‘Paint Drying’: How a filmmaker created the ultimate endurance test
Fun fact: the British Board of Film Classification has to watch every single film that wants to be released in the United Kingdom. That movie, whatever it may be, will not be released until it has been given a rating by the BBFC, unless the filmmakers have a special permit for it from the local council.
This means that the BBFC have to watch a lot of films. A hell of a lot of films. You might think you watch a lot of movies, but it’s nothing compared to the width and breadth of what goes through the BBFC. Hollywood blockbusters. Foreign art films. Sitcom box sets. Sports highlights. Porn, porn, porn and yet more porn. You name it, some overworked official is getting through it on behalf of the BBFC, with the intention of putting a label on it denoting who can watch this content.
Spare a thought for some poor, poor soul in 2023, though. Someone who works for the BBFC needed to sit down and, quite literally, watch paint drying. Sorry, that should read Paint Drying, a film in which white paint dries on a wall, in real time. It last ten human hours. To be precise, it lasts 607 minutes, and every single frame of it had to be watched in order to pass judgment on it. Not spooled through. Not half-watched while you watch reels on Instagram. Actually watched.
The irony is that whoever drew the short straw and had to watch this probably felt like they were watching it for a few months rather than ten hours. However, this is clearly some sort of art film, and they don’t have to be rated by the BBFC? You remember earlier about special permission from the local council? You can get one of those if your film is only going to be distributed in galleries and museums. Clearly, no one in their right mind is going to buy this on DVD or put it on in their local multiplex, so what gives here?
What gives, dear reader, is the fact that this entire thing was a prank.
So, who wanted to get one over on the BBFC?
Charlie Shackleton is a documentary filmmaker. In 2016, when work began on Paint Drying, he had three films to his name: 2014’s Beyond Clueless, Copycat and Fear Itself, all released the following year.
After making a name for himself with those pictures, he started work on a project that he’d first had the idea for at the age of 13. When reading the IMDb trivia page for David Fincher’s classic film Fight Club, he was aghast to find that the BBFC wouldn’t certify the film for release unless it cut six seconds of one of its fight scenes.
Apparently, this was to “reduce the sense of sadistic pleasure in inflicting violence”, and even when Shackleton was that young, he could smell a rat. His disdain with the board got even worse when he learned that the BBFC charges a fee for its service. In 2015, it charged £101.50 plus £7.09 for every minute of film to have a film reviewed by the BBFC, something a film has to do in order to have an official release in the UK.
To Shackleton, this was nothing less than institutional gatekeeping. His vendetta against them got a whole lot worse when he disclosed that of his first film’s £867.60 budget, fully half of that was getting it certified by the BBFC. Thus, he put his idea to the test. He shot 14 hours of white paint drying on a wall, then started a Kickstarter. The more money it raised, the more of the footage he’ll be able to get officially certified. After raising £5,936, Shackleton sent ten hours of the footage that paid for over to the BBFC.
They rated it a U.