Planning - Target audience

The important thing we had to consider during the planning of our film was the nature of the content we included. This would help to determine which age rating the film would get if it was to undergo classification. As we wanted to make our trailer as realistic as possible we knew the rating would be high, as if not it would not include stereotypical thriller conventions.

There is a list posted by the British board of classification (BBFC) which states what is allowed in a 15 film:

• Strong violence
• Frequent strong language
• portrayals of sexual activity
• Strong verbal references to sex
• Sexual nudity
• Brief scenes of sexual violence
• Verbal references to sexual violence
• Discriminatory language or behaviour
• Drug taking

There is also a published list by the BBFC which states what is expected to be seen in an 18 rated film:

• Very strong violence
• Frequent, very strong language
• Strong portrayals of sexual activity
• Strong horror
• Strong blood and gore
• Real sex - in some circumstances
• Discriminatory language and behaviour

The BBFC can also ban films that they think show anything worse than this and should not be seen by the public. Or they can make them R18 films, which means that they are kept hidden from the public audience and can only be shown in licensed cinemas.


Looking at these lists, we knew we wanted to make sure everything in our film was suitable to be viewed by 15 year olds, as this was an audience we wanted to target. This meant that our film could include horror themes but nothing too extremist. It also means we are targeting a larger audience, so our film is likely to be a bigger success.