Genius troll forces British film board to watch 10 hours of paint drying
January 25, 2016 10:06 AM Subscribe
Charlie Lyne was sick of the censorship of the UK's ratings board. Upon discovering the BBFC has committed to watch every minute of every submitted film, the filmmaker raised £5963 on Kickstarter to make a film of paint drying. He has now submitted a 607 minute long film for their review. There's an AMA with him on Reddit.
a single, unbroken shot of white paint drying on a brick wall
White paint, eh? Smart move. It'll probably get nominated for Best Picture at next year's Oscars.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:12 AM on January 25, 2016 [107 favorites]
White paint, eh? Smart move. It'll probably get nominated for Best Picture at next year's Oscars.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:12 AM on January 25, 2016 [107 favorites]
I did like that he didn't answer the question of whether he put in a few frames of questionable content.
posted by zabuni at 10:15 AM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by zabuni at 10:15 AM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
Wouldn't it be trivial for the reviewers to use software to determine rate of change, both audio and visual, per frame and immediately
A) skip reviewing the footage at all if no variations were detected
and
B) determine if anything had been "slipped in"?
It seems to me that something far more valuable, in terms of wasting the review board's time, would be to film a 10 hour mock filibuster (or the local equivalent) and submit that instead, again perhaps with something slipped in just to make sure they were on their toes.
posted by radiosilents at 10:24 AM on January 25, 2016
A) skip reviewing the footage at all if no variations were detected
and
B) determine if anything had been "slipped in"?
It seems to me that something far more valuable, in terms of wasting the review board's time, would be to film a 10 hour mock filibuster (or the local equivalent) and submit that instead, again perhaps with something slipped in just to make sure they were on their toes.
posted by radiosilents at 10:24 AM on January 25, 2016
trivial for the reviewers to use software to determine rate of change
Trivial for someone, maybe. But then he can submit some sequels: 600 minutes of waves on the beach, or 600 minutes of freeway traffic.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:33 AM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
Trivial for someone, maybe. But then he can submit some sequels: 600 minutes of waves on the beach, or 600 minutes of freeway traffic.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:33 AM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
They know from experience that if they play Yakety Sax in the background it'll go several times faster.
posted by delfin at 10:39 AM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]
posted by delfin at 10:39 AM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]
Of course, Yakety Sax is also known to make topless women appear out of nowhere, so that may skew the ratings somewhat.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:47 AM on January 25, 2016 [27 favorites]
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:47 AM on January 25, 2016 [27 favorites]
Even better would be a 10 hour video in which every single frame is a different random picture. Exactly one frame is some sort of unacceptable image.
With this scheme, they'd need to crawl through ~1 million images, which would easily take more than 10 hours.
posted by rlio at 11:03 AM on January 25, 2016 [17 favorites]
With this scheme, they'd need to crawl through ~1 million images, which would easily take more than 10 hours.
posted by rlio at 11:03 AM on January 25, 2016 [17 favorites]
I think this just melted the troll meter. Bravo!
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:12 AM on January 25, 2016
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:12 AM on January 25, 2016
Wouldn't it be trivial for the reviewers to use software to determine rate of change, both audio and visual, per frame and immediately
A) skip reviewing the footage at all if no variations were detected
and
B) determine if anything had been "slipped in"?
Lyne responded to that in the same link that zabuni posted. As for algorithms and the like, the BBFC has reserved 607 minutes in its screening schedule to show the entire film, so I trust that they're not going to defraud me and go to the pub instead.
posted by layceepee at 11:12 AM on January 25, 2016
A) skip reviewing the footage at all if no variations were detected
and
B) determine if anything had been "slipped in"?
