The BBFC vs. UK Independent Labels

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zedz
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#151 Post by zedz » Tue Mar 11, 2014 3:01 pm

tenia wrote: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.
Government censorship (leaving aside the question of whether there should be any in the first place) seems to me the very definition of a public service, and that is always the way it's defended, so if it's going to happen it should, logically, be a public expense. But once a government has figured out how not to pay for something that should be core business (if all those children really do need to be protected in this way), there's no way they're going to rationally rectify the situation.

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MichaelB
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#152 Post by MichaelB » Tue Mar 11, 2014 3:13 pm

zedz wrote:Government censorship (leaving aside the question of whether there should be any in the first place) seems to me the very definition of a public service, and that is always the way it's defended, so if it's going to happen it should, logically, be a public expense. But once a government has figured out how not to pay for something that should be core business (if all those children really do need to be protected in this way), there's no way they're going to rationally rectify the situation.
Absolutely. We currently have this ridiculous situation whereby a private company (the BBFC) is formally appointed the official state video censor, but because it's always been voluntarily funded by the film industry they thought that this situation could continue with no repercussions. Which makes logical sense up to a point, apart from one crucial distinction.

Which is that up until thirty years ago (and to this day as far as theatrical releases are concerned) independent distributors had an alternative - if they didn't want BBFC approval for whatever reason, they could go straight to the local authority and apply for screening permission separately, which had the huge advantage of costing next to nothing (in theory, the council could request an advance screening up to 28 days in advance but in practice this never happened to me). So if the film in question was only opening in a handful of cinemas before going straight to the repertory circuit it was clearly by far the more attractive option financially.

The 1984 Video Recordings Act changed all that by requiring all distributors of non-documentary and non-music material on physical video media to be BBFC-vetted, and to pay per minute for this vetting. Which, unsurprisingly, has been resented like hell by independent labels ever since, and this proposed change is being especially resented because it directly penalises those labels. The majors routinely submit everything for BBFC classification anyway regardless of whether it's strictly necessary, so it will have no impact on them at all.

So regardless of whether or not this is the intention (it clearly isn't), these changes will have a hefty impact not merely on independent distributors of physical media but specifically those who go the extra mile to provide added value. Which to me is absolutely insane.

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MichaelB
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#153 Post by MichaelB » Tue Mar 11, 2014 3:34 pm

jindianajonz wrote:Any word on how the change in BBFC policy towards supplements will impact this release?
Don't even go there. Seriously.

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colinr0380
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#154 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Mar 11, 2014 3:45 pm

I hate to ask, but what change is this? Extending the policy of classifying commentary tracks separately into having a fee paid for every individual extra on a disc?

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MichaelB
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#155 Post by MichaelB » Tue Mar 11, 2014 3:51 pm

As of April/May, documentaries will no longer be exempt from classification if they contain anything that might be stronger than a PG. Which will clearly have a whopping impact on independent labels who believe in generous extras.

Although I should probably stress that this won't affect the Borowczyk shorts, which should be BBFC-vetted even under the old guidelines and the classification fees have already even budgeted for. But some of the other extras were notionally exempt before and might well not be now.

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swo17
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#156 Post by swo17 » Tue Mar 11, 2014 3:57 pm

The original article makes it sound like the BBFC charges something like £430 an hour to watch content and determine a rating. Is that correct? How do they justify that kind of a charge?

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jindianajonz
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#157 Post by jindianajonz » Tue Mar 11, 2014 4:10 pm

That's beaurocracy for you... I know in my job at the DOD, if we want to hire somebody who makes $20 per hour, we need to pay somewhere around $110 per hour for their time to cover "overhead" (i.e. pay for their facilities, utilities, supplies, management, etc). I'm also guessing that reviewing 14 hour of material (which is where you presumably got your £430/hr quote) doesn't equate to 14 man hours of labor- The "classifier" would have to spend time on things like paperwork and rewatching certain scenes, and that's assuming that it only takes one person to classify a film.

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MichaelB
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#158 Post by MichaelB » Tue Mar 11, 2014 4:20 pm

I can't help but notice that I charge vastly less for my disc QCing services, even though this also involves close inspection of the material and I also factor in the time needed to write up a report and rewatch scenes.

But I don't work in an expensive London office and my overheads are minimal.

