Rosemary Shonhiwa - AS LEVEL MEDIA STUDIES : December 2012

The classification of a film is very important as it shows the suitability of movies, age wise; the advantage of this is that it may hinder people being exposed to things they may be too young for. in an example, a really violent film being watched by children could lead to children being really violent and rebellious towards parents and teachers.

This is the U symbol which stands for universal; this means that the film should be suitable for an personal aged four and over. However, for programmes such as "Teletubbies", the BBFC rate them as you but also give an additional insight were they can say that "This film/programme is particularly suitable for pre-school children". Films classed as U should and must not have any significant issues of Discrimination, Drugs,Horror, Imitable behaviour, Language, Nudity, Sex, Theme or Nudity.

On the other hand, Films rated U do use mild bad language such as "Damn and Hell" but only rarely the type of this bad language could could become worse to the extent of using words like "Bloody"; films like this will not be given additional insight as they will most definably be suitable for children under the age of four.

Films with U symbols contain no sexual scene but they will have scenes of the people kissing or saying the words "making love". in addition, films with this rating will also have brief horror or violence scenes, but eminence of this will be very mild and the matter will often be resolved straight after.

This is the "PG" symbol which stands for parental guidance and BBFC state that a film with this symbol is suitable for "general viewing", however, through research, a movie with this symbol should not affect anyone from the ages of eight and over. however, due to it being parental guidance, it is the parent's overall decision on how they feel about their child watching the movie as this rating has the most diverse collection of films.

Mostly, parental guidance films are made with children in mind, however, some films targeted at parent can also be rated as PG, for instance films such as The Artist are aimed at parents/adults but the BBFC have chosen to rate them as PG as they will not harm children emotionally,

One other key point with PG films is that the BBFC will not allow films with negative context that children may copy. for instance, a movie were a character may be seen jumping into a washing machine, if this may lead to children copying it, then the BBFC will not allow it to happen.

12(A) means that any person of the ages of 12 and over is able to watch the film without the need of any supervision, the "A" stand for accompanied or advisory; this means that people younger than twelve age are able to watch a film with this rating without the need of any supervision. the reason why there are two symbols of this rating is that the "12A" symbol is for films which are currently in cinemas and the "12" symbol is for films which are on DVD's and Blu-rays.

In the scenes of strong language, sex and violence can be in these films as long as they are not too frequent or sustained.

this symbol means no one under the age of 15 can watch/buy/rent a a 15 rated film as it is stronger than 12A or 12 and this is due to the fact that a 15 rated movie has the following:

strong violence
frequent strong language
portrayals of sexuality activity
strong verbal references to sex
sexual nudity
brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
discriminatory language or behaviour

when looking at strong language, 15 rated films permit them but they do not allow aggressive use of bad languages, therefore, you would expect to hear F words but will not be used in an aggressive nature. In addition, 15 rated films also consist a lot of rom coms such as the Five Year Engagement.

The image on the left is a symbol of 18 rated movies and this means that no-one under the age of 18 is allowed to rent/buy/watch films with this rating as it contains strong issues of:

strong violence
frequent strong language
portrayals of sexuality activity
strong verbal references to sex
sexual nudity
brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
discriminatory language or behavior

When looking at 18 rated movies, the extent of what they show should not promote or encourage the viewer to do it. for example, when looking at drug use, the use of the drugs should not in anyway encourage or give the viewer a reason to start or consider taking drugs.

The image on the right is a symbol of an R18 film and the difference between this and 18 is that you can not buy them in any high street shop or watch them at any cinema as they are the for explicit works such as pornography.

Our movie REMINISCE is going to have the rating 15 as

it includes brief scenes of violence.