Age Certificate and Target Audience

For our final piece we decided to put the age certificate for our thriller as a 15. We decided on this certificate because due to the use of  drug taking, frequent violence and the use of  strong language; which would be considered as inappropriate for either a U, PG, 12 or 12A. When we first of all started looking into age certificating, we believed our thriller opening would be  an 18. However, after researching  according to the British Board of Film Classification an 18 is described as "Films rated 18 are for adults. No-one under 18 is allowed to see an 18 film at the cinema or buy / rent an 18 rated video. No 18 rated works are suitable for children".  Which was not suited to our target audience.The target audience we chose is 16 to 24. we chose this age group because we believe that the  opening of our  movie will appeal to people within this group . We  also chose this target audience because these age groups have money without major responsibilities and would most likely want to go to the cinema with their friends or loved ones.