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tenia
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#159 Post by tenia » Tue Mar 11, 2014 4:26 pm

zedz wrote:Government censorship (leaving aside the question of whether there should be any in the first place) seems to me the very definition of a public service, and that is always the way it's defended, so if it's going to happen it should, logically, be a public expense. But once a government has figured out how not to pay for something that should be core business (if all those children really do need to be protected in this way), there's no way they're going to rationally rectify the situation.
But every country has such a government official classification board, but probably none of them pay them for this. I mean, do US labels pay the MPAA ?
So, how do they do there that can't be done in the UK ? That was my point, but the 2nd half of your post answers this : it's probably only very opportunistic from the BBFC to do something paid by the distributors where everyone else is doing it without the distributors paying for it.

In France, we have the CNC, the CSA and the Classification board. Everything is funded through taxes. Isn't the BBFC funded by taxes at all ?

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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#160 Post by David M. » Tue Mar 11, 2014 4:31 pm

I mean, do US labels pay the MPAA ?
US studios pay MPAA if they want an MPAA rating.

If they don't, they release the product Unrated.

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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#161 Post by David M. » Tue Mar 11, 2014 4:33 pm

swo17 wrote:The original article makes it sound like the BBFC charges something like £430 an hour to watch content and determine a rating. Is that correct? How do they justify that kind of a charge?
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/industry-services/fee-calculator" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Their fee calculator tells me it's 522.00 UK pounds per hour. That's without "Pre booking expenses", whatever they are.

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MichaelB
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#162 Post by MichaelB » Tue Mar 11, 2014 4:36 pm

tenia wrote:Isn't the BBFC funded by taxes at all ?
No. Ironically, it was set up by the film industry in 1912 to act on their behalf when negotiating with local authorities, who became drunk with power after the 1909 Cinematograph Act was passed and started making various impossible demands about the films being shown in their jurisdiction. Realising that this could create a nightmarish situation whereby different councils required different cuts, the BBFC was created to standardise things - and the industry was happy to fund it because the alternative was more expensive. So effectively the BBFC was designed to protect the industry from politicians!

This system worked reasonably well until 1984, when BBFC classification was made compulsory for the first time, but only on video (and now, we know, only physical media). But the crucial difference, as I explained above, was that there was no loophole - if you wanted to release anything on video, you had to pay for BBFC vetting. There used to be a discount for foreign-language titles (since abolished), and there's also a discount for registered charities, but otherwise the independent sector pays the same as the majors, despite the far greater impact on their production budgets.

But of course this suits the majors just fine - they welcomed the Video Recordings Act in the first place because they knew it would drive a lot of independent labels out of business, and it looks as though the same process is happening all over again.
David M. wrote:Their fee calculator tells me it's 522.00 UK pounds per hour. That's without "Pre booking expenses", whatever they are.
Off the top of my head, I think this relates to a scheme they have where you can pay extra in exchange for an absolute guarantee that the film will receive a classification certificate by a particular date - which can be very useful if materials are delivered late and the release date is looming.

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knives
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#163 Post by knives » Tue Mar 11, 2014 5:29 pm

MichaelB wrote:As of April/May, documentaries will no longer be exempt from classification if they contain anything that might be stronger than a PG. Which will clearly have a whopping impact on independent labels who believe in generous extras.

Although I should probably stress that this won't affect the Borowczyk shorts, which should be BBFC-vetted even under the old guidelines and the classification fees have already even budgeted for. But some of the other extras were notionally exempt before and might well not be now.
Wouldn't it make more sense for the BBFC to take everything on the disc in one sitting with the fee for getting passed being a lumped thing?

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jindianajonz
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#164 Post by jindianajonz » Tue Mar 11, 2014 5:35 pm

David M. wrote:http://www.bbfc.co.uk/industry-services/fee-calculator

Their fee calculator tells me it's 522.00 UK pounds per hour. That's without "Pre booking expenses", whatever they are.
The hourly rate changes depending on the length to be reviewed- plugging in 14 hours (840 minutes) gives a fee of £6138, or £438 per hour. But yeah, still pretty exorbitant.

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MichaelB
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#165 Post by MichaelB » Tue Mar 11, 2014 6:04 pm

knives wrote:Wouldn't it make more sense for the BBFC to take everything on the disc in one sitting with the fee for getting passed being a lumped thing?
What makes you think that it doesn't happen like that already?

