Mature Content Policy


what is gratuitous content?



"Thousand Year Films does NOT permit gratuitous content."

Gratuitous means; “being without apparent reason, cause, or justification” or “to be unwarranted, empty, or false”.

It’s the “being without apparent reason” that confuses people into thinking about ‘necessity’, but being without reason is different than being ‘unnecessary’.


"Being without reason is different than being unnecessary."

Like we previous discussed, necessity means it’s required or essential (which of course is subjective and debatable). Something could in theory be unnecessary to the plot but still have a reason for being there such as ‘providing insight’ to a characters life.

Purpose or No Purpose?

If content is thrown in ‘just because,' that is not a good enough reason to be there. Due to the likely sensitive nature of ‘mature content’, it needs to be treated with purpose or justification. Justification could even simply mean; that it’s honest. Whereas graphic is about purpose, gratuitous is not.  The content could be put in the film just because it is in other movies and may be felt like its ‘the standard’.

But at Thousand Year Films, we take an honest look into the world, themes, and characters that we are creating and ask if such content fits into this world. For example, there are people who don’t swear in real life just as much as there are people who do. The choice as to whether or not they use colorful language is a thoughtful choice. It’s important to know who the characters are; what generation they are from, what their belief systems are, how they were raised. Who influenced them? What is their personality? What social class do they appear in? (The list can go on and on…) All these things play a part in deciding upon the way a character speaks and their word choices.


"At Thousand Year Films, we take an honest look into the world, themes, and characters that we are creating and ask if such content fits into this world."

What we’re looking for is honesty and truthfulness; don’t put it in ‘just because’. Thinking about these things alone can give you purpose. Gratuitous content is really just content that has had no deeper thought put into it. When that thought has not been put into it, there is no subtext; no deeper levels to the performances (actions and dialogue) or the images. The plot merely connects to the viewer on an intellectual level, but people are generally not affected or moved on this level, it’s on a primal level where people can connect and resonate with the events (physical or emotional) of the story. These deeper levels are what are required to achieve this possibility, and they cannot be achieved when something exists ‘just because’.

Another problem is that this indifferent attitude can be seen as quite callous and can therefore become dangerous when dealing with even increasingly more ‘mature’ content such as sex, because the lack of a defined purpose opens the door for it to become something far worse than simply ‘no purpose’ such as ‘titillation’ or ‘eroticism’, ‘exploitation’, or ‘pornography’.

 
"If there is no reason, purpose, justification behind the ‘mature content’, it is NOT permitted in a Thousand Year Films production. 
However, having purpose alone is NOT the permitting factor since the purpose could fall into unacceptable reasons such as: eroticism, exploitation or pornography.