Lyne responded to that in the same link that zabuni posted. As for algorithms and the like, the BBFC has reserved 607 minutes in its screening schedule to show the entire film, so I trust that they're not going to defraud me and go to the pub instead.
posted by layceepee at 11:12 AM on January 25, 2016
radiosilents: "Wouldn't it be trivial for the reviewers to use software"
I would hazard a guess and say "yes and no". Would it be trivial for someone to use software to check if any frames changed? Maybe. Would it be trivial for these people to gin up some kind of ffmpeg/ImageMagick/perl one-liner ("every perl script is a one-liner if you believe in yourself") pipeline to do this? Maybe not.
posted by mhum at 11:48 AM on January 25, 2016
I would hazard a guess and say "yes and no". Would it be trivial for someone to use software to check if any frames changed? Maybe. Would it be trivial for these people to gin up some kind of ffmpeg/ImageMagick/perl one-liner ("every perl script is a one-liner if you believe in yourself") pipeline to do this? Maybe not.
posted by mhum at 11:48 AM on January 25, 2016
I've heard a lot of arguments about the classification of films by the BBFC, perhaps most notably the producer of Made in Dagenham was extremely upset to receive a 15, but that's not censorship.
Is there a particular example of censorship this guy points to? I don't see anything other than some vague answer about being shocked to see the BBFC and filmmakers getting on at an open day. Which, well, yeah. Over the last few years I've heard countless examples of the BBFC working with filmmakers to explain exactly why a film received the classification it did and what would need to change to receive a lower one. Filmmakers may not like cutting the 12th 'fuck' to achieve a more marketable certificate, but they're not really being censored for it. The last film I can think of that was refused a certificate was Human Centipede 2, which even then was passed after some of the more torture porny bits were cut.
posted by IanMorr at 12:21 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
Is there a particular example of censorship this guy points to? I don't see anything other than some vague answer about being shocked to see the BBFC and filmmakers getting on at an open day. Which, well, yeah. Over the last few years I've heard countless examples of the BBFC working with filmmakers to explain exactly why a film received the classification it did and what would need to change to receive a lower one. Filmmakers may not like cutting the 12th 'fuck' to achieve a more marketable certificate, but they're not really being censored for it. The last film I can think of that was refused a certificate was Human Centipede 2, which even then was passed after some of the more torture porny bits were cut.
posted by IanMorr at 12:21 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
> Is there a particular example of censorship this guy points to?
This isn't about "censorship"; did you read the second link? Here, this may help people to understand what's going on:
This isn't about "censorship"; did you read the second link? Here, this may help people to understand what's going on:
The BBFC submission fee is 101.50 British pounds per film, with an additional charge of 7.09 pounds for each minute of the film’s length. That cost typically runs at about a thousand pounds per feature film, Lyne says, a cost that can be “prohibitively expensive” for independent filmmakers who distribute their films themselves.posted by languagehat at 12:32 PM on January 25, 2016 [8 favorites]
“I self-distributed my first film, ‘Beyond Clueless,’ earlier this year, which meant paying for the BBFC certificate myself,” Lyne said in an email to The Post. “It cost £867.60, which was about 50% of the entire distribution budget.” Lyne said that he wouldn’t have been able to show his film in the U.K. if he didn’t have the money to pay for the certificate already saved up.
“I know of several planned releases that have been abandoned for exactly that reason,” he added, “which is terrible for British film culture.”
His Kickstarter "Make the Censors Watch 'Paint Drying'" and the related AMA 'I'm making the UK's film censorship board watch paint dry, for ten hours, starting right now! AMA' aren't about censorship? He's not very good at getting his message across then. Jesus, I bet his movies are about as exciting as...
posted by IanMorr at 12:47 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by IanMorr at 12:47 PM on January 25, 2016
The BBFC submission fee is 101.50 British pounds per film, with an additional charge of 7.09 pounds for each minute of the film’s length.
So his revenge on the BBFC charging too much to rate films is to pay them a whole lot of money to rate an extra long film?
This is like protesting the cable company's high fees by subscribing to EVERY CHANNEL, SO THERE.
posted by straight at 12:53 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
So his revenge on the BBFC charging too much to rate films is to pay them a whole lot of money to rate an extra long film?
