The Impact of Certification

Certification can have a massive impact on films, for example a film could have chosen a certain age rating, and targeted their film at that audience and dedicated all of the action/dialogue towards it. But the BBFC could have disagreed with their decision of making it that certificate and making a higher one maybe from 12 to 15. This eliminates the audience they hoped and planned for and may not appeal to the new official audience. This could be really bad for companies as they could lose a lot of money due to the amount of decreased tickets purchased in a cinema or DVD's being bought because they aren't the right age to buy/rent it.

Here is an example of a Certificate change for The Woman in Black.

The BBFC considered the film to be on the border between the 12A and 15 categories, because of the number of scenes of supernatural horror. Therefore, several factors needed to be considered by the BBFC before a decision on the final category for the film could be made. 

From this, it has limited The Woman In Black's audience from a younger to an older age of people losing their target audience and losing money. 

The impact on certification on films can be an issue, as the film can estimate their audience way over than they need to be, they could make it an 18 but really it could be suitable for a 15, therefore losing that age gap and losing money.

This will help us when creating our film because we can see from other films, what works and what doesn't work, we can analyse throughout our film what is needed for it to be the right age certifation, thereby gaining the right audience we need.

The comedy film Mrs.Doubtfire was given a 12 classification by the BBFC. Some councils disagreed with their decision and gave the film a PG.