Film, Radio and TV - 6 |
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"Indies" andFilm Ratings
Today's Independent Producers Originally, independent producers and production companies were out-of-the-mainstream operations that resisted—some might even say rebelled against—the perceived content and business-minded limitations of mainstream production companies. This independent production is important to filmmaking because:
However, by 2007, the majority of the films that won Oscars were technicality "independent," in that they did not originate with major studios. It was only later that they were picked up for major studio distribution. This low-budget, high-budget line was first blurred with such films as Chariots of Fire, The Blair Witch Project, Leaving Las Vegas, and Sex, Lies and Videotape.
The comedy, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, released in 2002, has been
another highly successful independent film. The film first appeared in very limited distribution.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding costs about $5-million to make, less than $20-million to market, and within the first few weeks it had made $100-million. Whereas most new releases stay in the top-10 listings for only a week or two, My Big Fat Greek Wedding stayed in the top-10 for months.
Even before its release on DVD, the controversial Fahrenheit 9/11, generated revenue comparable to popular mainstream films. An Inconvenient Truth, the 2006 film on global warming, won the Oscar for best documentary in 2007. The film cost $1-million to produce and within a short time had generated $50-million in revenue.
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Today, the term "independents" (or "indies") has a different meaning that it did in the 1940s. 
One of the most successful independent films to date is Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, released in 2004. Boosting its popularity were the many fundamentalist churches across the U.S. that promoted it in their pulpits, ran ads for it, and rented theaters and took busloads of people to see it.
Once it became successful, it was quickly picked up by mainstream film distributors.
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Shooting 40 minutes of film costs about $10,000, while shooting 40-minutes of video costs a small fraction of that. A professional video production team working on location is shown on the left. Today, most audiences can't see a difference in quality between good video projectors used in theaters (referred to as electronic cinema, or E-cinema) and traditional 35mm film projection systems. This chart indicates the excepted growth of theaters moving to some form of digital "film" projection.
Today's Movie Ratings Even though films had First Amendment freedom after 1952, the Hays' Production Code Administration (PCA) seal of approval was still used to determine what was not acceptable in film content. (You will recall from a previous module that once Hollywood got on more secure financial footing after the depression, the code once again became important.) Hand-in-hand with the production code was the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency that banned such films as Ingmar Bergman's classic film The Silence and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up. At the same time they endorsed films such as Godzilla vs. the Thing. Judgments such as these set the stage for rebellion—even when producers were faced with a $25,000 fine for disregarding the code. The well-known director Otto Premminger challenged the code when United Artists agreed to release his film, The Moon Is Blue, in 1953, without the Production Code Administration (PCA) seal of approval.
Three years later, Premminger directed Man with the Golden Arm, a film about drug addition. It was also released without the PCA seal of approval. Since both films were highly successful, the power of the PCA code was essentially broken at that point.
Although Valenti saw this rating system as being advisory only, many feel that the code still ends up having economic control over film content. It's easy to see why. In addition to the fact that much of the youth market is not allowed to see PG-13 and R-rated films, many newspapers refuse to run ads for NC-17 (and especially X-rated) films. So why not avoid problems and make all films either G or PG-13? First, there's a bit of a bias against them. Films that are given G, or PG ratings are stereotyped as being "kids stuff." Some people, including much of youth market (the ratings are designed to protect), tend to shun them. Second, G and PG ratings greatly reduce the chance of including provocative, edgy, and thought-provoking content. The committee members are kept secret, and individual members
Specific changes are neither dictated nor suggested by the committee. That, in their mind, would constitute censorship. There's obviously a lot of tension in this process—especially between the studios, who want the widest audience, and writers and directors, who want to keep the film cutting-edge, realistic, and maybe even disturbingly controversial. Yes, to a degree. For example, some films can be interpreted on more than one level. The early James Bond films are an example (action for the kids; pretty women, handsome men, and sexual situations and innuendos for adults). Many animated films represent even better examples. In Aladdin, Shrek, and Finding Nemo, for example, children can enjoy the action and spectacle while adults pick up on the adult humor that children (it is assumed) don't catch. Films that appeal to different age groups are called crossover films.
MPAA and Independent Films Gven the subjective nature of judging content, this is difficult to prove. However, the "dual-standard criticism" isn't helped by the fact that the MPAA board is controlled by the major studios and appeals are handled by representatives of the major film studios and their distributors.
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Traditional "Hollywood" thinking has long opposed production with video equipment for "serious, professional work." 
The film had been denied approval because it contained such words
as virgin and mistress, which were seen as being unacceptable,
even for adult ears.
are rotated out and replaced at regular intervals. The committee's primary criteria for judging films centers on parental responsibility, as they see it.
