Filmmaker Forces Censors To Watch 10-Hour Movie of Paint Drying (ibtimes.co.uk) 255
An anonymous reader writes: A British filmmaker has forced the people who decide how to censor films to watch a 10-hour movie of paint drying on a wall following a protest fundraising campaign. Charlie Lyne launched a Kickstarter to help raise the money needed to send his 'documentary' of a single shot of paint drying on a wall for consideration as a protest against the 'stronghold' the organisation has on the British film industry. The BBFC charge an initial fee of $144.88 to view a film and decide what certificate to give it, and then and additional $10.15 for each minute that the film lasts. The idea was the more money Lyne could raise via his fundraiser, the longer his paint-drying film could last. The campaign eventually nearly £8,500, meaning he was able to send in a 607 minute video which the examiners had to watch in its entirety.
Pounds or dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
Pick a damn unit of currency and stick to it!
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Air Canada Flight 143 in 1983 comes to mind.
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Timothy is the Slashdot Glider!
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From TFA:- "the campaign raised £5,936" = approx $8500, so the summary used the right number, but the wrong currency symbol.
Ehhhh, it's just a unit error. When has an incorrect unit ever caused a serious problem?
That never happens. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Pounds or dollars (Score:5, Funny)
Initial Fee: 3235532.60 Vietnamese Dong
Fee per minute: 226674.88 Vietnamese Dong
Campaign raised: 272438646.75 Vietnamese Dong
All in all, that's a lot of dong!
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Huh, interesting, that's just what your mom said as well!
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This thread is dongs.
You heard it here first, folks! THE new "it" slashdot phrase and reclaimer of the empty throne once held by "idle is pants": This thread is dongs.
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Who wrote this summary? Oh. Right.
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Especially if you're buying fabric. For reference, at the moment £ 1 / m^2 equals $1.20 / yd^2 at current exchange rates.
Re: Pounds or dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
Put some "obscene" and "violent" elements throughout the movie but keep it just within the allowed parameters.
For bonus points, put some of them in audio only (a "fuck" every few hours should do), while others are single frame images.
Then either call them out on not doing their work or have them stare at paint drying for 10 hours.
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Re: Pounds or dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent idea! Personally, I would have tossed in a rickroll somewhere towards the end while I was at it.
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Or maybe some subliminal messages.
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Include the whole video, one frame per X frames depending on the length of the movie.
Re: Pounds or dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
Every 3 minutes, have someone walk out with a stack of cards with pictures on them, and quickly flip through the pictures fast enough that they will certainly have to pause and rewind a whole bunch of times.
Make sure to randomize the number of cards, contents of the cards, and interval between showings. Make sure lots of them contain pictures of people in skimpy clothing or body suits. Include pictures of scantily dressed hairy men.
For maximum effect, each card should have 4 pictures on it, and be shown for less than 2 seconds max. Better yet, change the speed of flips with pauses of up to 5 or 6 seconds on one card, then flip rapidly through 5 or 6 cards....repeat.
Then, copy the whole film, and spice the whole copy on the end, backwards.
Re: Pounds or dollars (Score:5, Funny)
You would want to have a really dry audio track - perhaps a computer voice reading some long novel - say "Moby Dick". If the computer mispronounces some words, it wouldn't be a big deal. Except that you would slip in some swearing in the middle somewhere - spoken by the same monotone computer voice in the same speaking pattern as the rest of it.
An alternative would be to have the soundtrack be 10 hours of a crying baby (undoubtedly a much shorter clip in a loop). Which for most people would be torture to listen to. But in the middle of it you could have an adult come in and swear at the baby.
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Perhaps a recording of question time in Parliament?
A speech from RMS?
The speaking clock?
The shipping news?
Re: Pounds or dollars (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet, watching paint dry still better than some of the shit movies those people have to watch. Shit, I could imagine a month into that job wanting to tear my eyes out and run screaming from the room bumping into walls and furniture on the way out. Could you imagine having to watch shitty movie, after shitty movie day in and day out. Watching paint dry would be a relief, guy in question is an idiot. Honestly If I were them I would be begging for more paint drying movies, the peace of serenity of that, after week after week of watching more often than not self indulgent shit, would be an enormous relief. I would send the guy a thank you with a request for more, perhaps grass growing, or clouds moving across the sky or water dripping into a barrel anything but another shit Hollywood reboot, oh the humanity.
