There is much lively activity in the cinema and it looks as if the children are following the film. We are in the Media Council for Children and Young People's cinema observing the children taking part in the council's child panel on films - this time watching the animated film Beowulf. The children's visit to the cinema is an element of the Media Council's child panel sessions. Since 2001 the Media Council has been consulting a child panel in two different age groups four times a year each time presenting different films with different subjects of focus. The objective of the exercise for the Media Council is to update the classifiers in charge of age classifying films in Denmark on children's perception of films and importantly to keep the criteria for classifying films up to date.

The Child Panel session
The films that the children watch have already been classified. And this time the children between 11-12 years are being presented the film Beowulf that was classified for admittance to children from the age of 11. The focus subject of this session is to see how these particular children connect the thrill/shudder of violence with an unrealistic and animated fantasy universe.  When the children have finished watching the film each of the three classifiers observing the children will pick out two children to interview about their experience of the film.

Watching Beowulf
But this time it is the context of the children's film watching that is being observed. While watching Beowulf in the darkness of the cinema, the children react physically by covering their faces, making faces and sometimes exclamations when the story becomes particularly violent. During one very graphic scene some of the children say out loud: “not nice”, “disgusting” and “scary”. Some of them hold their hands over their ears and one of the children covers her face with her hands and pull her sweater over her head. Another one sitting by himself crawls further and further into the seat and keeps looking over his shoulder to look at his friends behind him as if he wants to share the experience with someone. On the back row some boys are sitting together commenting on the film, laughing and looking at their mobile phones.

After a while the shock effect eases off and more of the children start laughing during violent scenes.

The "how": the nuances of media use
Observing the context of media use is crucial to the understanding of the general picture of children's media use. Without this we miss out the nuances, the edges and small signs that provide the whole picture of how children perceive, understand, react and in this particular context, of which situational elements of viewing a film in the cinema can be frightening to some children.

So what do we get out of observing these particular children whilst they are actually viewing the film? Well, it's not that some of the scenes of Beowulf are graphic and powerful. We already know that just by watching the film. It is the nuances that we observe. When observing the children the classifiers see that generally it looks as if the children sitting by themselves appear to be more affected than the ones sitting close to each other. Their friends talking and laughing as well as the physical contact apparently extenuates the experience. Combining these observations with interviews with the children reacting to the film in different manners, the general conclusion is that the fantasy universe of Beowulf is characterised by a kind of thrill/shudder that does not transgress the children's limits. 

Facts about the Media Council for Children and Young People's Child Panel on Films:
The child panel's focus is children and films and different subject areas related to this. The panel runs for two years at a time with the same children: one 1st grade class that moves to the 2nd grade in the second year and one 5th grade that becomes a 6th grade. After the two years two new school classes are selected for the panels. There are 2 consultations per year for each class. Subjects of focus are prepared and chosen by the classifier board. The children watch a film in the Media Council’s cinema. During the film up to 3 classifiers observe their reactions.  After the film the classifiers choose 2 children each to interview. The results of the interviews and observation are assembled in reports and used internally in the Media Council. 
    

  
Keywords:
child panel, children as experts, media use, context of media use, films, cinema, movies, children, youth, youth panel