What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We screened our teaser trailer to our class, this is because our target audience are people between the ages of 16 and 25, and the people in our class fall under that category. This meant that the feedback they gave us would be of extreme value when it came to improving our trailer, as it was coming from our audience and not just anyone. They gave us feedback based on what they thought of it. The feedback was mixed and we got reviews on what they thought was good and bad in terms of Horror and trailer conventions. As we screened the trailer in class, alongside our peers, we were able to fully experience their reactions, we were able to process them visually and by listening to them. This is a better method than just reading written evaluations. 


Feedback benefits the distributor, when they are producing an advertising campaign to help promote the movie. It helps them to decide what to keep and what to cut out of the trailer, and this will make it more popular and sell better among it's target audience.

When we played our trailer to the class, we had feedback on different areas of it, one of which was sound.  The general soundtrack went down well, they liked the fact that it was a minor piece of music, that was quiet dynamically, and told us that it filled the necessary horror conventions needed in any soundtrack. Although it was agreed the heartbeats added suspense in the ending of our trailer, the general opinion was that they went on for to long. They though that the voice over of the antagonist in our trailer was very well done, because of the depth in the voice and the reverb, they got a sense of power from hearing it, and it allowed them to feel the horror and relate to how powerless our protagonist is against him. In contrast to this our audience really liked the scene in which our main protagonist, Emily, is saying "please.. please", this is because it shows her helplessness. They also thought that the sounds at the beginning of the trailer worked very well, the heavy breathing and footsteps connoted that she was running away from something or someone scary, and that she's desperately trying to get away, the fact that the audience don't no what this is and only hear it, makes them curious to find out what it was and watch the rest of the trailer. 

When I looked at the feedback on the editing of my horror trailer, one of the most interesting points came up. They said that they didn't like the scene of gore in my trailer, this was unexpected, because in my audience research gore was voted as one of the favourite genres among my target audience. Our trailer fitted in with the conventional length of trailers, and this was picked up on when we screened it, the audience liked the length and found it appropriate. The shot of the light was something that they didn't like, they said that it was too long, killing the tension and disrupting the pace of the scene. They also thought that the scenes in the woods at the end could have been edited and cut a little faster, to build up suspense towards the end of the trailer, to make it more scary and abrupt which is convention of horror. The colouring and general darkness of the trailer was something that was liked when our trailer was viewed, they said that it added to the horror and filled the forms and conventions needed to make something in the horror of genre succeed. The intertitles had mixed reviews, the colour of them wasn't working with our audience, as it didn't look scary enough, and not everyone liked the effect we used. 

Finally we were given feedback relating to Mise En Scene and Filming. One of the opening scenes in our trailer is the scene that takes place in the 'monsters' office, they felt that it was a bit "cheesy", meaning that they felt they had seen this type of opening scene far to often in the genre of horror, but due to lack of time we kept it in there, because we needed to show a logical order of the narrative in the trailer, so that it made sense when watched. The close of of Dale went down well in our screening, they liked the fact that he looks menacing and thinks the dark lighting makes him look even more evil. They also like the shot of Dale holding the torch, because of the low canted angle, they said it makes the shot seem more creepy. This combined with the pov shot of Emily running seemed to work well for our target audience, they said that the ideology was "powerful", another good point we received about the opening running shots was that is brought them straight into the action and pace of the trailer. Emily being a teenager is convention of horror, punishing them for their sins, and our audience got that point and said that it works well. To film our trailer we used virtually all handheld camera work, in the screening the audience also told us that this looked good and was very effective in giving our trailer that edgy feel that's conventional in the genre of horror, these along with canted camera work and close ups create the technical code needed to make something appear scary. We used a low angle canted shot to create the conventional horror look, when we filmed our staircase, leading down to the 'lair of the monster', the audience liked that it was part of this big haunted house, with no escape and light, they did say that we should have included more of it in our trailer though, to add to the general representation of the world in which the monster lives.

The feedback we received was extremely helpful, because after the screening of our trailer we went back to make improvements it, we studied the comments carefully and changed what we thought now needed to be changed. When we watched our trailer back, we realised that the green coloured intertitles weren't working, so we changed the color to blood red, this gave more of a representation of horror. The office scene wasn't framed particularly well, but we didn't have time to go back and completely re-film it, so we just adjusted the zoom and position of the shot on screen in Final Cut Pro. To add an extra sense of horror we put a grain effect across the entire trailer, and then made it wide screen format, we felt this made the whole thing look more professional. At the end of the trailer the main action scene and chase that takes place in a woods, was considered to slow paced, so we speeded up the cuts and the speed of the running, this ended up having much more impact and made a big difference in terms of leaving the audience with the feeling of excitement to see the movie. Even though the gore didn't go down particularly well, we still didn't feel that the trailer had the same impact without it, so we decided to leave it in. The only change we did make however, was to raise the certificate from 15 to 18, although this makes us loose some of our audience, it makes the film more suitable for those who watch it, and the gore scenes more accepted. When making improvements to something, it's always good to get a second opinion and see's things from other people points of view. This enabled us to create a better trailer than we had before screening it, and is one of the best evaluation methods there is. It made sure that our horror trailer would be suitable and please our target audience, as this was our primary objective.