Convert Movies From R to PG13 to PG On The Fly

uchi writes "Trilogy Studios announced the launch of its "Movie Mask" web site - www.moviemask.com , which will eventually lead up to the release of its "Movie Mask DVD Player" and "Movie Mask Director" software. The Director software will allow users to selectively add/edit a video adding graphics and special effects, which is nothing special in my opinion. The Movie Mask DVD Player, on the other hand, will allow its users to download a movie config file(for lack of a better term) which will have various portions of the movies to bleep/cut out depending on the rating which the person set. It can be changed on the fly while watching the video. This seems like a good idea - it would allow many people who don't wish to be subjected to violence/nudity/language a chance to watch any movie they want without waiting months for it to be released on network television, already PG-13ized."

How about the other way?

Does it have a "reverse" option so I can add more meaningless nudity and cussing?

Re:How about the other way?

I'd love to see an "invert" button, that would show you *only* those shots that were removed. You'd get just 60 seconds of nothing but blood, gore, and nudity.

What about the JJ -- NJJ Editing?

That is, Jar-Jar vs No Jar-Jar versions of certain movies? :-)

Re:What about the JJ -- NJJ Editing?

Insightful observation!

A new generation of homegrown-editors will spring up on the net. You'll get the web sites devoted to erasing annoying characters from otherwise watchable movies. But you'll get so much more.

You'll get "family-friendly" web sites devoted to removing only the sexual references, but leave in John Wayne killing natives with a dagger. Other editors will run web sites that remove the violence but leave the sex.

You'll also end up with violence-prone editors. They'll give you the "Good parts" edition of Dirty Harry, featuring just the gun battles and punk shakedowns. Playboy will probably run versions of popular movies just skipping to the sex scenes.

You'll get the Short Attention Span Theatre's version of Waterworld. It'll be three minutes long, and people will still complain that it's too long! The site'll probably be run by the Cliff's Notes people, and will probably give the Cliff's Notes edition of all sorts of old classics.

Certain editors will probably become wildly popular because they trim all sorts of bad and long popular movies down to their viewable components. Before long, the RIAA will get involved because someone will come up with a "Commercial Product Placement Skipping" version.

This could be the Next Big Thing!

John

Fine feature, but for who ?

I just wonder how you'll convince the 13 year old kid to enable censorship on the cool movie he just rented. Are they going to tag this up with all DVD-players requiring social security number to verify your age ?

Well well, i guess it may be useful in some cases atleast, and it sounds like its quite simple to implement, just tag each "scene" in the movie with a "recommendated age tag" and skip those which are improper.

Concepts on Parenting

> Don't play censorship cop, be a parent...

Unfortunately, sometimes being a parent is playing censorship cop. Giving them values is a matter of course, but that takes time, and in the interim it's sometimes necessary to censor. I take the view that it's better to preview a movie myself to decide if it's appropriate for my kids, but sometimes there's a movie of much value that has inappropriate parts, and (like the original story said) I don't necessarily want to wait for the sanitized version to appear on network TV. In this case, my goal isn't to prevent them from watching the movie, but to let them watch the movie but cut out the few parts that are not appropriate for them. The best example is "The Name of the Rose", which is a really good murder mystery, but has one rather graphic sex scene. I'd let a thirteen year-old watch the movie, as it's a good film, but that one scene throws the whole thing, and IMHO removing it is a better approach than simply forbidding the whole movie.

Virg

Re:Fine feature, but for who ?

I prefer my movies without sex and without language.

Wow. Even before the 'talkies' appeared on the scene, they'd put the essential dialogue into the movie as a sort of 'slide'. Offhand, I can't think of any movies with no language at all, though I expect there are some animated ones with language only in the titles and credits.

What does that give ya?

So let me get this straight. In the R version, you see the happy couple making love with no sheets covering them. In the PG-13, you see them starting to make out, presumably naked, under cover of sheets. In the PG version you just see them smoking cigarettes in bed for no apparent reason?

