We are very excited to be joining this week on the Empire Podcast by David Austin, OB, the assistant director of the BBFC's Roller's Eyes at the OB bit, but it's on your card, so I had to say it.

It's not often we have a film classifier on the Empire Podcast, and we've put out some requests to Empire's Twitter readers to come up with some questions, and we're going to be putting those questions to David, who's kind of agreed to answer them for you and for us.

David, welcome. Thanks very much Phil. Just before we get started, maybe you can just give us your background. How long have you been with the BBFC for?

I joined the BBFC in 2003, so I've been there for 10 years. I joined as an examiner, and in common with the most BBFC examiner I had a previous career, because we watched some quite challenging and difficult content from time to time.

So the board is looking for people that have got kind of an experience of life from a certain degree of maturity. So I was a diplomat for 16 years, specialising in conflict resolution, including mainly in the Balkans, so that's my background.

You can cope with the Empire Podcast, I think. Thank you again. So first question, are you looking forward to Human Sense P3? This has come from Charlie Ward at I New the Twist.

Very much so. Looking forward to Tom Six's next epic work.

Emma Aviston at Emma Avie, I said that right, asks, what process do you go through when assessing a film? It's kind of a board question, but maybe helpful if you can just explain because you came in as an examiner, and now you are assistant director, so you kind of oversee a team of examers.

If it's a film for theatrical release, we classify films on behalf of local authorities, so ultimately they have the final say in what the rating is, but 99.9% of the time they accept our rating.

And we get the film in, we have our own sort of preview theatre at the BBFC, two examiners generally, unless we've got an advanced warning that's going to be particularly controversial, two examiners will sit down and they'll watch the film from the beginning to end, and they have the option of rewatching certain scenes if they need to.

They will write, each of them write a report, recommending a particular category. Now if it's straightforward, if it's straightforward, it'll go through that category when the seniors and the director approve their recommendation.

Sometimes examiners will split, one will say perhaps a PG or another will say a 12A, and in that case the film will be referred to a second examining team, maybe the director, and sometimes in extreme cases a film like a Serbian film for instance, it will go to the director and the president.

How many films do you watch as someone that does referral screening?

Yeah, I don't watch that many unfortunately. I mean I used to spend 300 minutes a day watching filmers, but now I don't watch that many. I just watch the ones that are likes to be controversial.

So something like maniac for instance, which came in a few weeks ago, I was involved in the classification decision on that film, but it tends to be the more controversial ones rather than the...

When you say 300 minutes a day, do you mean that you arrive at an o'clock by half an hour watching a film? And then you just keep going, is that how it works?

Yeah, we actually watch more than 300 minutes a day now, but when I was in summer, it was 300. So you've given a program of works and it can be in the theatre watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster for the morning and then the afternoon, you might have some pornography, you might have a door of the explorer, you know, it can mix you of anything.

And who decides what order they are, because surely you've got to get them in the right order?

They're viewed in the order that they're submitted by each customer. So if the customer submits on a certain day, they expect to have a decision, you know, certain number of days after that.

So generally for theatrical releases, we turn around filmers in three days. For video releases, it tends to be seven working days. So yeah, we do with them in the order that they're submitted by the company.

You mentioned maniac, that that was classified with no cuts, which I think people were a little surprised by.

It didn't, to be honest, it didn't really challenge the very top end of 18 according to what the public's told us is acceptable.

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