Awesome Stuff: Let's Bore The Censors
from the rate-this dept
Film ratings and content warnings seem like a perfectly harmless and sensible idea in theory, but in practice they become a tool of censorship and industry protectionism. The UK has its own issues in this regard that are not unlike the ones we see in the US, and one filmmaker has come up with an amusing idea to fight back: crowdfunding a long and uneventful film of paint drying, to at least bore the censors to tears.
The British Board of Film Classification (formerly known as, yes, the British Board of Film Censors) is the UK equivalent of CARA, the film-rating portion of the MPAA. Both were formed by the industry to avoid government-administered content regulations, but where the MPAA's ratings stranglehold on the industry is based almost entirely on an economic monopoly, the BBFC's is backed up by ratings requirements in UK law. Where the MPAA can't actually ban films (instead forcing them to choose self-censorship or economic suicide), the BBFC can.
But the BBFC has one weakness, of sorts: it has to watch the films, even if it decides not to let anyone else do so. In fact, it seems to be quite proud of its commitment to watching every minute of footage that is submitted for classification. This gave Charlie Lyne, a London filmmaker and critic, an idea for how to take a dig at the BBFC while also sparking conversation around this under-discussed issue: force the censors to watch a very long, very boring, very pointless film of paint drying.
One of the most interesting things that this stunt highlights is the pricing system, whereby filmmakers must pay a per-minute fee for work they submit to the board — a fee that is trivial for a big studio production, but not so much for an indie working with a shoestring budget. Of course, in this case, Kickstarter neatly takes care of that problem: the final film will be scaled in length to the amount raised, with the crowdfunded cash paying the per-minute fee. Lyne has 14 hours of footage ready to go, which he figured would be plenty (it would cost a little over £6000 to get all that reviewed), but he's prepared to shoot more. And it looks like he might have to, since the campaign is past the halfway mark of using up all that drying paint. If it hits 13 hours, it'll snag a record too, becoming the longest film ever reviewed by the board.
A fan has even set up a website where you can track the length of the film based on the money raised so far. With 24 days still to go in the campaign, it looks like the BBFC is going to be staring at that paint for a very long time. Of course, it's easy to wonder if they actually will, but at least they confirmed to Mashable that they do watch every minute of submitted footage — plus, it's always possible someone slipped some objectionable content in at hour 7, right? What choice do they have?
So if you'd like to bore some censors and help spark conversation around the issue of movie ratings — which many people just assume are a system that works reasonably and fairly in the background, rather than a powerful and determining factor in the movie industry — head on over to the Kickstarter page and contribute a minute or two to this groundbreaking crowdfunded film.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: awesome stuff, bbfc, censorship, mpaa, uk
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
A suggestion
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A suggestion
https://librivox.org/search?q=insomnia%20collection&search_form=advanced
For example, Nicholas James Bridgewater does a stirring rendition of Moluvee Roshun Ulee's Ta‘tīlāt or A Treatise Concerning the Permutations of Letters in the Arabic Language. Other gems can be found in the Collections.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A suggestion
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They'd have to start over every time they fell asleep! >BD
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
If you've gotta have censors, I suppose it's best to have thoughtful, measured, reasonable censors — but there's still a bigger argument for not having them at all. Plus, when you're forced to pay the censors by the minute, it's a bit galling, and it unfairly punishes small filmmakers (a few thousand pounds is nothing to a major studio picture, but could easily represent a double-digit percentage of an indy's entire budget).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
And "a few thousand pounds" is a significant exaggeration, I might add. A bit of fiddling with the fee calculator suggests a 90-minute film would cost just under £750 to review. That's not an insurmountable burden even for a pure hobby-project.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
On the other subject: as far as I understand it, the BBFC is not actually a government body - it's an organization founded by film studios, much like the MPAA/CARA. The key difference is that in the UK, there are actually laws that prevent or limit the sale/screening of unrated movies, and which designate the BBFC as the ratings authority, but the government doesn't actually control the board — whereas in the US, film ratings are "voluntary" but there's an oligopoly of cinemas and retail stores that all play along and making selling an unrated film essentially impossible.