Honestly, any PG-aged kid I know would either STILL know what's going on, or if not, would be curious enough to ask WHY they are smkoking. What is it we're trying to prevent here? The actual knowledge of the subject, or an example of it?

Re:What does that give ya?

the bit that was removed is not needed to understand the movie (then why did the director put it in?)

Apparently you live in a world where all directors are ascetic celibates. However, in my world, directors often add nude scenes because they like to see live nude girls doing what they tell them to do. About Basic Instinct, the American writer gave some song and dance about the artistic necessity of the nudity and sexual situations in the film...the Dutch director was much more straightforward. He liked looking at naked women. I doubt that you disapprove of his opinions. Why then do you disapprove of the opinions of people who DON'T want to look at naked women?

What this thing produces are censored versions of movies.
The word is "expurgated." You apparently live in a world where if a person denies anything to themself, then Big Brother won't let them watch it. (Censorship is editing by others). If someone else wants to avoid hearing profanity, or vulgarity, or obscenity, why not let them? If you have the right to hear those words in a movie, why should someone else not have the right to NOT hear those words?

It's great that directors can do anything they want to with their films. Fair use lets other people do anything they want with those films, as long as it's for their own use. What do you have against fair use? What do you have against people deciding for themselves what to see and what to hear?

Most importantly, what do you have against a device that COMPLETELY takes the wind out of the sails of anyone who wants to censor movies "for the children"? Don't want your kids to see Pocahontas's cleavage? Download the anti-cleavage config file and pop the DVD in. Want to share Star Wars with your kids but don't like the word "damn"? Download the anti-swearing config file and have at it. The only people who'll be able to complain about the content of movies now will be demonstrably bad parents - ie, ones who refuse to manage the content their children are exposed to.

P.S. If you don't think parents should manage what their kids are exposed to, then I encourage you to take your two- and three-year old to a slasher flick. Several sleepless nights will ensue and you'll learn the hard way.

Re:What does that give ya?

It gives plenty. Watch on old movie sometime and you may notice that people can be killed or be passionate without ever seeing blood or frontal nudity. How did they do it? They used imagination and good acting and (correctly in my opinion) concluded that the graphic details were subordinate to the story.

Re:What does that give ya?

I would presume that the softwarewould just remove the questionable scene altogether.

This is actually a good thing for parents who want to rent videos for the whole family to watch. It's incredibly embarrassing for a parent when there are graphic depictions of sexuality in what would otherwise be a very entertaining film. Take Jerry McGuire... you rent it for the family and the scene pops up where Kelly Preston is bouncing on Tom Cruise's lap and screaming, "Don't you ever stop fucking me!" Even though you never see her full body, the scene is way too intense for kids.

Yeah, I know where the fast forward button is on my VCR, but the movie isn't entertaining for me if I have to sit on the edge of my seat with remote in hand, waiting for questionable material.

Compounding the problem is the "Director's Cut" that comes out on the DVD's. There are probably a lot of examples where a movie that had a mild amount of adult content turned it up to 11 on the Director's Cut DVD.

I applaud any technology that aids me as a parent.

-----

Oh, the arrogance...

Is it possible for folks to just applaud a decent, consumer-driven idea that allows people the option of easily toning down the content of DVD's?

Not everybody hunkers down on the family couch for a shared evening of goat sex and snuff films.

This is exactly what we need.

Now, my 4 year old children can benefit from watching my XXX movies tuned down to a G rating. And a 2 minute movie of random people talking and closing credits is perfect for their attention span.

This is great...

I really like this idea. Personally I have no problem with sex, nudity, etc., but I'm really squeamish about certain types of violence. It would be really cool if I could set my personal viewing preferences to "maximum sex, minimum torture", while still allowing other people to watch "no sex please, but lots of violence". It's a brilliant idea.

Re:This is great...

> there's nothing quite so uncomfortable as watching a nude sex scene with your mom

A friend of mine is the daughter of an actress who appeared years ago in a TV series that has been repeated. Try watching your mom's sex scene with your mom....