This is like protesting the cable company's high fees by subscribing to EVERY CHANNEL, SO THERE.
posted by straight at 12:53 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
> His Kickstarter "Make the Censors Watch 'Paint Drying'" and the related AMA 'I'm making the UK's film censorship board watch paint dry, for ten hours, starting right now! AMA' aren't about censorship? He's not very good at getting his message across then.
The paragraph after the passage I quoted:
posted by languagehat at 12:59 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
The paragraph after the passage I quoted:
The BBFC has been a part of British filmmaking culture for about a century. It used to be called the British Board of Film Censors, until changing the “C” in the BBFC to the slightly friendlier “Classification” in the 1980’s. And its longevity is in part why Lyne thinks that the current certificate system gets so little scrutiny.The board used to be called the Board of Censors, its function is both ideologically and historically related to censorship, and "censorship" is obviously an attractive rallying cry, even if not specifically applicable in this instance. But hey, if you want to find a reason to dismiss him, be my guest. I'm no censor.
posted by languagehat at 12:59 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
This could have been a lot shorter if he'd used latex.
ooooh, kinky
posted by randomkeystrike at 1:03 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
ooooh, kinky
posted by randomkeystrike at 1:03 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Shrink tubing, with a hair dryer.
posted by friendlyjuan at 1:06 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by friendlyjuan at 1:06 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm not dismissing him. I don't agree with how he's making his point. If his point is really about the fees, then it's counterproductive to lead with the 'censorship' argument, because people are missing it while congratulating him on his trolling. The BBFC have worked very hard over the last 10-15 years to shed the image of 'censors'. I think for the most part they've succeeded. His fees protest consists of making two low-level BBFC staff watch his stunt for 10 hours. Honestly though, they're probably happy to not be watching another 90 minutes of even stuntier torture porn designed to get the 'banned in Britain' label stuck on it. It also somewhat undermines his argument that £800 is a barrier to release for independent movies when he's raised £6000 for this.
posted by IanMorr at 2:00 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by IanMorr at 2:00 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
Some people have access to money, therefore money isn't really a barrier for anyone?
posted by Etrigan at 2:04 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by Etrigan at 2:04 PM on January 25, 2016
He raised £6000 from strangers on the internet to make a 10 hour movie about watching paint dry. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that most people capable of making a movie for theatrical release are also capable of raising £800.
posted by IanMorr at 2:08 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by IanMorr at 2:08 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
Has interesting resonances with How The Great Firewall Discovers Hidden Circumvention Servers, a video from 32c3 which should really have the additional title "(and what we do about it)". Some of the techniques to reduce the effectiveness of the Chinese government's systems are basically trolling - spoofing the IP address of a service that can't be shut down for economic or social reasons, or choking the GF's internal data structures by synthesising more things to block than it can cope with. (Video highly recommended, btw.)
Censorship must include analysis, or it produces actual collateral damage which outweighs the (perceived - how do you measure the utility of censorship?) value it delivers. And that's a very valid channel to attack. especially in conjunction with resource-sapping DoS.
posted by Devonian at 2:08 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Censorship must include analysis, or it produces actual collateral damage which outweighs the (perceived - how do you measure the utility of censorship?) value it delivers. And that's a very valid channel to attack. especially in conjunction with resource-sapping DoS.
posted by Devonian at 2:08 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
One day this nation will make movies where we care about whose paint is drying, and why.
posted by benzenedream at 2:37 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 2:37 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
IanMorr: "He raised £6000 from strangers on the internet to make a 10 hour movie about watching paint dry. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that most people capable of making a movie for theatrical release are also capable of raising £800."
