Certification in film

In the UK, the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) uses certificates to define the age groups that a film is suitable for, providing a guideline as to what scenes appear in the film. These are all of the symbols used in classification from the BBFC and where they would be used.

U (Universal): a film that is suitable for all age groups four and above, mainly a positive film with any sort of problem sorted, with a happy ending, with next to no violence, horror, or threat. Finding Nemo, Shrek, Bugs life fall in to this category
PG (Parental Guidance): For general viewing, but children aged eight or under should be supervised by an adult. The Incredibles, Frozen and How to train your Dragon
12A: Films that are suitable to children aged 12 or older, this certificate only applies to cinema viewing and no other types of media. Children under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Captain America: Civil War, X-Men apocalypse and Star Wars: The Force Awakens fall under this category
12: The same as 12A, but for media based around videos, DVD’s and games
15: Films that are suitable for an audience of 15 years old and above. No one under the age of 15 is allowed to see these films, usually contain strong language, violence, sexual activity, verbal references to sex, nudity, sexual violence and drug use fall under the category. Tropic thunder, The Hangover II and Zombieland fall under this category
18: no-one under the age of 18 are allowed to see these films, contains everything a 15 movie contains but can contain them in much more detail. Films that would fall under these categories would be Reservoir dogs, Kill Bill volume 1, Pulp fiction etc.

This would help my group in our final film as target audience is very largely based off age group and how it would be classified. Using these guidelines as to what we include in our film will help our film become classified towards our chosen target market.

How these logos are identified:
Each certificate has a distinguishable difference between each logo, be that colour, boldness of text, or even shape.

Here in this example, we can see the distinguishable difference between the 15 and the 18 certificates. The background, instead of being white against a fading red font that reads "bbfc", the colours change positions, so that the background is red and the font is white. The 15 and 18 colours also change to make the certificates differ even more. This time, the 18 is white, and the 15 is red, corresponding with the text visible in the background.