The result for the filmmaker and the public is pretty much the same in both cases — though I'm not surprised to learn that the BBFC may be somewhat less subservient to industry whims than CARA. I'd also be curious to know what it's like interacting with them, as one of the biggest problems with the MPAA ratings is the opaque process that gives filmmakers few hints about how to get the rating they want.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Apparently this person has no problem paying thousands of pounds to bore an employee. Seems they doth protest too much.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
So kind of like an open, honest, one-time version of your presence here in the comments.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
If you cared at all about artists the BBFC and the expensive requirements to get a film to screen would be the first thing you would complain about. You would be here, like the rest of us, protesting and complaining how stupid it is to have such arbitrarily expensive requirements to get a film to screen because that hurts artists. But no, you don't care at all about artists so instead you waste your time complaining about someone that's at least trying to do something about it.
Every opportunity you are given you either side with the distributors or you fail to focus your complaint on how the system is so broken to harm artists. Instead you focus your attention on how the person that's trying to fix the system is wrong and childish.
While I agree that raising funds to the BBFC to make a statement is counterintuitive (making a statement by funding and hence financially supporting them) and if it were me I would probably be tempted to make a documentary about how the BBFC are a bunch of scumbags and how these scumbags should quit their jobs or else feel guilty about how they are getting paid to contribute to a social harm, the fact that your focus seems to insult those that are trying to fix the system (ie: calling their efforts childish in opposed to giving them criticism in a constructive manner with a tone supportive of their cause) instead of delivering your message in a way supportive of their cause suggests that you don't care about artists at all. You never focus your efforts on supporting something pro-artist. Here is a perfect opportunity to show how much you care for artists by expressing your outrage at these expensive requirements and instead you focus your efforts on calling someone that's trying to fix the system childish. Everything you do seems to be pro-distributor. How do you expect to convince anyone that you are pro-artist because if you really are you sure could have fooled me into thinking otherwise. and how do you expect your posts to actually contribute to your cause when all they do is give people the impression you don't care at all for artists, the public, or the art but you only care about the distributors. Your posts are only harmful to your cause. It's unbelievable that you don't have the competence to see that.
A somewhat relevant quote
"But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/11/22/1618245
The truth is those supportive of IP laws don't care about the artists or the public or the quality of art. The error is that they do. When IP extremists come here and present themselves the way you do they are only harming themselves because it allows the truth to collide with an error giving people a clearer perception and livelier impression of truth. The truth presents itself much stronger when presented side by side with an error. At the very least you can try to minimize that effect by at least pretending you cared for artists but you won't even do that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I pity the two workers that have to sit through this. It's already up to 4 hours.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
* IMO there's no expression outside of narrow criminal bounds such as fraud and threats that should be banned
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So... Snuff films = OK, Incest films = OK. But, the Grifters = not OK (about fraud),
DieHard = not OK (about threats)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Movies, by their very nature, are 'about' stuff.
But if Fraud and threats rank as worse to you than incest and rape then you are beyond hope, and calling someone else a troll won't elevate your position. SickF**k.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Rape: bad
Murder: bad
Threats: bad
Movies about fraud: OK
Movies about rape: OK
Movies about murder: OK
Movies about threats: OK
You get it now?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You say 'expression" in thread about movies, but it's not about movies?Even though you are listing two things you specifically say that adults should not be allowed to watch - that fraud and theft films should be banned.
Yeah so tell me how you weren't talking about movies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Fraud and threats are a form of expression. They are a form of expression that is appropriately illegal. Here is my quote again: "IMO there's no expression outside of narrow criminal bounds such as fraud and threats that should be banned". If I had been talking about movies, I would have said something like "IMO there's no expression outside of narrow criminal bounds such as movies about fraud and threats that should be banned". I emphasized the difference to make it stand out more. If you still cannot understand the difference I'm afraid I don't know how to make it any clearer.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"... but nothing that adults shouldn't be allowed to watch, IMO there's no expression outside of narrow criminal bounds such as fraud and threats that should be banned"
See you were talking about movies ( and if you weren't then what context are you talking about, and why did it shift so suddenly)
Again, still interesting that you can condone all the acts described in the banned movies list, esp incest, but have a bugbear about fraud and threats.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Multiple Releases
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm reporting this site to my professor and making you write a letter acknowledging your privilege! Then I'm running home and telling mom!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]