The BBFC vs. UK Independent Labels

[peerpee]

I wish British labels would take the BBFC or the govt to the European court for being forced to pay for classification, which is unfair under European law. As soon as BBFC 'services' are voluntary, the fairer it will be for UK labels who have to pay fees that European and US labels don't incur. Can't see that happening with Tories in power though.

It reminds me a little of the draconian TV LICENSING laws which stated that any British household containing TV receiving equipment had to have a TV licence. Some bright spark took them to European court (about 10 years ago?) and the British law was changed to "any household that contains TV receiving equipment *that is plugged in to a TV aerial*". So you can just unplug equipment now, and you're perfectly legal without a TV licence.

The BBFC's mandatory forced compliance needs to be a thing of the past too.

[TMDaines]

Don't get me started on TV Licensing. Their scare tactics are quite shameful. They constantly plague every student dorm in the country with "fake" acknowledgments that soon their flat may be under investigation. They don't exactly go to any great pains to advertise the fact that you don't need a separate licence, i.e. you are covered by your parents', if you watch TV through a portable device (laptop) then isn't plugged into the mains.

[MichaelB]

My telly couldn't pick up a signal when I was living in a student hall of residence, so I was hoping the TV people would come round and tell me how to receive the programmes that I actually wanted to receive. I'd gladly have paid, but they never did.

[TMDaines]

Nowadays, I don't know a single student living in halls who has a conventional TV. They're all but obsolete with the advent of iPlayer, Sky Go and torrents.

[hellochas]

With regard to the certificate process, the BBFC do give higher (read: more restrictive) certificates to (for example) Bollywood films.

It bases its idea on that fact that Indian families living in the UK are just as sensitive as their compatriots in India. Thus, a film which has the equivalent content of an American '15' rated film will be given an '18' — with cuts if too racey — if it is specifically aimed at a Hindi speaking audience.

As for the "which certificate" do you watch…it was a well known practice in the early days of video certification for the BBFC to ask which certificate was required. In those days '18' rated films were always the most popular.

I've watched several titles certificated from the mid to late 80s which have been givem '18' ratings, and afterwards thought "An '18' for that ?"

[Jarpie]

I wish British labels would take the BBFC or the govt to the European court for being forced to pay for classification, which is unfair under European law. As soon as BBFC 'services' are voluntary, the fairer it will be for UK labels who have to pay fees that European and US labels don't incur. Can't see that happening with Tories in power though.

It reminds me a little of the draconian TV LICENSING laws which stated that any British household containing TV receiving equipment had to have a TV licence. Some bright spark took them to European court (about 10 years ago?) and the British law was changed to "any household that contains TV receiving equipment *that is plugged in to a TV aerial*". So you can just unplug equipment now, and you're perfectly legal without a TV licence.

The BBFC's mandatory forced compliance needs to be a thing of the past too.

It's almost same in Finland afaik, the distributor pays for examining the films and extras, the difference is probably that in Finland distributor can just put 18-classification on the title and not actually getting it classificated/examined by the personel, some distributor did this with the tv-shows like Little House on the Prairie since it would've cost a lot to get the actual classification because they charge by the minute.

Finland fortunately scrapped the video censorship in 2001 and introduced the new two new 18-classifications; one is "Not recommended under 18" and other one "Forbidden under 18" which can't be bought by the underage people, I was surprised Finland did this and BBFC still cuts some films. Only films which can't be distributed in finland are those with illegal material, such as childporn.

[McCrutchy]

Sorry to hijack my own thread, but I didn't know where else to post this. The ECI has recently been posted for the documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, and some of the language used is quite hilarious, to be honest. There's really no spoilers for the film here, so I'll quote it openly:

PUSSY RIOT - A PUNK PRAYER is a documentary about three members of the Russian punk band and feminist art collective, 'Pussy Riot', who were arrested and put on trial after performing a protest at Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral. It is rated 18 for a scene of strong sex and nudity in a performance art context.

