What I have learnt from my audience feedback

Most of my feedback came from my classmates, my peers, however I managed to get a lot of feedback from Facebook as my friends are in my target audience and are more diverse than my class.  The feedback I received from these people I feel was most beneficial as they took it on face value, like a real audience would.  I targeted mostly males as they are the most likely to see a film like mine on the whole they felt it was very well produced and the story was very interesting.  I asked them to comment on three main areas:

1) How it works as a teaser trailer, e.g were they 'teased' would they want to see it, did it look professional, was it constructed well, did it make sense etc

2) Did it follow the conventions of horror teaser trailer? (However many struggled to answer this as they were unsure what the conventions were, so this area of feedback was mainly from my media class)

and 3) How it could be improved

Here is what I found...

How it works as a teaser trailer

The main points which my target audience pointed out were that all in all, they were 'teased', which means that overall our main product was effective as they wanted to know more. They also thought the trailer was easy to understand and the plot was clear, liking how they were able to see the plot from two sides, the killer and the detective and how it said enough, yet kept the mystery as the killer's identity was never revealed. Overall the majority felt that it was a good mix of gore, plot and mystery although some of it could have been improved.

The overall construction of the trailer worked. They found it was in a logical order beginning with context and showing how the victim was captured, although they noticed a minor issue at the end with the victim appearing dead and then sitting on the chair again. Our feedback shows that the majority of our audience liked the voice over as we edited it to sound deeper and have a rougher resonance, and they especially liked the 'evil laugh' mid-way through as it stood out and was memorable. As well as the tone and nature of the voice itself working well, the dialogue of the voice-over from two opposing perspectives helped the audience to understand the trailer by hinting more about the plot. Teaser trailers usually have either a voice over or inter-titles, however we used both as we wanted to make sure the audience would be engaged with the plot as well as the action. However feedback about the inter-title wasn't positive during our first screening so we changed it for our final cut to engage our audience further.  Also many felt that the production companies title didn't look professional and it was a boring font, many suggested that these could have improved this by using 'dafont' or by using effects like some of the other groups did.

Other feedback which we gained about how our product works as a teaser shows that the grammatical devices used at the opening of our trailer were memorable and they found engaged them by addressing them with "you". They particularly liked the repetition of "I see you" and the rhetorical device of addressing "I" why raises questions of identity and "you" as it made them feel uneasy by addressing them. They noted that it was the right length but could have built up the tension better through the use of our soundtrack, which we agreed with also.

How it uses conventions of the horror genre

Character - The main idea which our target audience noticed was that our teaser challenged the 'final girl' convention of horror which we did on purpose to make it stand out by developing the typical conventions. While not all of our audience agreed that this was the right choice, I think that it made it more relevant and modern by showing a male as a victim and as powerless. While the idea of the 'final girl' being androgynous shows a modern equal view of women we decided instead to use a ‘final boy’ we did this for a few reasons:

• To make ours stand out and challenge the established character conventions

• To show a modern take

• It was easier to use a boy with all the stunts and effects we wanted to do (dragging down the stairs)

• We believed it followed some of the more modern conventions like Hostel and Saw which uses mainly male victims

Although it challenged the usual conventions I think that it worked, although not all of our audience agreed, and some felt because of having a male victim and detective it made our trailer appear to look more like a thriller showing the genre issues.

The ‘Male Gaze’ is a convention in horror and in a great deal of the media overall, however while we didn’t use it in the same ways, I think that while it doesn’t objectify the characters, it does show them from a powerful and dominant view, although not at a woman. Showing the victim as weak, although not in a sexual way still objectifies the main character, so while we weren’t able to incorporate the male gaze the effect of showing the character as weak was still accomplished.

Another part which most of our audience like was that the killer was kept hidden. Although in some horrors we see them, we don’t know who they are, or vice versa like in ‘Halloween’. For our trailer we used subjective POV shots  - which is a commonly used in 'classical horror' - and purposely didn’t show the killer, although we did use his voice on the voice over which our feedback was very positive about. They said the laugh in particular was very effective as it made them feel uneasy and made the killer appear mysterious as you could hear him but not see him. Our audience also liked that we only showed him at the end, and edited it so that it appeared that the camera was crackling so that you couldn’t see him in his entirety which most of our audience thought was a good ending, although again made it appear more of a thriller.

Camerawork - Feedback pointed out that there were some edgy shots which stood out, particularly the shot of the victim being dragged down the stairs, the reflection in the puddle, and the legs hanging.  Audience feedback was also positive about the camerawork, particularly like the canted angles which we used, a member of our class went of to say that it made her feel "uneasy and dizzy" when the camera canted in the shot of the victim hanging in the mirror showing how it affected our audience and our teacher commented that it was one of his favourite shots in our trailer as well as the shot where you can see the reflection of the killer coming down the stairs in the puddle.  A lot of my feedback off Facebook showed that the audience really liked the POV shots which we used (in the eyes of the killer), and strangely they felt as though they related to the killer, which is what we wanted as he is the main character, which is unlike most horror films. While this does challenge the main convention of the male gaze and identifying with the female I think it made our trailer more intense and stand out against the others. Also as the main audience of horror is male, it means that they are able to identify with a main protagonist more than an androgynous female.

