FILM EDITING UNETHICAL

BY THE SIGNPOST EDITORIAL BOARD, April 23, 2008
Weber State University SignPost

Clean Flicks and video editing companies like it need to be stopped, and it is great Hollywood has finally taken legal action against companies that do so. This illegal film editing is this generation's version of book burning.

In the United States, people are guaranteed the freedom to create artistic visions of their choice and retain ownership of creations. Altering them violates the artist's creative rights.

People who want the videos edited do so because they do not want to expose themselves to offensive material. By closing their eyes to theatrical art, people are closing their eyes to life. Art and literature have always reflected history. Do these people really not want to know what is happening around them? Life is offensive, but how do people learn what is offensive and what they stand for, if they have no knowledge of it? How do parents teach their children values if they have no examples to contrast or question their values? Children are going to face these examples in life. What better way to prepare them for it than through knowledge?

Despite the moral issues involved with censorship, there are legal issues as well. Clean Flicks is violating copyright laws with its practices. To alter a piece of work, one must seek permission of the author, often paying a fee to do so. Clean Flicks failed to do this. They are trying to operate under what they believe is a loophole in the law that allows customers to make one copy of material for personal use. However, by altering these copies and providing rentals of altered movies, Clean Flicks has bent the rules.

People argue that films get edited for television or airplane viewing, so why can't Clean Flicks do the same? The difference is that broadcasters and airlines pay for the edits, and the edits are done and controlled by the film studios. This is the way it should be. By allowing editing enterprisers to randomly cut content out of films, studios comprise the film maker's artistic integrity.

If Clean Flicks prevails in the court case, what could that mean for the future of all literature? Will a Clean Books editing company sprout up, providing offensive free books? Will printers begin processing nudity free alterations of famous art? And do proponents for censorship really think that will make a difference on our society?

According to the February 2003 edition of "Playboy", some common film cuttings include: "the farting in 'Dr. Doolittle 2'; thirty seconds of sexual innuendo and swearing in 'Shrek'; two minutes of sexual discussion in 'Bridget Jones's Diary'; 139 f*#@* and 29 s%&#* in 'Good Will Hunting'; the genitalia and breasts of the concentration camp victims in 'Schindler's List.'" By removing these from the eyes and ears of viewers, censors are not extinguishing them from society.

It is historically proven that art reflects society, not the other way around. The atrocities of WW2 happened long before Stephen Spielberg attempted to recreate them on film. Profanities have always and will always spew from mouths, with playgrounds being the practice arena for trying out these new insults. People have been finding ways to discuss and participate in sex since the dawn of man. And no matter how much people try to remove farting from celluloid, boys are going to think it is hysterical. Parents need to be confident of the moral values they instill in their children. And, instead of fearing that film content is somehow going to strip their children of values, trust that perhaps their children may have learned enough to rise above it.

THE BATTLE CONTINUES

BY RAY RICHMOND / March 2003
DGA Magazine

What began in August 2002 as a preemptive lawsuit filed against 16 prominent Hollywood directors continued Feb. 14 with a hearing in Denver, Colo., the first such court proceeding in a case that is expected by all involved to stretch well into 2004.

Since the original suit was brought by Robert Huntsman and CleanFlicks of Colorado, L.L.C., the DGA has filed a countersuit (on Sept. 20, 2002) — and that was joined on Dec. 13 by the major film studios of Disney, DreamWorks, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros.

The overriding issue, of course, remains the fact that by selling edited versions of existing films and/or selling software that contains pre-programmed "masks" or filters, services such as CleanFlicks, ClearPlay, MovieMask, Clean Cut, FamilyFlix and Family Safe are compromising the work of the directors as well as the copyright protections of creative works.

The case stands to be a protracted one, rife with discovery issues and conferences and motions and possibly a trial on the relative merits of the suit and countersuit well down the line.

The studios suit is based on copyright, while for the DGA the legal issue is the Lanham Act, which is based on the concept of brand integrity.

The 16 directors named as defendants in the original lawsuit — all of whom are being represented by the DGA — are Robert Altman, Michael Apted, Taylor Hackford, Curtis Hanson, Norman Jewison, John Landis, Michael Mann, Phillip Noyce, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, Martin Scorsese, Brad Silberling, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, Betty Thomas and Irwin Winkler.

The purported goal of the companies is to cleanse films of raw language, violence and sexually explicit content, but the analyzed examples go far beyond even the obvious. Indeed, some directors have said they felt the edits and muting have been in many cases jarring and far beyond the realm of simple trims to bring a film in line with an "E" (for Everyone) rating.

Take the case of Spielberg's Oscar-winning classic Schindler's List. A CleanFlicks copy of the film detected 43 audio and/or video cuts and some 10 minutes cut from the movie's total running time. The horrific impact of the film has actually itself been muted in the trims. A prisoner inspection scene in which SS guards manhandle nude prisoners and determine whether they will live or die is effectively eliminated from the film.

