About Helen
Helen Pang is a Film Examiner at the BBFC, where she has been involved in film and video classification for eight years. Prior to joining the Board, she worked for British and Japanese independent TV production companies, first as a researcher then producer. She filmed in many countries and worked on various programmes covering subjects as diverse as the early days of the internet, World War 2 and paranormal phenomena in Bulgaria. She was also a series producer for two weekly Sky TV programmes on internet technology and the digital arts. In addition, Helen spent two years studying Mandarin in Beijing and a further two years from 1999-2001 working in live webcast production in New York City, covering large events such as the 72 hour Blair Witch 2 Webfest.
Until recently, she was one of the UK's top food bloggers and last year her blog World Foodie Guide was shortlisted for the Guild of Food Writers New Media Award. After retiring from food blogging, Helen remains active on Twitter and tweets about food and travel.
Helen holds a BSc Economics in International Relations and an MSc Economics in International Relations from the LSE.
Helen’s background
Love of film and TV
Helen has always loved watching all kinds of films and TV programmes, and also grew up watching Hong Kong serial dramas and martial arts films. Knowledge of technical details such as shot sizes and editing methods is also useful when Helen is required to describe a scene in detail.
Working with children
Her background in both internet technology and children's education programmes proved useful as she has helped to create and manage Children's BBFC, the Board's first website aimed at primary school children. Having filmed with this age group in the past, Helen has also given presentations at schools to increase children’s awareness of film classification.
Language skills
Language skills in Cantonese, Mandarin and German have played an essential part in Helen’s current job. Until a few years ago, the BBFC used to regularly classify unsubtitled Hong Kong serial dramas and at one point there were four Cantonese-speaking Examiners. Helen’s German is now used for translating unsubtitled German works.
Day to day work
Each Examiner is programmed to view 344 minutes of material daily, to be viewed either solo or in a team (which could consist of two or more people) depending on the material. A typical viewing programme for the day could include a film for cinematic release, an R18 pornographic work, some DVD extras, an episode from a TV series like Desperate Housewives and a children's work like Bob the Builder.
Problematic or controversial works will require more views and opinions, and it is also important for Examiners to watch these in order to build up our knowledge of precedents. For each work viewed, a report has to be written, explaining why a category has been recommended, with the timings and issues listed and described in detail. Our recommendations are based on the Board's Guidelines, internal policy and precedent. Reports are then approved by the Senior Examiners, and the work receives a certificate.
Examiners cannot choose their own viewing material, which means that we are exposed to a very wide range of works, including those that we might not want to watch in our spare time. As a result, I have seen so many films and TV series over the last eight years that my tastes have been considerably widened and now I can appreciate an obscure Turkish film as well a random episode from a forensic crime drama series.
We also have our personal tastes when it comes to viewing material. Watching three hours of wrestling followed by two hours of pornography and 45 minutes of DVD extras from a horror film can be difficult at times. There have also been a few occasions when I have experienced a bad physical reaction to a scene in a film or video. No matter how many years of experience an Examiner has under his or her belt, once in a while a particular work can be particularly unpleasant. It's important not to let certain images linger in your head, and I have found that having outside interests, such as my food blog, has really helped me to leave work behind at the end of the day.
Once a week, we attend the traditional Examiners' Meeting where we discuss issues and policy matters that have arisen, view any problematic scenes together and make classification decisions with Senior Examiners, the Head of Policy and the Director. Certain works are referred to the Presidential Team for final decisions. Examiners are also allocated half a day every week to work on research and policy, as well as make education visits and respond to letters from the public.