BBFC and BFI - Film Regulation

BBFC - British Board of Film Classification by raerae09

Classifications - 3 films Regulation BBFC –  Saturday night Sunday morning  The 1960s and Liberalisation Challenges to the Obscene Publications Act (1959), in cases such as the successful defence in 1960 of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, suggested a strong shift in public opinion, when a jury acquitted this work. John Trevelyan, as BBFC Secretary, responded to the new spirit of liberalism by stating: 'The British Board of Film Censors cannot assume responsibility for the guardianship of public morality. It cannot refuse for exhibition to adults films that show behaviour that contravenes the accepted moral code, and it does not demand that ‘the wicked’ should also be punished. It cannot legitimately refuse to pass films which criticise ‘the Establishment’ and films which express minority opinions'. New realism took hold in British films, with the submission of a number of 'kitchen sink' dramas from the British New Wave directors - Karel Reisz's Saturday Night And Sunday Morning in 1960 and Tony Richardson's The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner in 1962, both passed X, the latter with cuts.Saturday Night And Sunday Morning had been submitted to the BBFC at script stage. Concerns were expressed about the language, violence and the theme of abortion, and the script was modified to meet these concerns. This might have been the 'swinging Sixties', but in spite of the film's BBFC uncut release at X, Warwickshire Council deemed it too strong and demanded that cuts be made for a local certificate. The film was rated PG on video in 1990. Debate – Is desensitisation of society the reason the rating was changed? ENTRE LES MURS - THE CLASS  is a subtitled French-language drama that follows a year in the lives of the multi-ethnic students and their teacher in a class at a Paris high school. The film was passed '15' for strong language. The film contains several uses of strong language ('fuck' and its derivatives, and 'motherfucker') which were considered too numerous to be contained at '12' at which the Guidelines allow for only infrequent use of strong language. This poses no problems at '15' where the Guidelines state that 'there may be frequent use of strong language'. There is also other mild and moderate language, including frequent use of the term 'slut' which is first used as a term of abuse to two of the female students and then forms the basis of a running argument that is an important part of the film's narrative. The film also contains some racial insults that occur in exchanges between the mixed-race students but are not unduly abusive, some mild sex references and a moment of moderate violence during a scuffle in the classroom. FISH TANK Feature Film Classified 02 July, 2009 . Run Time 122m 43s

Consumer Advice: Contains very strong language, sex and sex references

Extended Classification Information (*SPOILER ALERT* Information may include plot details) FISH TANK is a British drama about a 15-year-old girl whose life is thrown into turmoil by the arrival of her mother's new boyfriend. The film was passed '15' and contains very strong language, sex and sex references. There are five uses of very strong language in the film, all of which occur within the opening ten minutes. Two of the uses are heard as part of a shouting match between a group of girls in the street and neither is particularly clear. Two of the other uses are clear but used with comedic effect, one said by a young girl in a surprising and funny scene. The strongest use is directed at the protagonist by her mother and serves to indicate the strained and aggressive nature of their relationship. As the only agressive use serves a clear contextual purpose, it was felt that the language is acceptable under BBFC guidelines at '15', which state that 'The strongest terms may be acceptable if justified by the context.' The film also contains multiple uses of strong language and uses of 'dick', 'prick', 'skank', 'pikey' and 'spastic'. The strongest sex scene occurs between the protagonist's mother and her boyfriend and we see some breast nudity, writhing and thrusting with lots of accompanying groaning, gasping and moaning. Later, the protagonist and the boyfriend have sex, but they are mostly clothed. However, there is movement and groaning which place the scene at '15', where BBFC guidelines allow for sexual activity to 'be portrayed without strong detail'. The film contains some crude and expletive heavy sex references, but these are used by the protagonist to pretend she is having sex with her new boyfriend and as throwaway references to sex. They are not pornographic or focused on and fit within BBFC guidelines at '15', which state 'There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour, but the strongest references are unlikely to be acceptable unless justified by context.' FISH TANK also contains a scene in which youngsters drink what appears to be cough medicine to get high and a scene in which a fish is killed by being skewered on a stick.

This work was passed with no cuts made.