The film contains a scene of strong sex and nudity as footage from one of the group's performance art works is shown. The members are attempting to make a political statement in a provocative manner. Various naked couples take part in an orgy, engaging in unsimulated sex, including fellatio and rear entry penetration. There are occasional glimpses of penis shaft, but no clear sight of actual penetration.

The entire last paragraph is gold. "The members are attempting to make a political statement in a provocative manner"? You don't say...

The description of anal sex is another winner--Imagine asking someone if they'd enjoy some "rear entry penetration" tonight?

Also, I'm pretty sure "occasional glimpses of penis shaft" (especially the specific use of the term "penis shaft" as opposed to just "penis") just became my favorite new phrase.

[matrixschmatrix]

Is rear entry penetration necessarily anal sex? I would assume it would usually just mean doggy style (oh yeah, raising the tone!)

[McCrutchy]

Is rear entry penetration necessarily anal sex? I would assume it would usually just mean doggy style (oh yeah, raising the tone!)

Honestly never thought of that, as "rear entry" to me equals "anal", (a more apt phrase to describe "doggy style" would be "penetration from behind") but if so, it fits with the rest of the overtly-specific ECI anyway. I'm thinking the person or persons who penned that ECI was running on some stimulants at the time and got a bit carried away trying to be overly helpful. I mean, the film is already an '18' cert, so do over-18s really need to know beforehand what generic sexual positions are seen in a given orgy? If yes, then why is fellatio glossed over? Is the giver standing or kneeling, are the receiver's hands on the givers head? etc.

[zedz]

And what sort of face are they pulling? (Could make all the difference.)

[Moe Dickstein]

You should sit in on a legal meeting for Playboy TV sometime. Hearing the lawyers discuss notes on an edit is fucking hysterical. We had to make more and less explicit cuts for different markets...

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

And what sort of face are they pulling? (Could make all the difference.)

Or given the premise what slogans are they shouting?

[Roger Ryan]

Having just watched the documentary on HBO, I can confirm that none of the sex is explicit enough to determine precise anatomical interaction; the footage only lasts about 12-to-15 seconds.

[JamesF]

The BBFC and extras.

[John Robertson (MoC)]: There are fewer extras on a lot of our releases because of the certification costs.

Source: Clicky

Following on from this, there's been a fair bit more noise recently regarding changes in the rules surrounding exemption from certification, which will directly affect extras and features for a lot of companies, MoC included. Here's an excerpt from last week's edition of the industry newsletter The Raygun:

New legislation designed to protect children from the excesses of saucy pop videos and other grown-up material has been a key plank of the government's legislation plans for some time, something that David Cameron appears to hold close to his heart. But, it has emerged the amendments to the Video Recordings Act may have some unintended victims. Not the likes of Miley Cyrus, Robin Thicke and all their inappropriate-for-kids excesses, but the UK's own independent DVD and Blu-ray producers. For it has emerged this week that documentaries and additional materials accompanying, say, horror films from the likes of Arrow and Nucleus which contain clips from the horror films, will have to be classified. Previously, they could be given an Exempt rating, and with an overall rating for the main feature, no harm could be done. Now they must make a costly application for BBFC classification for any materials that contain 15 or 18-rated footage, even clips, after the new legislation is introduced later in the spring. It may not seem a huge ask, but for independents operating on a tight budget, it's the difference between being able to release a product or not. The consequences of the VRA amendments only began to dawn on indie imprints this week. Take the case of Nucleus Films, whose Video Nasties: Draconian Days premiered at FrightFest in Glasgow to a great response. It was already looking at high BBFC charges for the documentary which, like its predecessor, took in trailers, a documentary and introductions from horror experts complete with clips. Because of the new regulations it would need to get some 14 hours’ worth of material classified, at a cost of £6,000.