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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#166 Post by Gaddis » Tue Mar 11, 2014 6:34 pm

But every country has such a government official classification board, but probably none of them pay them for this.
Well, certainly in New Zealand we've been paying to have extras rated by the board as far back as I can remember, hence things like Deadwood on Blu-ray are bare-bones, compared to the wonderful U.S. sets. To be honest I'm surprised to learn this hasn't been the case in the United Kingdom, just goes to show idiocy is contagious.

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knives
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#167 Post by knives » Tue Mar 11, 2014 6:47 pm

MichaelB wrote:
knives wrote:Wouldn't it make more sense for the BBFC to take everything on the disc in one sitting with the fee for getting passed being a lumped thing?
What makes you think that it doesn't happen like that already?
Because it has been suggested that they are paying extra for getting extras passed rather than just paying for the movie.

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jindianajonz
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#168 Post by jindianajonz » Tue Mar 11, 2014 6:52 pm

The BBFC does seem to take the whole disc at once, but the problem is they charge per minute of material reviewed- more extras means more material that must be combed through.

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knives
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#169 Post by knives » Tue Mar 11, 2014 6:57 pm

Yeah, just finished this thread. Crazy stuff.

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Thornycroft
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#170 Post by Thornycroft » Tue Mar 11, 2014 8:02 pm

Oddly enough, in New Zealand the cost of having a film classified is significantly reduced depending on the strength of the content. Whereas in the UK everything above a PG rating has some sort of restriction attached, in New Zealand everything between a PG and a 16 is covered by the 'M' rating, which is unrestricted. The NZ system requires content to be fairly heavy before it starts restricting it, hence many films that garner even an 18 in the UK going totally unrestricted in New Zealand (Aliens, Die Hard, Predator, Total Recall etc.).

Anything that doesn't require a restriction isn't handled by the Classification Office, rather by something called the Labelling Body, which makes sure that all unrestricted DVDs are labelled with the proper content and rating information. If a DVD has already been rated 12A or under in the UK, or M and under in Australia, the Labelling Body simply checks it and assigns an equivalent rating. Total cost: $27. If it hasn't been rated in UK or Aus, the Labelling Body will rate it for a cost of $210. If it's rated 15 or above in the UK, or the LB thinks it contains material that would be restricted it gets referred to the Classification Office and that cost suddenly rockets up to $1124.

The NZ OFLC website likes to brag about the fact that this keeps the majority of compliance costs much lower than in Aus or the UK, but it does place a higher monetary burden on distributors depending on the type of material they're releasing. There's also a 75% fee waiver at the discretion of the Chief Censor, this is mostly used for festivals though there are apparently other cases. If a commercial entity wants to release a film that has had a fee waiver applied within 2 years of the classification they have to make up the rest of the fee, otherwise the waiver becomes permanent after 2 years.
Gaddis wrote:Well, certainly in New Zealand we've been paying to have extras rated by the board as far back as I can remember, hence things like Deadwood on Blu-ray are bare-bones, compared to the wonderful U.S. sets.
This isn't entirely true, the NZ system charges per disc rather than per item, defining a disc as 3 1/2 hours of content. I'm not sure whether that running time includes commentaries or not, but it does allow for extras to be classified along with the film at no extra cost - to an extent. It also allows film festivals and other organisations to submit programs of short films as a single item, rather than paying per film. In the case of Deadwood, for some reason all releases outside of Region 1 were deprived of the extra features, not just New Zealand. In my experience it tends to be fairly rare for major releases to be missing extra features, with the exception of rental copies.

The big issue I have is that there is a wonderful range of exploitation cinema getting good cheap releases over in Australia, releases that don't make it across the pond due to the cost of classification. And the cost of shipping from Australia to New Zealand is so paradoxically expensive that it ends up being cheaper to import from the US or UK. I still end up with mostly the same content, but I would prefer to support my local retailer where possible.

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TMDaines
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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#171 Post by TMDaines » Tue Mar 11, 2014 9:23 pm

I wish I could say I'm surprised by these changes, but I can't be the only person who listens to the BBFC podcast and gets deeply disillusioned by the fact that the deeply sanctimonious and Victorian tone, with which they broadcast, belongs to the people in charge of film censorship and its administration in this country. They seem to be completely unaware of the extent that they are behind the times and that the Internet has rendered their ability to "protect" futile.

