The BBFC

In our group for the film noir opening, we decided that our target audience would be 15. This is because we were aiming in at students of this age and above, which is the main cinema-going audience.

In November, I went to the 'Hollywood Cinema' in Ipswich to participate in a talk from the BBFC. The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) are an independent, non-governmental company who certify different media texts to their suited audience. These media texts include film trailers and advertisements, DVDs, videos and their advertisements, video and computer games and other interactive pieces. The main reason for attending this talk was to gain further understanding of what content we can get away with in our film noir opening sequence. I found the talk very interesting and useful, and one thing I learned from the talk was that last year they certified 639 different films, of which 227 where certified at 15. This point shows that 15 films are very popular.

After listening to the talk, we watched a film called 'A Guide To Recognising Your Saints', which was released in 2007. This was a typical 15 film and was specifically aimed at people our age. This was easily recognised by the way the characters talked, behaved and dressed. We watched this film to see what content a typical 15 film contains, and how it's directed to appeal to such an audience. In our film noir opening, I will take many ideas from this film, even though it isn't a noir, but it's aimed at the same audience as ours.

I found the BBFC official website very useful: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/
And the BBFC website that is specifically designed for media and film students: http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/