More Control

I think this would be a much better product if they allowed you to set levels for each of language, sex, violence, etc. Although, it does seem that you can make your own "masks", so I guess a third party could do that.

Doesn't standard DVD already offer this?

I thought that DVD could already do this? Most DVD players have a parental lock feature which can result in by-passing scenes in the movie, e.g. the pie scene in American Pie. What's this offering that we don't already have?

Use in fan-made works?

A standard between disc player manufacturers (Even an informal one) to handle custom changes to the DVD data would be nice -- two immediate things I can see coming from it:

• Ability for fan-created edits of films, such as "The Phantom Edit" of Star Wars Ep I w/o Jar-Jar
• Ability for fans to release their own subtitles / notes for foreign films that will never be released in their country

Useful in schools

Damn, are slashdot readers sarcastic and pessimistic or what? I think the first 25 comments I read thought this was a laughable product.

I see a real use in this. My wife is a highschool history teacher. There are many movies that she would like to be able to show, but because of some bad language, nudity, or violence, she is not able to use the films. Community standards are a bitch. If she could pop a DVD in, hit the PG rating and let it roll, that would be great.

Beyond that, there are some movies that I think my nieces and nephews would enjoy that I have seen, that have bits in them that are just not appropriate at their age. This would help with that too.

I'll probably get flamed all to hell from the slashdot (everything must be free!) zealots now...

Re:Useful in schools

If your community standards do not allow kids to see works of art that a teacher thinks is appropriate, you should change the community standards, not the work of art.

Btw, I'm not an everything must be free zealot.

So what?

That doesn't mean I'm going to have my kids watch an R rated movie with this thing. Sure you can take out cussing, violence and nudity - but what about mature themes? Kids aren't immune to those.

Besides, why would I want to ruin a director's vision of what s/he would like the audience to see?

None for me, thanks.

No it's not

It's no more illegal than a pen to modify a book. Or a paintbrush to modify a painting.

They are selling technology that _allows_ the user (who already has the mmovies) to make small (?) modifications to the film. It's nothing that I caouldn't do with the mute button and fast forward, just a lot more convient.

If they were reselling films they've edited, that would be. But that's not what they are doing.

What happened to movies as art?

I thought that cinema was form of art. In the future, will museums provide glasses to selectively block genitals and breasts on certain paintings? Will e-book readers have settings too? Must everything be compromised and converted into interactive fiction?

I seriously doubt any claims that violence and sex in various mediums are the root causes of any ills of society. But I think that the lack of any concept of artistic integrity points to where humanity's problems DO come from.

LS

What kind of movies do you get at the end ?

I can't imagine how this is going to work well. If the player automatically strips out violence/sex/offensive language, what will this do to movies where certain such scenes are integral ?

I'm thinking of movies like "Saving Private Ryan", "Apocalypse Now", "The Matrix", "Terminator", "The Wild Bunch", "Rocky", "Scarface", - heck, even "Star Wars", where the movies turn crucially on scenes that would be deleted. In the above movies, for instance, if you delete the violence you end up with something that is incomprehensible.

This is already possible with DVD

Most DVD players have a parental control feature that can be set between 1 and 7 and then password locked.

Current discs are capable of not being played at all if the disc level is higher than the rating allowed HOWEVER using the "branching" function within the DVD spec it is IIRC possible to branch based on the parental control level.

This way the director can just put alternate chapters both on the disc and setup the branch points and there you go!

No special DVD player, no special software.

I gather however that this raises all sorts of complications with ratings classification.

Changing movies from R to PG

One step might be to follow the brilliant suggestion of Bennett Haselton (webmaster) of peacefire [peacefire.org]:

In the case of decency standards, take the words "screw" and "fuck" -- which mean the same thing, but one of them is considered so harmful that films and CD's containing the word actually carry warning labels. "Fuck" is just a syllable -- the notion of what is considered a dirty word is completely arbitrary. When I was ten, I had an idea for solving the problem of "foul language" in movies: just declare that at midnight on the next January 1st, all swear words are reclassified as "slang" so they're not swear words any more.

