BRITISH BOARD OF FILM CLASSIFICATION

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) uses specific guidelines to classify films and games on age by giving it an age certificate on their content. Topics such as language, discrimination sex, violence and drugs in films and games are taken into consideration. Our thriller displays horror crime and violence and so this would affect the age certificate and so this is one of the reasons behind the age certification behind our thriller and also the age range of our potential target audience. Films that include horror or frightening scenes may not be suitable for younger viewers as the classification depends on the length, detail and how regular the frightening sections are as well as effects that are used such as music and sound and if the outcome shortly follows the scene, whereas, older audience viewers often enjoy the tense and chilling thrillers and so the classification method has been put into place in order to protect the younger audience viewers.

Criminal and violent behaviour and the easy access to weapons as well as the portrayal of anti-social and dangerous behaviour affect the age certificate as dangerous behaviour such as self harm is quite a violent and delicate topic and younger viewers may think this acceptable and so they may copy the behaviour. By having the certificate as ‘15’, this means that the target audience would be more mature and there is not as much of a risk of younger viewers copying this behaviour. Violence features in lots of thrillers as both younger and older see violence as form of entertainment and so younger viewers may think that it is acceptable to copy this behaviour. If there is a high level of violence then the classified age will be higher.  

I think that rating our thriller as a ‘15’ means that we will have a larger range audience compared to if we had of had a certificate of ‘12’. This would have not of made our thriller as effective because we wouldn’t have been able to build up the tension and have as many menacing scenes. Having a '15' certificate means that only a certain amount of violence, criminal behaviour and horror can be shown in our thriller and so we woudl still be protecting the younger aged viewers as well as having some chilling scenes which is what the target audience want to see.