Where Do You Draw The Line?....

I wanted to put this out to the rebel cafe community about a recent thing that hapend to me and I wanted to know if I am at all being weird.

I recently agreed to color correct a short that had "mature themes". The description of the film was that it had partial nudity in a few scenes and depiction of Bondage or sadomasochism.

I spoke with the director and she assured me that the material was very tame and that the overall them was a comedy from a sort of David Lynchi-an perspective.

She sounded very focussed and mature about her film and seemed very professional.

We set up a meeting and she showed up. . I actually wasnt able to view the whole movie at first because it was layed out in a program that i didnt own. I later found a workaround that enabled me to view her footage later on.

When I finally got a look at her footage it was much more graphic of material than I was lead to believe

I just wanted to put this out to the community becasue there seems to be a proliferation of this type of material that is showing up festivals. I am thinking that the festival filmakers are trying to compete with the ubiquitous nature of questionable material on the web.

Where do you draw the line?

Jerry Seinfeld stated that "Once the nipple makes and appearance, it is pretty much sex"

Sincerely, Your Freak Magnet,
-Danny

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It is better to ask forgiveness than permission..

What, exactly, is the question here?

-- Bruce

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Bruce Findleton
Land's End Productions

I guess I just wanted to get a general consensus about what is considered objectionable.

I know a job is a job. But sometimes I think that ethics come into play. I mean I didnt waste the last few years of my life to use the latest cutting edge techniques to polish a turd. Ya know?

Also maybe I am not giving enough info about the way that things worked out. I saw the first couple of minutes of the film and pulled up a browser to overview her clips ( the browser didnt show any weird stuff going on and the CC looked fairly straightforward)

The client had basically assured me that it only involved a certain level of activity (nudity, toe sucking and a guy sucking on a chicks boob ( Jim Carey from Me Myself and Irene came to mind at first, I thought well i guess it should be ok if he did it).

Then later ( after I had already agreed to take the job). I figured a way to view her edits in AE and FCP. I saw the movie and was like "What the hell?"

She didnt say anything like that was going to happen. It is my fault I should have reviewed the material closer but I didnt have the program that she used to edit it in. She had only authored a few minutes of the beginning which was just people talking.

(Sorry if this is starting to sound like Dr Laura moment)

I really dont want to go into too much detail about what this young lady had in her film but it was a bit of a shocker.

So I guess in a nutshell I guess I wanted to share this experience with you guys to check if im a kook or not. And was also wondering if this sort of thing had ever happened to you guys and what you thought about it.

I really just wish she had come out and said it was a porno movie ( closer to an earlier Jon Waters film like Pink Flamingos oof!) parading as an art film ( whats even creepier is that she got a grant from a film board to make the thing).

cheers,
-D

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It is better to ask forgiveness than permission..

This is pretty subjective, Dan. There are those who would jump at the chance to be full time porn editors while others would issue a fatwah just for the existence of the footage.

I would counter that it's not a matter of ethics but rather a matter of taste. (One man's turd is another man's fetish object after all. Or woman's; I want to be PC about this.)

If you're uncomfortable with the project then bow out. It's really up to you.

-- Bruce

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Bruce Findleton
Land's End Productions

I agree totally with Bruce. It is entirely up to you and your sensibilities. I have to add, though, that (and I may have just missed it) you haven't really said what was so objectionable. What I read there might be objectionable to a Sunday school teacher, it wouldnt be for most of the population.

Finally, I have to bring up THE BROWN BUNNY. It has a scene where the director/actor receives graphic oral....uh....satisfaction. The ACTUAL act is shown. While this movie was said to be "the worst film ever screened at Cannes", it wasnt because of that scene. While that scene was the big scandal, it was actually said to be the best scene in the film as it said more about the characters and their feelings and story than the rest or the film.

I would be hesitant to be a part of that film. That doesnt mean I dont think it has it's place - even in MAINSTREAM film.

Follow your instincts. Politely pass on this job, but really examine your thoughts/feelings on the subject. You may learn you are just being reactionary.