The entire "Why we do this" page [rant :)] is quite interesting; well worth a read. Not like any of it would ever happen. :)

Too indiscriminate to work

So you've got a puritanical bug up your ass, and you cut out the nudity. But wait! There's some essential dialog in that bedroom scene that ties the whole plot together! What do you do?

I'm sure we can all do without Jar-Jar, no matter what he says, but in general, I can't see this working. Just who are these talented editors, who will cut and snip the patient so well that no one will even know surgery took place?

I told my mother to watch the movie "Brazil" when it was on television some years back. You know what they did? They chepped the ending, to make it a happy one!

How many copyright holders are going to agree to publishing their art in this bastardized format? The opportunistic greedy ones, like Sony et al, will be delighted, I'm sure. And an ugly mess it will be.

From "Brazil":

Dr Jaffe: "Can you believe it?! Just me and my little knife! Snip - snip - slice - slice - Can you believe it?"

and elsewhere:

Mrs Terrain: "My complication had a complication, but Dr. Chapman says I'll soon be up and bouncing about like a young gazelle."

Yeah, right.

Hey! That was *my* idea!

Well, actually it was a buddy's idea, but I've been working on it. I have hacked Xine [sourceforge.net] to do on-the-fly edits of DVDs. My code can do various edits now, but I'm just beginning to work on the "edit script" stuff that tells it what to do. My approach is to use a pair of XML files, one that documents the content of a DVD movie, along with links to files with replacement video, audio and subtitles, and one that is a sort of a movie-watching "stylesheet", that specifies how you want the player to handle various kinds of content. Rather than just allowing you to select an MPAA rating level, I'd like to allow you to specify what kinds of things you don't like, what degree you'll accept, and how to deal with it when the movie exceeds those bounds. For example, should the player just fuzz out the boobs, or skip the scene entirely? Or should it go into slow motion so you can watch every jiggle? The content script will also have to have some sort of a "relevance to plot" rating for each section, so that the stylesheet can specify different actions for stuff that matters.

I'm also making the script engine pluggable because I see value in other kinds of scripts. For example, with a more procedural type of script you could string together snippets of video from one or more DVDs, interspersing other bits of video, splashing words or other images over the top, etc., to make collages, artwork, etc.

There seem to be a lot of people questioning whether or not any of this is useful, and I've run into a suprising amount of opposition when I talk to people about it. Here are some uses:

• I buy lots of movies and my kids (ages 8, 6 and 4) watch lots of movies. I let them watch a fair number of PG and PG-13 movies, but I'm often a little uncomfortable with a few scenes. I often think "I wish I could just set my DVD player so that part would be skipped automatically." There are probably even some R-rated movies that I wouldn't mind my kids watching if they could be cleaned up a little. Right now, though, there are too many things that I'm not quite ready for them to learn.
• There are a fair number of adults who for reasons of either religion or just sensitivity don't like to see certain kinds of content. For those people, the selection of movies is quite limited. In my case, my wife doesn't watch R and a lot of PG-13 movies for religious reasons. Since I really only watch movies with her, that means *my* selection is also limited (note that this is the biggest reason I'm hacking on Xine -- so that I can watch more movies with my wife).
• If a teacher wants to show a movie to kids in public schools, there is something in nearly any movie that will offend someone, who will tell their parents, which will get the teacher in trouble, etc. This is a solution.
• Artistic edits, as I mentioned above.
• Anything else you can think of... For example, another buddy joked that he wanted a stylesheet that showed *only* the offensive parts and skipped all the rest.

To me, this is about freedom of choice. I like to watch movies, but I may or may not want to watch them in exactly the way Hollywood makes them. This is really going to piss off directors who will feel that the "artistic integrity" of their movies is damaged, but I'm interested in my own entertainment, not in their "artistic integrity", and since I'm paying them, I think it's my choice that matters. Others may be more interested in the message the director is trying to convey, and they're welcome to watch the thing in its entirety. Others may be interested in an easy way to create derivative artworks (until Fair Use is abolished, of course).