The main spoken language in this work is English. Directed by Andrea Arnold The cast for this work includes: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Jason Maza, Kierston Wareing, Harry Treadaway.

When submitted to the BBFC the work had a running time of 122m 43s.

The running time of this film was calculated from the measured length of 11044+9 ( feet + frames ).

This work was submitted to the BBFC by Artificial Eye Film Co. Ltd .

The Hays Code   The moral code that governed mid-20th century American film-making First published in March 1930, the Motion Picture Production Code (popularly known as the Hays Code after its creator Will H.Hays) was the first attempt at introducing film censorship in the US through laying down a series of guidelines to film producers. The Code was founded according to the concept: "if motion pictures present stories that will affect lives for the better, they can become the most powerful force for the improvement of mankind" - the clear implication being that films were signally failing to achieve these lofty aims. The Code was based on three general principles: - No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin. - Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented. - Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation. These were developed in a series of rules grouped under the self-explanatory headings Crimes Against The Law, Sex, Vulgarity, Obscenity, Profanity, Costume, Dances (i.e. suggestive movements), Religion, Locations (i.e. the bedroom), National Feelings, Titles and "Repellent Subjects" (extremely graphic violence). Although these guidelines were technically voluntary, in practice the major Hollywood studios used the Hays Code guidelines as a convenient means of staving off pressure groups (the British Board of Film Censors' recommendations had been adopted by British film producers and distributors for similar reasons). As a result, the Hays Code (and similar strictures laid down by the hugely influential Catholic Legion of Decency) directly influenced the content of almost every American film made between 1930 and 1966, when theMotion Picture Association of America introduced a ratings system along the lines of the BBFC's classification certificates.

UK Film Council NOW BFI - changes to industry


Is British Cinema in crisis?

The British film industry is not thriving

There's an opportunity for British film to flourish, writes ex Hammer Films chief Terry Ilott, but all will be lost if we don't sharpen our business skills

• Terry Ilott
• Guardian Professional, Monday 3 March 2014 11.12 GMT

British director Steve McQueen won best picture at this year's Oscars, but what about the next generation of film pros? Photograph: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

The successes of 12 Years a Slave and Gravity at this year's Oscars have given rise to self-satisfied crowing in sections of the British media. One could be forgiven for thinking that British film was in good health. But while the UK remains awash with astonishing talent both in front of and behind the camera, and while we continue to enjoy a patrimony that comprises a treasure chest of stories we can plunder, the fact remains that over the past thirty years it has become almost impossible to make even a decent living – never mind build a business or a career – in the British film industry.

The industry sucks the creative life out of our best creative talents, then throws them over the side, never to be seen again.

According to British Film Institute (BFI) data, of the nearly 1,200 directors who made British feature films in the 20 years to 2008, 74% made one, 15% made two, just under 6% achieved three, and 2.4% made between five and nine. A mere six directors were able to put together 10 or more films.

Michael Winterbottom, Ken Loach, Gillies Mackinnon and Kenneth Branagh were in this elite group. Coming up close behind were the equally celebrated Danny Boyle (nine),Mike Leigh (eight) and Stephen Frears (eight). BFI data shows that in the 10 years to 2012, the trend towards a one-time-only film "career" has accelerated, with 80% of writers and directors achieving a single credit.

You might also consider that 50% of the film workforce is self-employed, many of them making a precarious living at best. Or that from 2003 to 2010, only 7% of British films achieved a gross box office of twice their cost of production (the BFI's very rough yardstick of profitability). The rest – 93% – fell short.

Thirty years ago the British film industry could boast two major corporations, The Rank Organisation and Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment, each of which owned a cinema circuit, a film library, theatrical and home video distribution divisions, foreign sales divisions, film studios and production companies. (EXAMPLE OF VERTICAL INTEGRATION) Clustered around their skirts were a host of reasonably well-capitalised production and sales businesses, including Goldcrest, Hemdale, Virgin Films, J&M Entertainment and Palace Pictures. These were capable of mounting award-winning and crowd-pleasing pictures such as Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, The Mission, Platoon, Mona Lisa and A Room with a View.

