Notes on audience genre certification

After thinking of a certificate and genre to give our film we wanted to check we were creating the right piece.
This is the top ten thriller films, although we are looking more at psychological thrillers I found it would be more helpful to look at thrillers and then look at certificates they have been given. By looking at this I can determine if the certificate my group have given is correct to what the BBFC would give.



Pulp Fiction (1994) - 18
The Dark Knight (2008) - 12A
Inception (2010) - 12A
Goodfellas (1990) -18
Rear Window (1954) - PG
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - 18
The Usual Suspects (1995) - 18
Psycho (1960) - 15
Se7en (1995) - 18
Leon (1994) - 18


From these I have found that most thrillers are put at certificate 18, this is most likely because they are often made for an active audience. Meaning the mind could become over active and psychologically the audience could be effected. There are often also scene of violence and gore, for instance in Se7en (1995).

As most of these film are certificated at 18 however I have thought about who our target audience and realised we wanted to aim to a wider range. This means using a certificate 15 would appeal to more people. We didn't want to put the certificate to low as our story is quite effective and could upset younger children. There will be use of drugs etc in our piece so this has to be thought about and therefore certificate 15 is most convention for thriller.