I guess I'll abandon my vague ideas of productizing my work (I was quite enjoying the idea of people buying a DVD player and recieving a CD-ROM full of source to all of the GPL code that rus it, "Martha, what in hell is this crap" ;)), but if anyone is interested in helping me work on this, send me an e-mail.

Destroy the story?!

Is there anyone else who thinks that this has the possibility of killing the intended story? Or at least, killing how it was intended to be told?

Movie directors and editors spend thousands of hours in the editing room, cutting a scene here, splicing one back in there, all in hopes of achieving the best story.

Fast foward about a year, with this technology in place in all DVD players and VCRs. People are able to add and delete scenes at will. Yes, you've given choice to the people. Yes, you've made videos that were previously unwatchable in schools available for educational purposes.

But there's a large chance that you may have destroyed the story as it was intended to be presented.

I know this sounds like a fine hair to split. But we the Public pay these guys a heckuva lotta money precisely because they know how to tell a good story. Second guessing them is probably a bad idea.

Just my two cents.

R -> PG-13

Converting from R to PG-13 results in the loss of nudity and language, but you'd probably keep all the same levels of violence. Roger Ebert [suntimes.com] rants about this all the time.

From his Movie Answer-Man column on November 4th [suntimes.com]:
The fundamental problem with the MPAA is that it avoids making any kind of common-sense evaluation of a film, and simply counts f-words and evaluates nudity. ''Waking Life,'' one of the most affirmative and challenging films I can imagine for smart teenagers, gets the R rating, while the thriller ''Domestic Disturbance,'' which shows a small child exposed to a murder, an incineration, the beating of his mother (leading to a miscarriage) and the beating of his father, after which the kid himself causes an electrocution, gets the PG-13--presumably because there is no nudity and the language stays below the cut-off point. What sane parent would prefer their teenager to see ''Domestic Disturbance'' rather than "Waking Life''?

To me, this is absurdity. Parents cannot rely on these crap ratings. If you are truly concerned about your children/family, you need to watch the movie yourself beforehand and then make an honest judgement.

Convert all libraries to PG13!

Source: ACLU Texas [aclutx.org] in file report.doc [aclutx.org] (Word doc)
=========

Banned and Challenged Books
In Texas Public Schools

Title: Puppies (Baby Animals)

Author: Petty, Kate

Synopsis: The book discusses how puppies are born and fed, and how they grow and communicate. Photographs are used to enhance the descriptions.

School District: Columbia-Brazoria ISD, West Columbia

Use: Library, Curriculumn, Wild Peach Elem.

Reason: Profanity/Inappropriate language

Result: Alternative book allowed

Notes: Parent said text referred to female dog as "bitch"
======

We need some kind of device to insert before the eyes of those vulnerable children, that would remove all curse words so that they are not exposed to the abomination of referring to a female dog as a "bitch".

AOTC

Now all the kiddies will be able to watch Episode II without the gratuitous pr0n. In this version, Luke and Leia are delivered in a basket by an annoying talking stork.

DVD-Spec Already Supports This!

But nobody does it.

This was one of the big "cool features" promised way back when DVD was still being introduced. You'd be able to select different "versions" of a film, from a normal DVD player menu, and the player would pick-and-choose specific scenes automatically, and seamlessly (or just about so). The promise was to be able to have a single disc, with a single "super-duper-extra-beyond-director's-cut" version that you'd never, in practice, see. Then you select the "Theatrical Release" and see what you saw in the theater. Select the "Director's Cut" and see what the movie house didn't think would sell but all the rabid fans prefer. Select "TV" and see a cleaned-up version for TV. Select "Morman" and -- oh, nevermind.

Of course, I've never seen this happen, except on one movie (Crash), which allowed you to pick an R or NC-17 version of the same film.

