Film Certification

Certification of Films...
             Nowadays, films are categorized into age groups. The age rating that a film receives is the age that a viewer must be to legally view the film, without an adults permission. The organisation that handles these ratings for the UK is called the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). The reason a film will be given a certain rating depends entirely on the content of the film, this gives the viewers an idea of what to expect in the film. For example, a  3+ would not contain sex and murder, whereas a 15/18 could.

These rating could be seen as both a blessing and a curse. They provide guidelines for what the director can include, these can be seen as limits, but a talented director can build their story around these restrictions. This is something that i can aim to do when i make my films. Quite often when thinking of a film a director will try to get away with as much as he can because the lower the certification the larger the potential audience that can pay to see the film. On the other hand however, a director may write a film and know that they will not be able to get the certification any lower than an 18, therefore they may hold back any potentially dangerous subjects such as illegal drugs to rape.

Films that belong to the same genre tend to all have very similar age ratings. Horror films (Saw, Alien) are almost always 18's, whereas animated films ( Up, Snow White) are usually 3+. There are always exceptions to the rule but generally these films don't often perform that well, this has meant that most directors choose to stay away from these types of film.

The Main task, which we are currently filming, we consider to have an age rating of 15+.  We think this because of the films horror inspirations as well as the themes of murder, assassination and espionage.We could have aimed at a younger audience however we felt we would have to reign in some aspects and it would have detracted from the overall feel and ambiance of the piece. Alternatively we could have gone the complete other way and made it very graphic and gory but this would have been tacky and unnecessary. It would have also spoiled the mood of the piece. Being a 15+ meant we could have a certain degree of freedom to do what we wanted while at the same time putting the necessary restrictions in place to prevent any of us going over board. This is a very good example of how deciding an age rating before even starting production is good. An extra point is that the most common age rating for Thriller films in the UK is 15+, further cementing how we have chosen a good place to build the plot around as well as giving an example of how genres tend to have specific age ratings associated with them.