Audience and Rating

I have done some research on Audience for our opening sequence which will be a low budget psychological horror/ thriller film.
In psychological horror/thriller films the movie is often driven by characters fears and is more mental than physical. The characters usually have to resolve conflicts in their own minds, they are not so much reliant on physical strength but on their mental strength.
This genre may be more attractive to women.
It also has a element of audience participation as they are also trying to work out what is happening as this genre often involves mystery. The audience are going to be people who enjoy the genre will most likely be British as it will be low budget meaning we would have less distribution resources for targeting a wider audience. We would also possibly have to recap certain areas of the plot for example a American audience whereas, in British films this is less typical. Psychological thriller/horror films can also be very disturbing, which means an older audience are more likely to want to watch our film. From my research on BBFC our film will be appropriately rated as a 15 as it will have violence in it. The BBFC also rates the following things as being OK to include in a 15:

• strong violence
• frequent strong language (e.g 'f***').
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behavior
• drug taking

Our opening sequence will include drug taking although not in a glamorized manner, so it is still appropriate for a 15, it will not include strong language or sexual references however the topic is still very dark so not appropriate for a 12A or 12 rating.