I imagine most of the contributors could care less about the movie and are instead in it for either the lulz or the publicity of making the board rate the film. IE: it is probably false to extrapolate the funding to other non-stunty films.
posted by Mitheral at 3:48 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
I imagine most of the contributors could care less about the movie and are instead in it for either the lulz or the publicity of making the board rate the film. IE: it is probably false to extrapolate the funding to other non-stunty films.
posted by Mitheral at 3:48 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
*very slow clap where my hands only meet once every 607 minutes*
posted by crossoverman at 4:28 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by crossoverman at 4:28 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
How about he do what Kevin Smith did and you know...actually make a real change to the system.
Zack and Miri
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:31 PM on January 25, 2016
Zack and Miri
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:31 PM on January 25, 2016
> I'm not dismissing him. I don't agree with how he's making his point. ... It also somewhat undermines his argument that £800 is a barrier to release for independent movies when he's raised £6000 for this.
Others have addressed the fallacy of your final point, but I'm curious about why you're digging in on this. Do you think it's a good thing that people have to pay a thousand pounds or so if they want to make a feature film, just to have these good people look at it?
posted by languagehat at 5:27 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Others have addressed the fallacy of your final point, but I'm curious about why you're digging in on this. Do you think it's a good thing that people have to pay a thousand pounds or so if they want to make a feature film, just to have these good people look at it?
posted by languagehat at 5:27 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think it's a good thing that the BBFC exists and that they are an independent film classification organization. So, yes, I do think it's a good thing that these good people have to look at a film and classify it before release. I think they generally do a decent job of walking a tough line between the 'censorship' outrage of the left and the 'ban this filth' outrage of the right.
Charging per minute seems fair to me. It costs the BBFC just as much to classify Giant Robots Blow Shit Up With 5 Edits Per Second as it does to classify Brave One Room Black and White Drama Made For Pennies. Could the BBFC be cheaper? Fees are set to cover their costs which they took steps to reduce by more than £1m in 2013. They showed a surplus (pdf) of about £1m in 2014 on turnover of about £6m. Perhaps they could cut their costs to eat into that, but I have no idea what a responsible level of surplus is, especially given their declining turnover trend. I do know that I don't want them to be funded by the government or the movie industry through any kind of voluntary payment that could be used to pressure them one way or another.
posted by IanMorr at 9:49 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
Charging per minute seems fair to me. It costs the BBFC just as much to classify Giant Robots Blow Shit Up With 5 Edits Per Second as it does to classify Brave One Room Black and White Drama Made For Pennies. Could the BBFC be cheaper? Fees are set to cover their costs which they took steps to reduce by more than £1m in 2013. They showed a surplus (pdf) of about £1m in 2014 on turnover of about £6m. Perhaps they could cut their costs to eat into that, but I have no idea what a responsible level of surplus is, especially given their declining turnover trend. I do know that I don't want them to be funded by the government or the movie industry through any kind of voluntary payment that could be used to pressure them one way or another.
posted by IanMorr at 9:49 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
He raised £6000 from strangers on the internet to make a 10 hour movie about watching paint dry. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that most people capable of making a movie for theatrical release are also capable of raising £800.
Some guy raised six times that to make potato salad. That doesn't mean everyone else can Kickstarter themselves a dinner at Le Bernardin.
As excerpted above, this guy has himself had trouble raising money for the certificate, and claims that other filmmakers haven't been able to raise that measly £800. Sure, most can do it, but wouldn't be nice if everyone was able to get their films past the censors without having to pay for the privilege?
posted by Etrigan at 10:04 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
Some guy raised six times that to make potato salad. That doesn't mean everyone else can Kickstarter themselves a dinner at Le Bernardin.
As excerpted above, this guy has himself had trouble raising money for the certificate, and claims that other filmmakers haven't been able to raise that measly £800. Sure, most can do it, but wouldn't be nice if everyone was able to get their films past the censors without having to pay for the privilege?
posted by Etrigan at 10:04 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think we need a classification system. I think there's value to the public in having one and I think that the BBFC, currently, is a particularly considerate, open and effective one. See for example the exchange with Nick Wright over the number of times he could use the C word in The World's End before being bumped from 15 to 18 (obvious warning: contains repeated use of rude words). The BBFC is trusted by the general film-going public, most filmmakers and the local councils who are the ultimate licensing authority for what can and can't be seen in a cinema. Who should pay for this service, if not the filmmaker?
posted by IanMorr at 4:09 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by IanMorr at 4:09 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
What you see as a service others see as pointless government intrusion and a worthless system.