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Instead, he should have just make a 10 hour movie of the most hyperactive 6-second vines with exactly one second of naked boob somewhere.
Do the Fight Club thing (Score:2)
and randomly insert single frame from pr0n film into that 10 hour paint job.
Let's see how many they can catch...
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I honestly do not know if their ratings regulations allow for such, which is why I am asking.
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An Oscar in the works? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:An Oscar in the works? (Score:5, Funny)
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Paintist!
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#PaintsMatter
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#WhatsaMatter
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#Whatsamatteryou
#gottanorespect
#whattathinkayoudo
#whyyoulookasosad
#itsanotsobad
#itsaniceaplace
#ahshutuppayourface
Hell, play that as the soundtrack. Over and over.
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#PantsMatter
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Re:An Oscar in the works? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder, is it entirely possible, that there was no racial bias...that all the movies selected actually WERE thought to be better than the movies not selected....
Or, is it that today, if you have a group of movies made by minorities and non-minorities, you cannot, by merit alone have only consideration of the non-minority movies and categories.
Do we now have to have a quota of minority movies and actors considered just to have diversity regardless of merit?
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Once? Sure. But the same thing happened last year, and there were performances both years that those in the industry generally consider worthy of inclusion.
That's the insidious nature of subtle racism. One event alone might look normal, or at least reasonable, but if you have enough events to show a statistical trend it can betray even the subconscious intentions of the racists. In this case, the hypothesis is that the large numbers of voting academy members added in the 1970s and 1980s, many of whom ar
List (Score:2)
From the web:
Surprising omissions from the actor race this year included Idris Elba for “Beasts of No Nation,” Will Smith for “Concussion,” Michael B. Jordan from “Creed” and the many young actors in “Compton.” link [variety.com]
Will Smith was fantastic in "Concussion." I didn't see Idris Elba in "Beasts of No Nation," but I'm going to rent it just to thumb my nose at the Academy. No interest in "Rocky VI" (ahem) "Creed," but I think Stallone got nominated for his performance in that one. It seems to me he's milked all the Oscars he should get out of "Rocky." Were the leads up to the same level? Don't know. "Straight Outta Compton" is another one I mean to hit in rental. No idea if it was any good, though.
Seems suspect
Re:An Oscar in the works? (Score:4, Informative)
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [bls.gov], in the field of "Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations", 6.5% of workers are black (unfortunately, "actors" isn't split off by itself, as there aren't enough of them for the BLS to keep track separately). Since there are 20 actors nominated each year, you'd expect them to have 1.3 people nominated. Two years in a row of not having anyone nominated isn't that far off, and historically they're pretty much exactly tracking population demographics (which means that blacks, who are underrepresented in acting by population demographics, are actually slightly overrepresented in awards). If it happens again next year, then that might be evidence of racism, but so far it's not necessarily racism, although I'm not ruling it out.
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.. with a soundtrack of 4'33'', repeated on a loop 133 times.
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Copyright would cost too much (I kid you not).
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You can see a screencap and a preview on the page. I'm not sure which is which.
AC wins the internet for today.
Censors must have been delighted (Score:5, Insightful)
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True but if you are looking to cause their down fall you stick a few single frames of the old goatse.cx somewhere in the middle. If you still get your 'G' or whatever 'appropriate for children' rating the BBC gives, you got a major scandal, "see see the censor's don't even really do their job its just a cash grab!"
Wost case its just as effective a DOS as this was anyway.
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If you have an erect penis for more than 4 hours, you should consult your doctor ... says so right in all those Viagra commercials.
That would be priapism [wikipedia.org], and likely would have gotten him a different rating for the film.
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If you have an erect penis for more than 4 hours, you should consult your doctor ... says so right in all those Viagra commercials.
That would be priapism [wikipedia.org], and likely would have gotten him a different rating for the film.
Special effects magic.
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If your erection lasts for more than four hours...
Re:Censors must have been delighted (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone either has to prove it, or live with being wrong ...
So if I gave you 9.75 hours of paint drying, and 15 minutes of hardcore porn, and you give me a rating which says "anybody can watch this", then it's your ass on the line when someone discovers the 15 minutes you missed.