Music/ voice-over - Music in horror trailers are known to build up tension which we attempted to replicate however our audience felt that it didn't work very well as it didn't build up enough tension and many weren't sure whether they liked how the music changed at the end near.  However some disagreed and felt it worked well with what was on screen and felt that the change to almost classical calm and unnerving music which was juxtaposed against the torture scene. Someone commented that it was reminiscent of 'Seven' which worked, although they also pointed out that this could make our trailer appear more like a thriller than a horror, which could be a genre issue.  Other aspects of the music which they liked was the synchronicity between the music and the shots.  They noticed the bangs which we created on 'Garage Band' worked well with the violence especially the shot of Sean hitting the bathroom wall at the beginning, the shot in black and white with Sean being stabbed and the shot of the killer hitting sean with the chair leg, feedback showed that it actually made some of them jump, which was the desired effect.  The voice over was received well, although some of my feedback from Facebook showed that not everyone agreed as some felt it was 'cheesy' however the 'evil laugh' they felt was unnerving and a good technique as it reinforced the sinister tone throughout. I was happy as it was a last minute idea during the editing process to make it more eery and to fill an empty space.

Mise-en-scene - Many commented on the good use of mise-en-scene mainly due to our choice of location, which all believed to work well as a horror, specifically they liked the 'grungy' texture on the walls and the good use of lighting.  Jody in our class especially liked our use of lighting especially before the victim was dragged down the stairs as she thought that it could be symbolic of freedom which I really liked the idea of.

Editing - It appears that the short and quick editing at the beginning worked well (bang scene) and with the slow tempo music at the start complimented what was on the screen, however many felt that it a faster editing pace would have worked better nearer the end to create more impact.

Gore and torture - Many liked our use of stunts (dragged down the stairs,  hitting the wall, hit with table leg) as not many groups used stunts, but felt that we should have shown more gore.

How could it be improved

The first shots were quite weak which we did agree with however we didn't have time to re-shoot it which was a shame. Using a male victim wasn't as popular as we had hoped, a lot of our audience felt that it could have been more effective overall if we had used a female victim which perhaps if we could redo it we may have tried, or added in another victim.  However Saw uses male victims and many modern horrors are beginning to use male victims also which we pointed out, and many felt that we should have taken out the detective as it complicated the narrative and gave a lot away, as well as making it more like a thriller than a horror.

Also many commented on how we could have showed more CU and POV of the victim so that the audience can relate to them better as they usually identify with the main protagonist.


While the music received a lot of positive feedback they didn't like it at the end as they  felt that it didn't build up tension as well as it should have as it was too slow paced, and felt that there wasn't much of a climax at the end which would have worked better.

While overall most of the feedback was positive and flattering of our final product many felt that it should have had quicker shots and faster paced editing to build up the tension more which some of the other trailers used with brilliant effect. Whilst we did intend to have a faster paced sequence at the end, we didn’t have enough shots and felt that it didn’t flow as well as the ending which made it into the final cut, but agreed with this feedback.  Our issues with editing which I have mentioned previously is that the structure issues with the victim appearing dead and then alive at the end.  As well as this our audience felt that we should have made our narrative easier to understand as we attempted to show two sides of the narrative with the two different voice overs and different camerawork, however our audience didn't think that this was clear enough as they didn't realise that the use of night vision was symbolic of the killers view, so they felt we should have either clarified this from the beginning or left it out as it was confusing.

Other suggestions were that we should take our the intertitle “coming to a basement near you” which we had had disagreements on between our group throughout the editing process, our feedback was that it was too 'gimmicky' and the movement wasn’t to everyone’s taste.  They also felt that we showed the killer for too long at the end, which I agree with as it took away from the intrigue as the audience felt satisfied, it would have worked better if we had just had a quick flash of his face and then cut to black as it is scarier not knowing.

The main feedback for improvement which we received was that we should have used more of the classical horror techniques specifically a final girl, more close ups and extreme close ups, more gore and a faster pace to create tension.   Audience feedback really helped, however I wish that we could have done it earlier on so that we could have used their suggestions for our final edit as they made some very good points, although we did edit the main parts they suggested.




How real distributors gain feedback


Film distributors gain feedback on there products in a similar way to this.  Before the campaign begins they research (like I did) similar products like posters and concepts and test these on a target audience.  They do this to make sure that there would be an audience for the film and so that they could direct this audience with the rest of the campaign and will meet their expectations.  During the campaign, they usually they hold a test screening before the final edit of the film and invite it's target audience to see it free of charge.  After watching the film the audience are usually given a questionnaire or interviewed in a 'focus group' to gain qualitative and quantitative data feedback.  From this feedback mainly, the film is then re-edited to appeal further to it's audience.  While it wasn't a movie, a well known example of this was the music video for Britney Spears 'Everytime' where the end was her dying, assumably from suicide, her fans and audience who first saw this were so distressed with the ending that it had to be reshot and changed.