelves at 791.4372.

Please note: We have a large collection of script "class sets" which are held in our store. You can locate these in the catalogue and search as suggested above.

Script Databases

American Film Scripts Online (Alexander Street Press)
American Film Scripts Online contains 1,009 scripts by 1,062 writers together with detailed, fielded information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts. In addition, the database includes facsimilie images for more than 500 of these screenplays. Most of the scripts have never been published before, and nowhere else are they available online.
Australian Plays Transform
AustralianPlays.org offers the combined catalogues of Australia's leading theatrical publishers together in one place. Provided are free extracts of scripts where available and access to the full text of over 1200 titles.
Chinese Film and Newsreel Scripts from the Cultural Revolution Online (Brill)
This is a collection of film advertisements and transcripts of Chinese documentary films and newsreels that spans the years 1946 to 1985. The original items are held in the Chinese Filmscript and Advertisement Collection held by the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University. The bulk of the items are transcripts for the documentary films and newsreels from the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976. All documents are in Chinese.

ALSO NOTE the individual titles are catalogued separately in the catalogue. Eg Blade Runner – Draft script

Why use scripts in AFSO?

They are legal. Copyright permissions have been secured from the studio. Just ensure you cite the script source properly when using them in your assignments and writing. Many scripts you find on the web have been sourced illegally and may not be able to be used for educational purposes under the Copyright act.
AFSO has provided authoritative versions of the screenplay -- whenever possible, the final shooting script.
Scripts in AFSO are dynamic. They have been encoded with information such as scene breakdowns, character information (such as sex and race), setting, genre, subjects and more. This allows you to search AFSO in order to find specific scenes, ie scenes that are from drama films, are set in a prison, and include at least one male character.

Finding Scripts Online

Note many of these websites provide draft scripts that may or may not have legally published. Please consider copyright issues when utilising these in your study and work at the University, and in the public domain:

Drew’s Scrpt-O-Rama
Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb)
Script City
Script Fly
Simply Scripts
Australian Short Films
The Daily Script
Shore Scripts
more...less...
To discover new exciting screenwriting talent and help kickstart careers! We put each year’s best scripts into the hands our industry roster – all of whom have the experience and means to get your script made