Seriously, can you think of a film that's come out in the last 15 years, where you didn't know whether is was appropriate for kids, or of interest to you, based solely on the trailer alone? If you can, do you think reading a few reviews would have cleared it up? Still not, then perhaps you could call the booking venue and ask? Why do you need others to do your work for you? Don't we already have too much of a nanny state? Finally, the content you find objectionable is probably not what I would find objectionable. I'd rather my kid watch a consensual couple of any gender get it on, with full frontal, than have this hypothetical youth watch a rape scene or a stabbing. I'd rather my kid know all the swear words than watch a military propaganda film. I'd rather my kid watch a realistic film portrayal of drug use than a Jesus cult indoctrination film. I could go on. What this board decides is acceptable and what isn't seems pretty puritanical and arbitrary to me.
Add in that a film's rating also affects it's marketing and where it (or if) it gets distribution and this is just a stupid and outdated idea.
Here's an idea, rather than abdicating protection of children to the government...try parenting.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:27 AM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
Seriously, can you think of a film that's come out in the last 15 years, where you didn't know whether is was appropriate for kids, or of interest to you, based solely on the trailer alone? If you can, do you think reading a few reviews would have cleared it up? Still not, then perhaps you could call the booking venue and ask? Why do you need others to do your work for you? Don't we already have too much of a nanny state? Finally, the content you find objectionable is probably not what I would find objectionable. I'd rather my kid watch a consensual couple of any gender get it on, with full frontal, than have this hypothetical youth watch a rape scene or a stabbing. I'd rather my kid know all the swear words than watch a military propaganda film. I'd rather my kid watch a realistic film portrayal of drug use than a Jesus cult indoctrination film. I could go on. What this board decides is acceptable and what isn't seems pretty puritanical and arbitrary to me.
Add in that a film's rating also affects it's marketing and where it (or if) it gets distribution and this is just a stupid and outdated idea.
Here's an idea, rather than abdicating protection of children to the government...try parenting.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:27 AM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
Additional links:
Actual rating.
Kickstarter
WaPo
Mashable
boingboing
posted by cjorgensen at 10:33 AM on January 29, 2016
Actual rating.
Kickstarter
WaPo
Mashable
boingboing
posted by cjorgensen at 10:33 AM on January 29, 2016
Who should pay for this service, if not the filmmaker?
Perhaps a sliding scale to allow ultra-low-budget movies to sneak in at a nominal £5, or even free, while charging your Transformerses and Guardians of the Galaxies more to make up for it?
posted by Etrigan at 10:53 AM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
Perhaps a sliding scale to allow ultra-low-budget movies to sneak in at a nominal £5, or even free, while charging your Transformerses and Guardians of the Galaxies more to make up for it?
posted by Etrigan at 10:53 AM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
Who should pay for this service, if not the filmmaker?
It's a government agency producing a rating meant to be used by the populace to determine appropriateness for the masses. So maybe the masses? Seriously, as a tax payer if you don't find enough value in this system to pay for it, that alone should be an argument against its existence.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:38 AM on January 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's a government agency producing a rating meant to be used by the populace to determine appropriateness for the masses. So maybe the masses? Seriously, as a tax payer if you don't find enough value in this system to pay for it, that alone should be an argument against its existence.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:38 AM on January 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure you understand the role of the BBFC. It's not a government agency.
posted by IanMorr at 2:33 PM on February 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by IanMorr at 2:33 PM on February 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
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posted by JackFlash at 10:10 AM on January 25, 2016 [9 favorites]