Clear Play's edit of Hackford's Proof of Life deletes the entire opening sequence involving rebel brutality, the first killings and subsequent kidnapping — leaving gaping plot holes in its wake.

Not even subtlety is a guarantee against surgical manhandling, however. A scene from Redford's The Horse Whisperer depicts Redford doing a tender slow dance with co-star Kristin Scott Thomas that features his hand touching her back. Thomas' character is married to another man, and the FamilyFlix cut of the film completely eliminates this dance, despite its import in illustrating her character's struggle with her marriage and her attraction to another man.

And those who believe that a movie as benign as the Betty Thomas-directed Dr. Doolittle should be spared the knife might be surprised to learn that it isn't. FamilyFlix makes 58 individual audio and/or video edits and cuts, taking seven minutes from the running time total. Most glaring is the complete butchering of a scene in the vet's office (featuring Jeffrey Tambor and star Eddie Murphy) involving a thermometer and a "talking" dog's rear end. Other edits cut straight to the heart of Murphy's comedic timing.

Then there is the utter evisceration of the freebase scene in Soderbergh's Traffic. We see the drug being prepared, but never the ingesting or its immediate aftermath. Some might note the foolishness of trying to edit, for family consumption, a film as rife with raw language and hard imagery as is Traffic. At best, the attempt unacceptably blunts its edge.

Silberling harbored no illusions before finally mustering the courage to sit down and watch a CleanFlicks edit of his 1998 feature City of Angels. He knew that the company came at its job with a particular outlook. Yet he wasn't quite prepared for what he saw — or, perhaps more accurately, what he didn't.

"They didn't take that much out — less than three minutes, I think — but I was still actually shocked," Silberling admitted. "It was weird because it went beyond language and nudity. It was a mores question. And I guess I wasn't prepared for that."

As Silberling describes one trimmed scene in question, Meg Ryan's character has an on-again, off-again boyfriend but longs for a character played by Nicolas Cage. Finally, after much pushing and pulling, she and her boyfriend get together and make love. In Silberling's movie, the entire episode is off-camera. All that was shown is Meg Ryan getting out of bed. Still, it is cut from the film by CleanFlicks.

"It was the most shocking cut imaginable," Silberling maintained. "I guess someone didn't like the idea of Meg Ryan sleeping with someone out of wedlock. It astounded me."

Indeed, Silberling believes that "if every director saw what these people are doing to their work, it would make them even more upset. The storytelling itself is just being pilloried. And that's your name on the film. I thought I went in prepared, and yet I was really floored by what had been done to my movie."

Having educated himself on the particulars of the debate, Silberling believes he is now fully armed for the battle ahead.

"Another thing that's bothersome," Silberling says, "is that people like ClearPlay, who are supposed to be selling masks and filters, can't sell a pre-programmed technology that immediately recognizes, say, the fact that 'skin' would mean nudity vs. the bottom of someone's leg. Someone still has to go in and pre-program the omissions. They may sell you a template that makes the edits in real time, but someone has to create that template in the first place."

What that means, stresses Silberling, is that morality is still being programmed into a device that is claimed to be amorphous.

"Someone is still making editorial decisions and selling the public those decisions," Silberling adds. "Their decisions happen to be in the form of an edit list. That's something I have a real problem with."

And there is a real difference between viewers customizing their movie viewing experience and having it customized for them, Silberling emphasizes.

"All that any filmmaker can hope for is that the viewer at least has an opportunity to take in the intended storytelling experience," he says. "If people restructure your film for the hell of it, that tends to get in the way. I mean, if you own a copy of a film it should be yours to do with what you want. But for a company to externally distribute a whole set of editorial choices, well, that runs counter to the whole creative process."

THE BATTLE EXPANDS

BY RAY RICHMOND / January 2003
DGA Magazine

On December 13, Hollywood's major studios joined the Directors Guild of America in its countersuit against a number of companies involved in the unauthorized editing and manipulation of films for rental or sale.

In their filing, the studios — Disney, DreamWorks, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. — note that the edited films "are of lousy quality in terms of continuity and reproduction; sometimes, the dialogue is not in synch with video images" and that "use of studio trademarks on the ... films 'falsely and erroneously' suggests a connection with the studios that deceives consumers as to the source" of the edited films.

The studios are seeking an injunction to stop the sale and renting of the altered videos and to declare that the unauthorized editing infringes upon the studios' copyrights and trademarks. The studios are not seeking punitive damages, but do seek attorney fees.

On August 16, CleanFlicks pre-emptively sued the DGA and 16 well-known director members asking for a judicial determination that they had a First Amendment right to edit movies for private use. The DGA countersued on September 20 asking the court to allow the Guild to represent the interests of its membership, allow the Guild to expand the counterclaims to include other companies that engage or contribute to the practice of editing or altering videocassettes and/or DVDs in commerce, and allow the Guild to bring in the motion picture studios as necessary parties, citing their role as the copyright holders of films. These actions by the DGA set the stage for the studios joining in the battle against film alteration.

For complete background information about the issue and the lawsuits, see DGA Magazine's November 2002 issue.