-GageFX

You guys are totally right,
I admit I was in a bit of shock still when I wrote that original post. I guess my main thing was that I felt ultimately that the client was not very forth coming and honest about the material at hand.

So I guess if this post had to go anywhere it would have been in the "gripe" bin.

Thanks again for your responses I really just needed a reality check....

-D

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It is better to ask forgiveness than permission..

Having been able to step back, do you really think she was dishonest and not forthcoming, or do you think that you just reacted a certain way to something she honestly thought she disclosed.

I ask only for you to step back and look at how your hear/react to things, and also, iff she was really dishonest/deceptive, that should certainly factor into dealing with her again in the future.

-GAgeFX

Hey Gage,
Well I thought I was pretty good about reading folks. She said the film contained a scene with a guy sucking a chicks boob, a few shots of the womans Poonany ( her word not mine), some toe sucking and a half of a shot of a guys left but cheek. I though this was ok.

Then she shows up at my house for a meeting. We cannot review her cuts because they are in iMovie but she gets a little more descriptive about the film and states that there is a rimming sequences ( this is actually referring to a scene where the guy is licking the rims of the dominatrix's wheelchair). So I am stil not entirely aware of any strangeness.

I though ok kinda a turn of phrase type thing.

Then I look at a few of her shots in my browser ( I use iViewMedia Pro its a pretty good one for you folks that need a decent cross platform browser that is cheap). The clips look like the exposures are fairly decent looking.

I have to admit she knew a little too much about the BDSM scene, she originally stated that she wasnt really that involved in that scene.

Anyways, I find a way that enables me to view her cuts in another program. The film starts off pretty tame and I can see the elements of dark humor in the beginning. A Sub( a submissive person who is a slave to a particular dom is leaving his dominatrix for another one).

He shows up, ( sorry I am going to be graphic at this point so anyone not wanting to read further should just stop reading right now).

The guy starts to suck on the ladies toes and then sucks on her boob for a minute. Then she exposes her vagina and he proceeds to perform oral sex on her.

Now this is the part I had trouble with. She told me there was no real sexual activity in the film and this was clearly so. It gets a little more graphic than that afterwards and quite honestly I am not comfortable getting into further details here at the risk of offending anyone.

I am hoping that I am not being too judgmental here. But I feel she didnt give me an adequate head up on what was going on.

Her original description made it sound like some light nudity and possible "mature themes". I guess to her it wasnt a big deal ( she knew a little too much about that whole world and I think she was desensitized to it compared to where I am coming from).

I guess I am still not explaining myself very well here and you would just have to see it for yourself to understand where I am coming from. At this point I feel as if I am coming off as rambling, so all apologies.

So needless to say I am looking for new work any takers? Laughing

-D

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It is better to ask forgiveness than permission..

I had a some what similar experience.

A few years ago, I volunteered to edit a varmint hunting video for someone. He gave me a pile of tapes and basically just wanted the boring and bad shots taken out and to cut 6 hours of footage into 45 minutes.

While transferring some footage to my PC, I couldn't help but notice that the location for this shoot suddenly changed mid-stream. No longer was there an outside environment. It was now a bedroom! The camera was pointed at a bed and it was obviously a hidden camera type of situation.

I stopped the transfer and got on the phone. I was assured that this was an accident and that there would be no more footage like this on the other tapes.

I figured that the wrong tape was accidentally used for this "surveillance" scene. So, I agreed to continue working on the project, after first issuing a warning that if there were more accidents, I would abandon the project.

Yeah,
I spoke with her on the phone ( anyone use Skype ?) and we reviewed the film together.

When the aformentioned scene came on I confronted her about how I felt she was being evasive about the graphical nature ( anyone that knows me knows I dont have a problem with naked chicks but this film actually irked me quite a bit because I wasnt told ahead of time).

She apologized and after some grilling (light grilling, but grilling nonetheless) she admitted that she was a dominatrix. I would have not had such a bad time if I just knew that much ahead of time I think.