Independent labels were predictably worried about the new legislation and are concerned about the lack of consultation. Nucleus’ Marc Morris said: “For the first box set we classified the trailers only, but now we've been informed by the BBFC that we will also now need to pay to classify the main documentary and all the trailers AND intros, if they include clips from the movies. We simply can’t afford it. Small labels are already struggling, and with these new guidelines coming in to effect shortly, it will just be cheaper to just leave off any extras we'd planned. I've spoken to some other indie labels and we're all concerned that none of us were asked our thoughts on this during the consultation process. What we can't figure out is that if a DVD is going out with its main content classified 18, that should cover everything else in the box set? This is what we did with the first set, we just paid to classify the main trailers. This new draconian guideline won't help us at all. All our additional content will be reduced to blandness, with nothing from the films likely to fall foul of the new ruling, which surely can't be right for an 18-rated movie?” Odeon’s Alan Byron added: “What a typical botched piece of law making. Because Lady Gaga flashes her t*ts and upsets 100 people the government move to protect children and indie horror labels have to now certify hours of extras on 18 certificate releases that children should not be watching in any case. So much for the consultation that no indie horror label that I know were ever spoken to and it’s them that are affected the worst.”

For its part, the BBFC has issued a full statement outlining the new planned legislation. It said: “When the Video Recordings Act (VRA) was passed over 25 years ago certain video works were made exempt from classification by the BBFC because they were considered unlikely to be harmful. The content of these exempt works has changed significantly since 1984 which means that inappropriate and potentially harmful content can be legally supplied to children. On May 24 2013 the Government announced that it planned in 2014 to lower the exemptions threshold for all currently exempt material in order to prevent children accessing potentially harmful material. Since this announcement, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has drafted an amendment to the VRA to ensure that currently exempt material that is unsuitable, and even potentially harmful, for younger children would come within the BBFC’s regulatory ambit. The BBFC agrees that the draft Statutory Instrument achieves this objective and, once implemented, will improve the protection for children from potentially harmful media content. The draft Statutory Instrument will ensure that video content such as drug misuse, strong violence, self harm, strong language, racist and other discriminatory language, and certain sexual content falling short of actual sex will no longer be freely supplied legally to children. Instead, the BBFC will classify such content to keep it away from vulnerable and impressionable children. Under the draft Statutory Instrument it is Governments intention that all currently exempt video content that the BBFC would classify at 12 and above, be submitted to the BBFC for classification. The BBFC is confident that the wording of the proposed amendment will capture all the content set out in its 12 age category and above and will ensure that children are not able to legally purchase potentially harmful material.”

One positive spin-off could be a group of independent labels bonding together to form a loose alliance to protect their interests in such issues. There was a similar initiative back in the 1990s, during the VHS era, but it was muddied by internecine squabbling which often held back the arthouse sector in its formative years. The Raygun will be there acting as a moderator for a meeting likely to take place in the next few weeks. To register your interest to discuss this and other matters, please email Tim Murray at the usual Raygun address.

[Finch]

Not the first time the current Westminister government pushed through a flawed bill: they passed the equal marriage law with the spousal veto left intact and completely forgetting to include the procedures for how to treat civil partners who want to upgrade to a marriage, with the end result being that English & Welsh civil partners will have to get divorced first before they can get married until such time the legislation is fixed (luckily, the Scottish bill was more thorough!).

I'm surprised and disappointed that the BBFC hasn't intervened on behalf of the labels but then I guess, with the added revenue coming in they won't be complaining. What a shambles.

[Thornycroft]

Oh christ. Things like forcing seperate classifications for film and video (which pushed Third Window out of theatrical distribution) and requiring classification (and sometimes even cuts!) for commentaries were bad enough, this is simply ridiculous.

Any legislation designed to 'protect the children' can be guaranteed to hurt people it was never meant to and totally fail to address the underlying issues that precipitated such legislation in the first place.

[tenia]

My issue with all this is that you need to pay for it.
You want to do a theatrical release ? Pay for the classification.
You want to release a movie on video ? Pay for the classification.
You want to add extras on your release ? Pay for the classification.