I'm just going to say "this is what I submitted, if they didn't look at it, I can't be blamed for that".
I'm pretty sure those people pretty much have to watch everything, or it's them who gets in trouble for having missed something.
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*shrug* They probably just played it accelerated. Playback at 10x and you'd still catch anything significant stuck in there.
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Bullshit ... assume I spent 1 out of every 100 minutes screeching obscenities without changing the picture.
Fast forward doesn't solve the problem, and when people find the 60 minutes of be saying this stuff, whoever said "yeah, boring, whatever" is going to get caught.
The problem with this job is you have to watch all of it, or some smart ass WILL put something in which catches you out.
You literally have to see and hear every second of the film, and attest that you have. Or you have no idea of what you mis
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Somehow I doubt the censors get to pick and choose based on boring. They get a submission, they have to review it.
Watching movies as a living may not sound like a bad gig, but I'm sure there's some epic bad (atrocious/terrible/disturbing) films out there which can't be unseen.
I'm sure it's not quite so cushy as it seems.
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Of course, then they'd probably raise their fees and create an obscure rule or law that would fine people.
Under what authority would they be able to fine people? The BBFC is a non-governmental agency.
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It wouldn't DoS anything, if the number of submissions goes up they will expand to cope with the increased demand.
They never knew (Score:5, Funny)
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Hah!
Best /. humor in ages. Well done.
Fast forward (Score:2)
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so some does not splice in porn.
Like that guy used to do the change over theater up till about 2011 when we got rid of film there.
Re:Fast forward (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't truly appreciate the nuance of paint drying without watching it in real time, everything else is just being a poseur to impress your art-house friends ... but they'll know you just fast forwarded ... they'll know, man.
The heart-wrenching existential agony at 3h52 minutes when the paint crinkles like an adolescent nipple blown with soft, warm breath for the first time can't be fully appreciated in anything but real time.
The suggestion of human suffering at 5h57 when a small droplet forms is utterly lost in anything but real time.
The utter elation at 9:37 when you realize, finally, we are reaching denouement and resolution can't simply be watched on fast forward.
You lose all of the majesty and vocabulary as envisioned by the film maker in his Neitzchean expression of the inhumanity of paint as a metaphor for moving past obstacles, and stepping over the carcasses of ones foes.
Of course it needs to be watched in real time.
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As someone pointed out, he could have spliced in non-G-rating audio at a certain point. For example, at 5 hours and 47 minutes, a single curse word might be uttered. Then, at 7 hours and 23.5 minutes, perhaps he'd have XXX-rated audio play for 3 seconds.
If the censors still give the movie a G rating, then it's obvious that they didn't watch it all (either fast-forwarding through it or watching the first few hours and then stopping).
So the protest... (Score:5, Funny)
Was to give them 8,500 pounds to have them claim to watch the whole thing? Even if I didn't fast forward, that's still pretty good for 10 hours of work.
I wish someone would protest me that nicely. I'd really learn something. Feel free to repeatedly protest me.
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no shit - even 10 people watching it simultaneously could rake in up to 85 Pounds Stirling per hour (minus administrative costs, overhead, etc)... not a bad rate of pay.
What's a man gotta do to get into that racket?
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This would probably be an easy, albeit boring, watch for them. Some of the shit that comes out of Hollywood (and other places) can actually be horrifyingly bad. Paint Drying would be BAFTA-winning material in comparison.
Tamper-proofing (Score:2)
Re:Tamper-proofing (Score:5, Interesting)
Awesome compression potential (Score:2)
I would imagine being able to encode this video with a ridiculously low bitrate and still achieve great pictures, albeit at low framerates. I would imagine most people would not be able to tell the difference however. 10 hour video, 1080p encoding for 10 MB?
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Possibly far less. Most of it header stuff. The actual video stream could consist of: #ffffff
3 bytes.
Gotta say it (Score:5, Funny)
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Of course it is. A 10 hour epic about the slow development of a lasting bond.
I'm looking forward to the sequel set 10 years later when after years of having the world eat away at that bond, the wall replaces the paint for a newer version.
MPAA is market-driven (Score:2)
Even as a protest (Score:2)
This was NOT helpful...
What a waste of money. If you don't like the rating system, distribute your material in other ways..
