Target audience and BBFC

The age range for our film is 15 - 35 females based on the actors ages and also because it is a war romance which in general is appealing to women. It is appealing to a range of ages because firstly because it’s set in war times this would be appealing to the older generation and the fact that it is a romance appeals to females of all ages. But there is cross-over appeal to an older generation due to the period, music and setting. The main protagonist is a young woman which would appeal to the younger generation. The BBFC which stands for, The British Board of Film Classification is an independent, non-governmental body, which has classified cinema films since it was set up in 1912 and videos since the passing of the Video Recordings Act in 1984. We have decided to put our film at a BBFC rating of 15, which means 'Suitable only for 15 years and over. No-one younger than 15 may see a '15' film in a cinema.' If we were going to do flashbacks of her husband in war then it would contain moderate to strong violence and not be suitable for viewers younger than 15. Because the main character is early 20's then there might 'contain strong language choices' and also 'moderate sex references'. Atonement (Joe Wright 2007) which influenced our film is at a BBFC rating of 15 because of the sex references and the war scenes.In the first two minutes of our film the only characters are both Caucasian but I don’t think that this would affect the appeal to a non-Caucasian audience, Atonements central characters were both Caucasian and in their opening weekend in the UK they took over 1.5 million pounds. It is also due to the time period our film was set in, it was not as common as it is now to have a multi-ethnic society.Our main target audience are females because our film is a war romance which is seen as a female film. Our main protagonist is a young woman which means you could apply the male-gaze theory which would be appealing to males. Also woman would take their boyfriends and husbands to see this movie as a romance is a typical date movie. Another factor is that we have incorporated the theme of war which is a stereotypical male theme, for example war films such as’ Saving Private Ryan' (Steven Spielsperg 1998) and 'Apocalypse Now' (Francis Ford Coppola 1979).

We have tried not to restrict our audience so we tried to avoid stereotyping, we don’t have anything that suggests it’s centred around one region. Because our film is set in the 1940's the majority of our audience wont of been around at that time so Our film, in this first 2 minutes the characters do not speak as such but we do have dialogue, whilst the woman is reading the letter we have dialogue of the letter been spoken by her in the future. The woman who is reading it is older and has a clear, well-spoken accent with no regional content so it has a larger UK-wide audience as it does not discriminate against any regions. It also would be recognisable for foreign audiences and the American audience, as it is easy to understand. We have also set our film in London so again it is easier for the American and Foreign audiences to understand. Working title often set their films in London, such as Bridget Jones's Diary (Sharon Maguire 2001) as it is familiar and more understandable to an international audience. Either that or WT set it in a rural countryside location, such as Wild Child, (Nick Moore 2008) which is stereotypical British.

In our film we've tried to leave the borders of class differences blurred but because of the period and the setting and also the music at the beginning I would say this helps attract the ABC1 market, the upper, and middle class. . Mise-en-scene along with costume seems to suggest that the characters within the first two minutes are of upper middle class, though this isn't exactly that clear. Research shows that most period/wartime drama's appeal to the upper class but the incorporation of the actual war scenes would hopefully attract other classes as well.Are film is similar to Atonement, the Notebook (Nick Cassavetes 2004), Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright 2005), so we already have a fan base of people who enjoy period films. It also has the appeal of a romance which has a wide audience appeal.If we were to do the whole film then to create some tension between some characters then a gay character would be used as at that time period it was not greatly accepted and would create some dramatic devices and would also draw in the 'pink pound' appeal. The main protagonist is in love with her husband but as she thinks he’s dead, she would have an affair with another man, so where sexuality is concerned it has a wide-audience appeal.