I was watching my favorite show, Mythbusters, and they were doing the cieling fan/decapitation episode. I noticed that when a carefully constructed head containing real human skull and real pig spine got it we could hear someone on the team saying “right in the jugular” but the video cut, I’d say, around a frame before the fan sliced through their blood filled “jugular vein”. Was this too much? They have shown all kinds of things, but fake blood coming out of a fake head is too much? WTF?
You must have missed the pig carcass getting cut in half by a steel cable…
yeah, that was gross… but it did a hell of a clean cut. My butcher would be proud.
I’ve been a bit surprised by what they’ll show, considering it’s the Discovery Channel. I saw the pig getting cut in half last night (“God, I hope there’s a pig cut in half in there”). They also showed Adam puking after he got sucked down a whirlpool.
On an episode of Dirty Jobs, they showed Mike Rowe grooming a dog and they blurred out the naughty bits of the dog. Kinda surprising, considering what they usually show him doing, and what they show on Mythbusters.
I want to try this one myself. I think they could have positioned the pig a little differently for more tension as the cable wrapped around it.
Wow, I’ve seen women giving birth on DC without anything being blurred.
I couldn’t watch the pig-cut-in-half episode. The head one was ok once I didn’t have to look at the pig spine anymore.
I thought it was going to bother me a lot more than it actually did. However, I do wish that they hadn’t just left the two halves connected by that single thin strand of skin. That actually made me squirm a bit. If they’d fully separated, I’d have been completely OK with it.
Slightly OT, but one of the things that I find funny about Mythbusters is their insistence on blurring out every single brand name on a product on the show.
Corporate logos? Blurred out. Cap logos? Blurred out. Company name on a tool someone’s using? Blurred out. It’s sort of the ultimate in anti-product placement.
I’ve got news for them. Blurring out the Ford oval on a big pickup truck ain’t gonna disguise the fact that it’s a Ford pickup truck.
I mean, I can understand blurring out the license plate numbers of the team’s trucks (or on the other cars in the MI:6 parking lot) for privacy reasons, but who really cares if the Mythbuster team uses a DeWalt cordless drill or not?
*The deep, dark, worried voice inside me just said “probably because they’re afraid someone will sue the company whose tools/trucks/etc. they use if/when someone tries the same sort of stunt and gets hurt.”
If so, I weep for my country.*
I imagine if they show the logo’s, they have to sign deals with the companies, or pay them, or something. So they just blur it all out.
Isn’t it usually the other way around? The company has to pay them? Probably those companies didn’t want to pay, so they blurred out the logo.
I didn’t know Adam and Jamie were co-workers of James Bond…
I believe their studio is M5 Industries.
It’s a trademark thing. They can’t show a company’s trademark without coming to some kind of arrangement with them (whether it’s the company paying them to show it or vice versa). Mythbusters is far from the only television series to do this but because products have to be featured so prominantly you are going to see them more. Cooking shows often have the same problem because they have to feature a product but can’t show the label.
Short answer:
(1) TV shows are not required to blur out logos.
(2) Companies have not always paid even if their logos are showing.
It’s a matter of choice for both parties. Some shows choose to blur logos; some shows demand payment; some don’t care and show everything. Companies can offer to sponsor shows in order to have their logos prominently shown – if they do pay, they might demand that competitors’ logos be blurred out.
One thing I do find interesting, now that I think about it, is that they blur corporate logos and such, but seem to have no trouble showing big signs on smaller, non-corporate shops they go to, even going so far in some cases as to make sure you know what they’re called.
Interesting.
The show may (okay, will) be on in reruns for many years to come, and with commercial sponsors who just may be competitors to those whose products are shown on the show. Blurring logos helps preserve the show’s marketability in syndication. Why would a potential sponsor want to pay to help advertise the other guys, even a llittle? It’s an easy problem to prevent.
Back to the OP, it’s funny you bring this up. I just watched the episode last night and thought the same thing. I was surprised they showed the pig getting cut in half but they wouldn’t show a crash test dummy get it’s throat slashed.
Not that I really want to watch either one, but if they’re going to do the experiments, they might as well show the entire thing.
In the Ancient Chinese Astronaut episode, I was quite surprised that they actually told you what the recipe for gunpowder was. I know it’s pretty common knowledge, but the censors on that show tend to be rather nervous and jittery when it comes to revealing how to make dangerous chemicals.
On NBC’s Heroes, a character intentionally mangled her hand in a garbage disposal (she’s got Wolverine-type regeneration powers). Apparently, you could see the disposal’s logo, or at least tell what brand it was.
The disposal makers sued NBC.