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YouTube? (Score:2)
In very related news (Score:2)
Did they stick something salacious in the middle? (Score:2)
They should have put something to censor in the middle, for a few seconds. That way they could tell if the censors really did their job and watched it carefully.
Stupid PR Stunts Change Nothing. (Score:2)
A British filmmaker has forced the people who decide how to censor films to watch a 10-hour movie of paint drying on a wall following a protest fundraising campaign.
Does viewing the film imply viewing the whole of it in real time --- or that it can't be broken down into smaller, more manageable, pieces that can be screened independently?
The easiest way to put an end to stunts like this is to blandly give your grass-growing documentary an inoffensive rating without any further comment.
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Easiest money ever made (Score:2)
Just put a web camera towards projection screen and set to detect and record motion movement.
If there are no changes, no exceptions, no hidden "frames", to this incredibly dull movie, motion movement recorder will have zero footage to review.
$600 per hour and 10 hour movie? Hell, I would be more than happy to take view the movie and sleep at the same time. Or clean the house.
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$600 per hour and 10 hour movie? Hell, I would be more than happy to take view the movie and sleep at the same time. Or clean the house.
Except you can't, because if he puts five seconds of a guy with full frontal nudity screaming racist and scatological tracts while holding a picture of Mother Teresa, the movie has to be rated differently, and you better have caught that part.
And I assure you, even on fast forward, looking for a needle in a haystack like that takes forever and is almost as mindnumbing. The only way to get through that sort of film is to watch parts of it with many breaks.
Did that to Sony once... (Score:2)
Hidden Cursing (Score:2)
Harmless. (Score:2)
In an updated review, the film's rating was changed to "Mostly Harmless"
Watched or scanned? (Score:2)
But did the BBFC really watch all 10 hours, or just use run it a high speed looking for a scene change. If it were me making this film I would definitely have put in some siliceous scenes of single or double frames (1/24s. 1/12s) with perhaps the occasional obscene word displayed subliminally (5% contrast) to see if they are on their toes.
If not, then HEY we just got smut past the censors, WIN!
Funding British censorship (Score:2)
I'm sure the BBFC has done worse and more mind-numbing things for funding than that. In the end, you simply gave the censors more money, dude. Easy money.
Oh noes! (Score:2)
The campaign eventually nearly £8,500,
But then they accidentally the whole thing :-(
Maybe they already did this but... (Score:2)
To those questioning if they REALLY watched it (Score:2)
I can't wait (Score:2)
I can't wait for this to come out on DVD.
the ultimate troll (Score:2)
At like the 400 minute mark... (Score:2)
They should have blasted out the Inception sound.
BWWWWOOONNNNGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!
Then everyone shits their pants and has to sit there for the remaining 200 minutes.
Forces? (Score:2)
Stronghold? (Score:2)
...or "stranglehold"
Maybe it's one of those British-speak things, like boffins or wollygigs?
One a related note, the copyright violation for (Score:2)
$10 a minute? (Score:2)
At $10 a minute I expect the censor who had to watch the paint drying probably laughed through most of it.
Re:Dying of suspense... (Score:5, Informative)
"The BBFC confirmed it had awarded the movie a U certificate along with a note warning that the description of the film "may contain spoilers". It also read: "Paint Drying is a film showing paint drying on a wall. It contains no material likely to offend or harm.""
From the TFA. I thought the response was pretty good.
Re:Dying of suspense... (Score:5, Funny)
What if the paint never dries???
What if it turns out that the paint is really aliens from the future???
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What if it turns out people saw M. Night Shyamalan as being involved and decided they don't give a crap what the movie is?
Because, really, that's what I do these days.
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What if the paint is really... PLANTS!
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Gotta admit - they did respond with a bit of class.
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They're British. It's almost a foregone conclusion.
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Then a great film was lost on you. The Man Who Fell to Earth is a brilliant minimalist sci-fi film with critical allegories of consumerism and resource-consumption.
If Paint Drying could be compared to any other films, they would be those made by Andy Warhol, [wikipedia.org] such as Sleep [wikipedia.org] and Empire. [wikipedia.org] However, Warhol's films arguably had more action.
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But, if you save that for the directors cut, then they will be the ones who really look like boobs.