Audience

When looking at appropriate audiences for films the BBFC (British Board Film Classification) has to take into account movie content. This can be wide ranging, from language, visual content and the message that a particular film tries to get across. The BBFC certificates would affect Short films negatively because they are limiting the target audience. Short-films would mainly target their product at PG to widen their audience range; if they were to target another age group their film would be much more limited in aiming their film at wider audiences. Most of the films I have seen have all contained limited content, which seems to target the ages of 15 with themes such as Rom-coms and social realism in attempt to reach different audiences. As a form of education short films are most effective when targeting the age rating 12 or 15, this is because it can be shown to children, if it had an 18 certificate it would be useless as it couldn’t be shown to the people that need it. Within the short-film making community, there is a huge issue surrounding funding issues which prevent short-film makers to target a wider audience within the film industry therefore they are less successful. Short films will not appear in cinemas so most of them try and get their films played at film festivals to get noticed. Short films are also distributed through competitions and the internet. 'Sign Language' by Oscar Sharp was the winner of the Virgin shorts competition and so got its recognition through the competition which also helped promote the director. 

Due to this research we will now try to aim for a lower BBF certificate like U or a PG to ensure that we can maximise our audience. Our film won’t strictly be an educational film however we still need to aim for a wider audience so that we can get our film noticed more. We will make sure that all the language and visual content is appropriate for this, our film is most likely to be a romantic comedy so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.