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."

Comments

What does that give ya?

[Trinition]

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?

[dillon_rinker]

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?

[ragnar]

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?

[artemis67]

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.

-----

Use in fan-made works?

[Hobart]

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

[Casca]

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

[Hanno]

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?

[big_groo]

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.

Re:Fine feature, but for who ?

[cloudmaster]

The kid needs no convincing - it's the parents that need it. The video store shouldn't be renting videos to 13-year-old kids that are inapppropriate to begin with, but if this technology catches on, then the players should have some sort of access control wherin the parents define that their children can only watch movies that are PG13 or less (in this case) or movies that the machine can filter down to that level. If a movie doesn't have the standard "rating code" or filter available, then the kid has to get the parent to either add or remove the movie to the mahcine's allow/deny list.

It's really pretty simple, aside from getting parents to actually 1) keep parental access away from their kids and 2) play an active role in their child's life. After all, if the kid's renting his own movies, it's quite possible that the parents have left the child-raising to the TV anyway, and are not going to want to have to "work" to protect the kids from "bad pictures".

Oh, the arrogance...

[TopShelf]

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.

Re:What about the JJ -- NJJ Editing?

[plover]

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

What happened to movies as art?

[LS]

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

Re:What happened to movies as art?

[Relic of the Future]

No one's telling you that you can't watch the original. And I agree with you; I wouldn't want to watch one of these edited films. But there are people who wouldn't mind toning an R down to PG-13 and watching it with their child, or younger sibling, or what have you. I think this is a MUCH better approach then caveing in to the "save the children" advocates and only producing edited movies.

What kind of movies do you get at the end ?

[tmark]

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.

Too indiscriminate to work

[wfrp01]

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.

No it's not

[DarkMan]

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.

Destroy the story?!

[SeanAhern]

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.

Re:Hey! That was *my* idea!

[Jerf]

Please do us all a favor and release your code now. I totally don't care what state it's in, what we need is the prior art so that nobody else can patent this stuff later and hit you with a suit when/if this takes off.

Just tarball it and post it somewhere with a good timestamp on it. Please! Release a good version later, or not at all, but the sooner prior art simply exists, the better!