Between them, these large and medium-sized companies provided the infrastructure within which creative and business careers could flourish. All have gone. It is now 16 years since the demise of our last major film company, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, whose alumni – older, sadder and doubtless wiser – still populate the boardrooms of what remains of film's corporate culture.

With the decline of the corporations has come a decline of professionalism. The film industry has started to pick up the bad habits that have infected other sectors of our economy, with a significant increase in unpaid interns and people working on a deferred fee basis (working for free).

We are lucky to still have a core of expertise and infrastructure – studios, post-production and special effects houses, expert lawyers and accountants – on which to build. We also have talent, not just in film but in film's constant cross-fertilisation with theatre, television, publishing and the visual arts. Further, we benefit from the injection of capital and expertise provided by the Hollywood studios, who continue to make big films in the UK and without whom our industry would likely be dead in the water. (GLOBALISATION)

But the creative side cannot continue to flourish in the absence of a healthy commercial side. We need viable companies. We need to take a leaf out of the US book and learn to help ourselves.

Film professionals, especially on the business side, must make themselves better equipped. In Hollywood, it is commonplace to find film executives, even film lawyers, who have attended both film school and business school. In the UK there are probably no more than two dozen MBAs in the entire industry. If you want a career in film, get equipped. Hard work and talent are not enough.

Creative Skillset is doing useful work in this regard, especially in technical and craft grades. Film schools are also doing their bit on the creative side. But we still need executives and entrepreneurs who can talk the talk and walk the walk. That means getting a business education, becoming familiar with the vocabulary of finance and being confident in how to go about building and sustaining a business.

The opportunities are certainly there, as screen entertainment flourishes in emerging markets and on new platforms and pipelines. But those opportunities will be seized by others if we in Britain don't sharpen our business skills.

Terry Ilott is tutor at the Met Film School – he was previously director of the Film Business Academy, CEO of Hammer Film Productions, governor of the BFI and editor of Screen International

WHAT ABOUT FUNDING?

After Gravity, is the British film industry rocketing or crashing to Earth?

Visual effects firm Framestore is behind the acclaimed space movie, but is UK film making a giant leap, or is funding falling?

o    Jennifer Rankin

o    theguardian.com, Friday 28 February 2014 17.05 GMT

With British skills behind its visual effects, Alfonso Cuarón's critically acclaimed Gravity has been described as a '98% British film'. Photograph: Warner Bros/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

After picking up a galaxy of awards, the space thriller Gravity is tipped for further glory at the Oscars on Sunday. The film might look like classic big budget Hollywood, but has a starring role in the British film industry. Almost everything on screen, from the gorgeous images of light bouncing off the earth, the constellations of stars, down to the astronauts' space boots, was conjured up on computers at a studio in Soho. Stars George Clooneyand Sandra Bullock filmed their space nightmare in deepest, darkest Buckinghamshire.

Tim Webber is the director of visual effects at Framestore, the studio behind Gravity's magical effects. Before he put Sandra Bullock in space, Webber created the rich worlds of Harry Potter and The Dark Knight. But Gravity was the most complex movie he had ever worked on. "Gravity was more of a giant leap than a small step," he says. "Everything about this movie was different to any movie any of us had ever worked on before."

Not only are the film's space scenes entirely computer-generated – only the actors' faces are real – but Webber and his team had to make weightlessness believable over the long shots favoured by director Alfonso Cuarón. This meant the technicians couldn't rely on the usual "cheats" that work for a five-second shot. Webber and his team invented a new way of doing things and a new language.

Every move – a hand grabbing a tool, or a tilt of the body – was mapped out in a year-long pre-visualisation period before filming began.

The Bafta victory for outstanding British film may have raised a few eyebrows, but industry insiders are quick to point out that almost the entire team was from the UK – even the Mexican-born director is a long-term Londoner. "It is 98% British, we should put a flag in the ground and we should take pride in that fact," says Ben Roberts, director of the British Film Institute film fund.

Film production was worth £1bn to the UK economy in 2013, up 14% on the previous year, according to BFI. With the government keen to show the UK economy is built on more than financial make-belief, chancellor George Osborne hailed the creative industries' contribution. On a recent visit to the set of Downton Abbey at Ealing studios in west London, Osborne praised the "fast-growing" sectors of film and television for their job creation record. Up to 44,000 people work in film production, making it a bigger employer than the hedge fund industry.