I can think of MANY movies where I wish this feature was used. A good example is Blade Runner. There was the US theatrical release, there was a foreign release (with some additional, gorier footage), a later US release (basically the foreign release), a "Director's Cut" (with the unicorn in and the voice-over out), etc. Wouldn't it be great if you could get all those on a single disc? Or could mix-and-match? Gimme the director's cut, but WITH the narration. I won't even go into what you could do with Brazil (what, didn't the Criterion LD include three separate, complete, full-length cuts?)

Personally, I'd like to see this for many "normal" movies, too. For example, I'd love to recommend "Wild Things" to my mom -- it's a great mindfuck movie. But the sex scenes would probably make her want to stop watching. So she's missing out on a terrific movie.

And the worst of it is that all this capability already exists. The studios just don't want to do it.

So, something like this project seems really cool, especially for people using their own DVD player software to drive their home theater screen. Someone else talked about "Fan Edits." This might even make a good argument for an additional "Fair Use" for DeCSS technology -- providing a value-added service for DVD owners that the studios don't feel like doing.

DVD had such great promise, but very rarely do the studios actually deliver on those promises. How many movies nowadays come with alternate language tracks? With OBSCURE alternate languages? With decent subtitle selection? Now, how many come with "making of" featurettes, stupid storyboard-to-final "worksthops", or animated menus? Which delivers better value to the end user? Which is cheaper to produce?

gah. I gotta find something useful to do...

Re:Removing....Nudity.....Huh?

Of my two parents, one (my mother) had no problem with nudity in films but didn't like violence, while the other (my father) has no problem with violence in films, but didn't like nudity. My tastes are closer to my mother's: it's a screwed up world that deems it okay for a youngster to watch someone getting their brains blown out, but not someone taking their clothes off.

The point is, creating a branched film which incorporated various versions of scenes could be a great idea, as long as they allow you to select *what* you do or don't see at a fine grained level.

Re:Removing....Nudity.....Huh?

Actually, this is done already all the time... but by hollywood. When a film is made, the MPAA reviews it and gives it their rating. Frequently, Hollywood will submit a movie and it will come back with an 'R' rating. The studio may decide that an 'R' rating would make them less money by restricting it from a large portion of their target audience, and if they decide that, the movie goes back to editing (sometimes in extreme cases, scenes are re-shot) and a new version is submitted, one that will get them their "target rating". The perfect example of this is the film Basic Instinct. When that film was submitted for review, it became the first movie to recieve the then new, NC-17 rating. The studio decided that since they wanted the money of the under 17 crowd, that they would re-edit it and shoot for an R, which they got. Later that decision was (partially) reversed, when the studio actually released the film in BOTH NC-17 AND R versions to theaters, and home video. So as far as I can tell, this would broaden up the spectrum of available movies for a lot of parrents who are paranoid^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h concerned about their children seeing what they want^h^h^h^h shouldn't.

Now granted, I doubt it will do much for some films, like the Southpark movie or such great "classic" films like Strip to Kill. Seeing as those films would probably be about 8 minutes long and have nothing even resembling plot if they were cut down a rating... But there are THOUSANDS of films out there that only have content that people find objectionable for their children to watch in a couple scenes which can be cut without significantly dammaging the plot. Take one of my favorite films for example, Top Gun. Most people would probably think that the violence is the worst part of the film, but there is lots of language that I never even realized would have to be cut for TV. I just never thought of it when enjoying the film. Everything form "Mother Goose, you Pussy!" to "You'll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong" Most parrents don't mind their kids seeing violence as long as it's not overly graphic. But lots of parrents DO mind swearing in movies because their children tend to emmulate it. They tend to emulate some of the violence too (through play, etc) but for whatever reason, this is more acceptable, but that's another discussion entirly...

Another example, Starship Troopers I think, probably a better example... there are about a dozen scenes in that film that add to the atmosphere of the film, but take nothing important away by being cut. The nude scenes (shower and sex scene), for instance, and some of the more graphic scenes of soilders being literally torn apart. You can have a war movie without these scenes. I personally would rather see the movie as it was intended to be seen, but I can understand the choice of parents that want to control what their kids see. In many ways it's not censorship at all, think of it as browsing the films at 4 or 5 rather than ar -1.