Censor for a Day report: Term 3, 2011
The Term 3, 2011 Censor for a Day event was held in Wellington, Napier and Palmerston North. We had 271 students from 16 schools attend along with their teachers.
Students learnt about New zealand's censorship law
Students were given information about what kinds of publication get classified, and the criteria used to decide what classification to give a film.
They watched the film Fright Night
The story follows teen Charley Brewster as he deals with the realisation that a vampire (named Jerry) has moved into the property next door in the Las Vegas suburb where he and his mother live. As the number of victims grows, Charley must find a way to kill the vampire, and save his girlfriend, with the help of a hedonistic Las Vegas 'vampire killer' showman.
As they watched, students thought about how things such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, violence and offensive language were presented in the film.
students applied the classification criteria 
Students filled out a form similar to the form used by Classification Officers, and discussed how different things, such as sex and violence, were presented in the film. They also had to take into consideration the likely audience of the film, the dominant effect of the film, whether it had any merit, and how watching the film in a 2D cinema might be different from watching it in 3D or at home on DVD.
The majority of students classified the film R16
51% thought that Fright Night should be classified R16 – primarily due to the horror, violence and offensive language. The Classification Office made the film R13 with the descriptive note 'violence, horror scenes and offensive language'.
Read the report on the Term 3 2011 Censor for a Day events (PDF, v9.0, 1.59MB)
A copy of the Classification Office's summary of reasons for the decision on the film Fright Night is available upon request.