The number of times I've sat there and listened to them preach about how it is never OK to pirate or use torrent sites, while at the same time they seem completely unaware that their fees have a far bigger impact on the bottom line of smaller, niche labels than any piracy does through actual, concrete lost sales. An incredibly short-sighted change such as this one is absolutely certain to cause even more damage to indie labels than any amount of piracy.

They seem completely unable to see the wood for the trees and realise that their contribution to ensuring that "vulnerable people" watch only "suitable" content is absolutely trivial in the age of the Internet.

Edit: Improved the wording of a sentence.
Last edited by TMDaines on Wed Mar 12, 2014 5:27 am, edited 3 times in total.

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jindianajonz
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#172 Post by jindianajonz » Tue Mar 11, 2014 9:27 pm

So theoretically, if the extras are cost prohibitive, would it be possible to release a sparser box set and make the Arrow-owned features available online, since online viewing doesn't have the same restrictions?

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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#173 Post by peerpee » Tue Mar 11, 2014 9:44 pm

TMDaines wrote:I wish I could say I'm surprised by these changes, but I can't be the only person who listens to the BBFC podcast and gets deeply disillusioned by the fact that the deeply sanctimonious and Victorian tone, with which they broadcast, belongs to the people in charge of film censorship and its administration in this country. They seem to be completely unaware of the extent that they are behind the times and that the Internet has rendered their ability to "protect" futile.

The number of times I've sat there and listened to them preach about how it is never OK to pirate or use torrent sites, while at the same time they seem completely unaware that their fees have a far bigger impact on the bottom line of smaller, niche labels than any piracy does through actual, concrete lost sales. An incredibly short-sighted change such as this one is absolutely certain to cause even more damage to indie labels than any amount of piracy.

They seem completely unable to see the wood for the trees and realise that their contribution to ensuring that "vulnerable people" watch only "suitable" content is absolutely trivial in the age of the Internet.
Hear, hear!

The BBFC's hurdle-jumping and unfairness definitely contributed to me getting out of the business – and I know of a few others who gave up in the UK and set up in the US. Life's too short – and to see the amount of money that could have been spent on better editions, instead of repeatedly going in their greasy mitts, was thoroughly demoralising.

The only good thing about the demise of physical formats (other than environmental concerns) will be the strangulation of funds to the BBFC.

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Re: The BBFC and MoC

#174 Post by David M. » Tue Mar 11, 2014 10:01 pm

TMDaines wrote:I wish I could say I'm surprised by these changes, but I can't be the only person who listens to the BBFC podcast and gets deeply disillusioned by the fact that the deeply sanctimonious and Victorian tone, with which they broadcast, belongs to the people in charge of film censorship and its administration in this country. They seem to be completely unaware that they are so far behind the times that is unbelievable and that the Internet has rendered their ability to "protect" futile.

The number of times I've sat there and listened to them preach about how it is never OK to pirate or use torrent sites, while at the same time they seem completely unaware that their fees have a far bigger impact on the bottom line of smaller, niche labels than any piracy does through actual, concrete lost sales. An incredibly short-sighted change such as this one is absolutely certain to cause even more damage to indie labels than any amount of piracy.

They seem completely unable to see the wood for the trees and realise that their contribution to ensuring that "vulnerable people" watch only "suitable" content is absolutely trivial in the age of the Internet.
I don't think I would be able to tolerate one of their self-interested podcasts.

But their whole tone is just astonishing. They seem to genuinely believe they are a necessary and valuable contribution to this industry, rather than parasites.

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zedz
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Re: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

#175 Post by zedz » Tue Mar 11, 2014 10:17 pm

jindianajonz wrote:So theoretically, if the extras are cost prohibitive, would it be possible to release a sparser box set and make the Arrow-owned features available online, since online viewing doesn't have the same restrictions?
That's theoretically a solution, but it's a horrible one. Added value extras are there to add value and persuade people to purchase products. Barebones discs with (expensive to make and license) extras available for free online are still barebones discs, and would totally screw up the economics of disc production, which for labels like Arrow, MoC and Second Run, are already knife-edge propositions.

I expect the outcome will be labels providing no extras with their films, not continuing to pay for extras that will no longer generate any revenue.

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