I'm not highly educated on this subject, but to pay for this seems a silly thing to ask. Maybe it's also the case for other countries, but I don't think in France we need to pay the National Comitee of Classification for such things. To have to do all these classifications separately is not so much of an abnormal things (I've seen movies getting 3 different classifications over its distribution course), but to pay for every single one of them seems to me to be the problem at heart.

However, I can't think of another country where the classification of the movie is not used as the classification of the release. I've bought many French titles which are rated not for people below 12 or 16, and there has never been any side discussion about the extras. The movie is rated not for people below 12 ? Then, that's what on the box, and that's it.

[MichaelB]

As far as I'm aware, hardly any other country charges compulsory fees on a per-item basis like this - in fact, I'd be intrigued to know if there are any others.

And as everyone above rightly says, this will have a wholly disproportionate impact on an independent sector that already feels unfairly penalised by BBFC fees. They're a drop in the ocean if you have a realistic prospect of selling tens or hundreds of thousands of copies, but that doesn't apply to the vast majority of independent releases, and so BBFC fees constitute a very significant part of the budget.

The really ridiculous thing is that because the BBFC's remit doesn't extend to streaming services (they admit this in the relevant documents), the whole exercise becomes even more pointless. If my kids want to watch a raunchy music video, they're not going to head over to HMV and pay for a BBFC-approved compilation, they're going to watch it on YouTube. The whole exercise is like trying to repair a leaky colander with one of those tiny circular pieces of sticky plaster - it's utterly futile, insulting to the intelligence, and more than a little reminiscent of a protection racket. But who exactly is being protected?

[TMDaines]

Any hope that you at Arrow, MichaelB, and other indie labels might be able to band together and fight this?

[ellipsis7]

For instance, could the supplements, not the feature itself, not be granted an educational exemption?...

[MichaelB]

For instance, could the supplements, not the feature itself, not be granted an educational exemption?...

We've had this "educational exemption" for the past thirty years, but the government is essentially proposing to abolish it if the educational material in question contains anything that might be considered unsuitable for children.

For instance, previously it was "gross violence" that would require a documentary to be classified, but now it's any violence above PG level. Same with sex and other BBFC bugbears.

In other words, while an independent label previously wouldn't bother to get a certificate for an hour-long documentary about the film featured elsewhere on the disc (on the grounds that it's exempt from classification on educational grounds), from April/May they may well be forced to - and the inevitable upshot is that fewer extras will be produced, because budgets are tight enough as it is.

And not one single child in the country will be "protected" as a result of this, unless of course they have no online access and all their viewing is rigorously policed by their parents. Which is of course what should be happening anyway, but this allegedly Conservative government clearly doesn't believe in individual personal responsibility.

[jindianajonz]

Or how about letting the label (who knows the disc better than anyone else) decide whether the supplements would warrant a higher rating than the disc already recieved and have them submit anything that is questionable, and then fine (proporitional to number of discs pressed or sold or some other metric ) anybody who produces a disc that is noncompliant, rather than charging everybody up front.

[tenia]

Or how about letting the label (who knows the disc better than anyone else) decide whether the supplements would warrant a higher rating than the disc already recieved and have them submit anything that is questionable, and then fine (proporitional to number of discs pressed or sold or some other metric ) anybody who produces a disc that is noncompliant, rather than charging everybody up front.

BFI's release of Comrades was written as such on the packaging "The movie itself has a 15 classification, but due to this extra movie being classified 18, this release is classified 18". I don't see why it should be more complicated than this and, more and more, I don't understand why the BBFC is actually taking money for this stuff.

It does seem like an authority abuse to me.

[Finch]

Can anyone clarify that if the footage to be used on the bonus material is from the main feature itself, whether the excerpts would still have to be classified (if so, )?

And if the new legislation applies only to clips from other films, would the usage of stills fall within the category of footage that needs to be classified and priced separately?

[jindianajonz]

Any word on how the change in BBFC policy towards supplements will impact Arrow's Borowczyk release?