I actually had a similar thing earlier this month where ( I actually have an Anxiety disorder and have to be carefull about certain things) a client wanted me to just log a bunch of footage.

I got through the whole Alaska vacation and was down to the last tape. I put it in and it was footage of an autopsy. Turns out his wife works in medicine and was doing gross anatomy. I nearly lost my lunch ( no joke) on that one.

I will just have to be more vigilant about people and their footage in the future.

cheers,
-D

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It is better to ask forgiveness than permission..

Since we're all sharing stories, I once applied for a job as an editor at a company that sounded pretty reputable. They called me back and asked me a bunch of questions, if I had a problem with editing adult material... I thought this was a bit odd at first as nothing had been said in the ad for the job about adult content but I didn't mind so I said sure. Then they asked me if I was comfortable working in a super friendly environment with lots of happy people. I said of course, who wouldn't right?

Now that I think back to it he may have been doing "quotation" marks with his fingers on the other end of the line when he said this.

After doing more research on the company I discovered there productions were mainly, if not all, male homosexual adult entertainment. Not that theres anything wrong with that, but I can't say I wasn't shocked, and thought it was a hilarious and great way to subtlety inform someone of the content of the films.

yeah, it sounds like the problem isn't the content as it is the deceit. She should have been completely up front and told you what to expect. You don't want to be told you're editing High School Musical, and wind up with Shortbus footage. I'm very much the same. I'm very liberal, but there's a time and place for everything. I hate when I'm searching for photo references for work and I wind up with porn pictures. So I can imagine your shock. As for what to do about it, it's up to you. Hopefully the film as a whole is good and not just gratuitous. Something like Hostel for example, which I consider to be a truly great horror movie, as opposed to the knock offs that copy the torture stuff but not the underlying story.
Anyway, hope it works out for you.

Porn is my day job and once you're in the industry it's fine, you throw around phrases like ATM and DP like they're nothing. If I'm dealing with an industry person it's dollars and cents, sex sells and this is exactly what kind of sex is in here (the only issue i've had was people being homophobic, but it's funny how dudes are only homophobes when it comes to other dudes, homo chick content is fine).

But the minute I start talking with someone who isn't keeping their eye on the bottom line, that's when discussions become more vague and about innuendo rather than substance. She may be a dom or may think she is one, but obviously she wasn't comfortable enough to discuss it openly. I personally don't think she had any bad intentions, she just had it in her head that she needed to sugar coat it to get anyone to even approach it. The idea that if you're up front about it even if that person would be okay with them they'd get scared off.

Because she's a potential client, I would personally approach it from making sure she knows that almost anything is fine as long as you know about it before hand, she'll appreciate it and I think the rest of the process would be smooth. You play it any way you want though.

One thing to note, the 2257 laws in the states (I'm from canada) require very specific records be kept as far as model releases and proof of age of consent is conerned. You need to look into it if the content looks hardcore at all.

While I'm no porn connoisseur, I think it's a safe bet that what I consider offensive is very different than what someone else considers offensive.

I'd guess that she didn't feel the material is as offensive as it was to you. I suppose it's possible that she was trying to play it down to make it easier to find someone to do the job you agreed to, but on the other hand it would be more likely for that to bite her in the ass if she did that rather than just saying "yes, it's essentially porn"

It's a tough call. I would have to agree with others who responded before I did, and say do what you feel is right. If you have a moral issue with the project then it's your prerogative, and you'd probably be better off than struggling through and perhaps not doing your best work. On the other hand, you agreed to do the job, and if it's not that big of a deal, though not particularly your "thing" then maybe do it and get on to the next thing.

It's all a matter of taste, and what you're willing to expend your time and energy on. The only line to draw is what you're comfortable with. But no one is bad or wrong for having different tastes. In my latest feature, no one smokes tobacco. Promoting that particular addictive drug is over the line for me. The film does have a brief flogging scene, however. I consider it a sweet romantic interlude in an otherwise dark tale.

To each his own. Your milage may vary.

-- Paul