The industry has been a rare bright spot during the worst recession of modern times. Film-making has been growing faster than the rest of the economy, as big Hollywood studios turned the country into a giant film set. Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Comic's space blockbuster, opening this summer, was shot at Pinewood Studios. The Dorset town of Sherborne stands in for Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge in a version of Far From the Madding Crowd, also being released this year. TV is not far behind. Northern Ireland has doubled as Westeros and Essos for epic fantasy drama Game of Thrones, while fugitive agent Jack Bauer is on the run in London, with the next series of 24 shooting in the capital.

Behind all these dramas is the distinctly unstarry HM Revenue and Customs. Film tax relief, introduced in 2007 and extended to blockbuster TV and animation last April, has been heralded by the industry as a game changer. It was worth £202m to film studios in the last financial year; £227m to television companies. According to consultancy Oxford Economics, these subsidies mean it is now 38% cheaper to shoot a film in the UK than the US – while the generosity of the UK's regime has prompted gripes from the LA film world.

The tax credit has been "a tremendous success at attracting inward investment," says Andrew Smith, director of strategy and communications at Pinewood Studios.

Pinewood is turning away business at the moment, he says, as the studio battles with Buckinghamshire county council for planning permission to double the size of its studios by building on the green belt. Smith does not deny the project would damage the green belt, but contends that failure to back the studio would be a tragedy when the government is targeting film as a growth business.

Other industry watchers, such as former culture secretary Lord Smith, argue that British film is living through a golden period. To William Sargent, co-founder of Framestore, that kind of talk is the "kiss of death" that understates past successes. But he says: "This is a solid industry in which people come to work on Monday morning. If you went back 15 years it was really uncertain and up and down. You couldn't build a career in the film industry the way you can now."

It is not just the money flowing into government's coffers. Paul Greengrass, the celebrated director behind United 93 and Captain Phillips, recently said the industry was "nowhere near where we were in the 80s when we were trapped in low-budget British film-making with films no one wanted to go and see". Roberts thinks the UK industry is more confident than a decade ago when British film-makers sought to emulate Hollywood's crowd-pleasing gross-out comedies, with homegrown copies, such as Lucky Break and Sex Lives of the Potato Men.

But amid the hype about a £1bn industry, the number of independent British films has declined, while funding for homegrown films fell by 38% in 2013 on the previous year.

Some have disputed the figures, which are produced by the BFI. Producer Andrew Eaton has pointed out that Rush, a German-British co-production about a famous in Formula One 70s rivalry, was not included in the BFI's count of independent British films, casting doubt on the usefulness of the statistics.

Roberts, who oversees £26m in lottery funding for British films, disputes the claim that independent British film is in the doldrums. "We are at the coal face and my instinct is that it feels healthy. He points to "very characterful individualist films with a strong [sense of] place and identity" that will come to the screen this year. These include Posh, a film about the exploits of the Bullingdon Club, and Pride, the little known story of gay rights activists helping striking Welsh coal miners. "We are reaching the end of our financial year and we are likely to make more investment this year than we have ever done before."

Elliot Grove, founder of the British Independent Film awards, also thinks it is a vibrant time for grassroots film-makers, largely thanks to the massive fall in production costs. A decade ago, a budding film-maker needed at least £1m to make a film. Now, thanks to "cell phones and mum's video camera", they can make their masterpiece for a tenth of that price. The biggest problem for film-makers, he says, is getting their work into cinemas. He sees the intense competition to get on screen at the independent Raindance film festival that he runs. Last year, he and his team sat through 4,300 films, but only 127 made it to the festival.

Gabrielle Tana, the producer behind the Invisible Woman and Philomena, cautions that it is hard for small film-makers, especially as so-called arthouse cinemas are less devoted to independent films. "It has become extremely competitive now. For the little guys it is hard to stay out there. Some films are on five screens and the little guy can't even be out [on screen] for two weeks."

Sargent at Framestore agrees that screen space is a problem when UK cinemas are dominated by big Hollywood studios. In that sense at least "we are in no different a place than we have been for 30 or 50 years."