BBFC Seminar

On Wednesday afternoon, a speaker from the BBFC came to speak to us about their job in the industry and allowed us to ask questions. The woman was part of the BBFC's examining body and I found it really interesting to get an inside opinion on how things are run and what her job entails. I was surprised with the short turn around it took from them receiving a video work, and the work being classified - however, she explained that the BBFC are always trying to shorten this time as they are providing a service to the industry and the longer it takes, the more disruptive to the film industry it becomes. I was surprised to hear how often different examiners have conflicting opinions on the classification of a film, and this showed me just how subjective the guidelines are, and that it really comes down to personal interpretation. We were shown clips of films and had to classify them based on what we thought was a suitable rating, a task I found helpful as the examiner could then show us how the particular scene would be interpreted by the BBFC. I also found it surprising that the board had made mistakes in the past when classifying films (for example The Dark Knight).