Censorship

Before filming we warned the actors and made a conscious decision during filming to avoid copyrighted material and logos on clothing etc, stating ‘please no third party logos, offensive words or symbols, or nudity in anything’ in the email exchanged when organising filming. This was made aware to us in our research into censorship laws and conventions as well as through some videos and watching music video channels. Although music videos are generally exempt from censorship groups such as the BBFC and their age ratings, we were aware that, although our target audience would be mature enough to view such things as nudity, a music video would be accessible to everyone of all ages on music video channels. As well as this we saw no reason as to have nudity or visibly offensive language or symbols in our video. The audience of our video genre and chosen music genre may expect such things (conforming to the uses and gratifications model), however, with no solid reason as to include these elements, we consciously decided not to include it.

In editing, we found that the footage of the cut scene was not as bad as we thought it would be censorship wise. However, we still dipped the volume somewhat when we knew swearing did occur in order to make sure that it would comply with censorship regulations for this topic. However, in a showing of the video projected onto a big screen with surround sound, we did find that the language and sound was more audible and thus will have to consider more explicit censorship methods such as bleeping in order to maintain censorship regulations. Although a video isn’t regulated, the BBFC do state that for a 12/12A rating ‘Moderate language is allowed. The use of strong language (for example, ‘fuck’) must be infrequent.’ Strong language is infrequent in our video, however this cut scene features it frequently and thus may be a problem to regulation rules if gone uncensored. A PG rating requires ‘Mild bad language only’ which our video, without explicit censorship, does not conform to as the language used is not classified as ‘mild’.

(Also see ‘Filming: Narrative’)