BBFC Certificate Research

'We need to talk about Kevin'

Certificate; 15

Genre; Drama

Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly vicious things he says and does as he grows up. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be beyond anything anyone imagined

The BBFC certified the film as a 15 because it contains: 
Very strong language, once very strong.
Strong sex and sexualised nudity.

I print screened the information from the BBFC website which gives you basic information of the film including genre, running time, certificate and a brief summary of why it was given that certificate without going into detail about the film.

 

However, if an individual would like to know a more in depth description of the films certificate there is also a link which you can click...

 

This shows what parts of the film use strong and very strong language and what words are used. It tells the individual why they are accepted in a certificate 15 film. E.g. 'The strongest language may be accepted if it is justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated use of very strong language is unlikely to be acceptable.' This is stated clearly so the viewer understands the justification of the certificate, why it isn't an 18 and what would make it unacceptable for a 15 certificate audience.

This research will allow us as a group to give our film an accurate age certificate and we can give the audience a clear, in depth description of why the film was certified with this rating. Furthermore, we are now able to say what we would have to do to raise the age certificate or lower it to target a specific audience.

 

We gave our initial certificate for the film a 'PG' but we were unable to go into an in depth description of what a PG certificate must/must not include but as we hadn't written a script we couldn't relate the research to our film. Now we have a final script I have related the research to our film so the audience can see why it is a PG and then parents are able to see whether they think it is appropriate for younger children to view.

 

Here are the guidelines for a PG certificate film: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/pg/

Our film contains no use of bad or offencive language and it includes minimal violence only as a girl pushes another girl over and it is implied that she is killed by a train however we do not see the girl fall onto the train tracks and we don't see the after effects, they are implied through the sound effects only. Therefore it will only cause minimal distress for a young viewer as we don't see any gore or blood. There is no drug use but there is a brief scene where a character is noticeably drunk at a party. In this scene it also involves a boy being pushed to the floor however this violence is not prolonged and he suffers from no injuries.