Evaluation Part 4

Audience Feedback:

I found that audience feedback was one of the most helpful elements to completing our project and ensuring that it was enjoyable for viewers. I found that because I was working on editing the trailer for many hours It became easy for me to miss subtle mistakes and therefore showing it to 'new' viewers they were able to highlight mistakes I may of been making - for example things as simple as spelling mistakes. Audience feedback also showed me that every horror trailer cannot appeal to absolutely everyone. During our first screening we had comments from some audience members telling us that some of our inter title's duration went on for too long, however we also had comments made by other audience members saying that the duration of the inter titles was far too short for them to read properly. These was a tricky comments to deal with as I was a little bit lost as to who to essentially listen to and whether to speed up or slow down the duration of the text. However, both me and my partner learnt that it's far better to listen to the majority for obvious reasons such as keeping the majority of the viewers happy and understanding what was going on. To deal with this problem we ask two audience members, both with opposing ideas on the duration of the inter titles, to re -watch the trailer after we had tweaked it to a duration Seraphina and I felt was better and listened to the feedback we received. Having this problem definitely highlighted why feedback is so important because without audience comments I would of be clueless that some people weren't happy with what they were seeing.
Another thing I learnt, along the same idea that its impossible to impress everyone and fit into everyone's idea of an 'ideal' horror, was the complaints and approval we had over body horror issues. I found that a lot of my audience wanted us to feature more body horror however we were highly adamant that we wanted to make a psychological horror - which due to forms and conventions research we found that gory horrors are far more likely to feature blood and guts etc and therefore it was difficult to decide on what to do. Regardless, it was very interesting to see the type of audience member that complained about the lack of gore, and those that praised our psychological techniques as it helped me finalise my stereotypical fan that I was targeting.

                                                 Focus Group Screening Clip.

After the focus group screening we looked through the praise and criticism points given to us from audience members.
The main Good Point that I was given that I was really happy to hear back was the 'Nice montage of shots when Sam drinks the whiskey x6'. My reason behind this being my favourite comment was because I found it very difficult to find different angles to use and different close up/medium shots to put together to create a speedy, effective and realistic montage of shots.This point also links to the praising comment we got - 'Varied use of cinematography x4 - good angles'. I really didn't want my trailer to be boring it any sense but especially when it came to cinematography so I was very pleased when audience members had actually noticed the effort I had put into experimenting with different shots.
The main Bad Point that concerned me was the comment made on spelling mistakes. My reason behind this annoying me was because it was such a silly mistake that I felt really effected the mark we received and it also worried me because I didn't notice the spelling mistakes until an audience member brought it up and therefore concerned me that I was missing other silly points. The comment made about adding a jump scare I found highly useful as I wasn't sure whether to add one or not - this is another reason why I found audience feedback so useful - it helped me finalise so many queries that I had.
Our trailer got a average mark of 7. I feel very happy that our rough cut received this because it wasn't nearly finished and we have changed so much of it that I feel confident in it getting a higher mark in a final mark moderation.

Last Minute Changes:

We changed a lot of our trailer from our focus group screening and rough cut. When we first showed our rough cut to our audience we had only completed the very opening of our trailer and so viewers didn't have much to work with in terms of giving us much feedback.
One major problem we came across was the length of our overall trailer product. It was far too long and we found that audience members began to get bored after a while and I noticed it myself when I was watching other horror trailers such as the Dawn of the Dead (2004) trailer. Shorter trailers such as The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield for me personally came across as 'better' due to it not being long enough for the audience to lose attention.
In order to cut the length of our trailer down we played around with the duration of some shots and really focused on what shots were a 'must have' and which were there as 'space fillers'. We had an entire scene with Sam Lee on the phone talking to his friend about how spooked he was about seeing his 'dead girlfriend'. We decided that although the scene worked well it wasn't needed because we had already established how scared he was from the 'whiskey scene' and panicked close ups on his face.
We also added a 'love scene' at the beginning because we wanted the audience to be able to really relate and sympathise or go against each character. Contextually it worked well because within our generation we noticed that we are very obsessed with being with a 'loved one' or 'in a relationship' so we felt the audience would prefer to see something they can familiarise themselves with, after all, horrors are much more effective in terms of scaring someone if they feel like it can happen to them too.
After the criticism of fonts in the focus group screening we went onto a copy right free after effects website called AETEMPLATES4U where we got a template with text that animated and maintained the audiences attention more.
I got a couple of my class mates to act as an audience and watch the final edit of our trailer to see if our improvements had helped. I noticed that the viewers weren't so bored by the end due to cutting the duration down and the love scene helped them feel more emotions towards the characters which essentially is exactly what we wanted.

My opinion of our trailer:

Personally, I think our trailer works very well in terms of fitting with the general horror forms and conventions. I feel like my group can be very proud of the acting within our trailer. Sam Lee, Seraphina Woodrow and myself all worked really hard on trying to make our acting believable as we felt that no matter how secure our shots or pacing or audio were it still would not have been too effective if our acting let it down. I also feel like after being influenced by other horror trailers such as Insidious and Black Swan, the pacing of our final project was very effective and accurate in terms of fitting with the usual horror genre. I especially like our jump scare at the end - I think it adds a sense of excitement and allows the trailer to finish 'with a bang!'. The pacing of our trailer ensured that enough suspense was built in order for the ending to shock the audience. Our trailer is
There are certain things I'd of like to improve as well such as the last couple of shot. I feel as though it would of worked better if we had of included a very fast montage of shots to really put across the emotion of panic to the audience and add a sense of thrill. Also, our trailer takes its time to get 'into the action' and focuses a lot on the brewing of our main protagonists anger and his guilt rather than focusing on the 'chase' of ghost vs human and the fear within the main protagonist then rather than before. I also feel like our trailer seems a little more like a scene trailer other than a highlights trailer because it starts really with a complete moment from the film meaning that although it finishes as a highlights trailer the start is more of a scene.
I really like the inter titles within our trailer. I feel like they fit well with the narrative and atmosphere of the trailer itself and I also like the sense on continuity they provide as well as the element of professionalism I feel they bring to our final product.