What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Through audience feedback i have found out what my target audience of 16 to 25 year olds think of my trailer. I have aimed at both male and females to bring in a larger audience and i feel the narrative and the use of female characters have encouraged this.

I discovered that there was a contrast of opinions on the same shots, the use of music and also the setting. There were particular features of my trailer that all of the audience seemed to think were successful. To start, everyone liked the ending of my trailer as the volume of the music was kept high which added to the pace during this point and influenced on a large impact finish. Also at the end of my trailer the audience enjoyed the shot with Bloody Mary jumping forward into the camera when she hisses as it seemed to make a few people in the audience jump and quite scared. As a well known horror convention, close ups appeared to be a positive of my trailer. This was said especially with the chracter who plays Bloody Mary and the shot where she has blood coming out of her eyes as tears. A shot that everyone seemed to be fond of was the tap shots during the middle of the trailer and the way they linked back to the beginning where the two girls are in the toilets. Also because they have blood dripping from them and gave a sense of creepiness and mystery.

There was contrasting views on the next aspects of my horror trailer. The shot where we see someones legs being dragged around a corner with blood on the floor was liked by some of the audience as they thought it was an effective shot in the sense of showing them that the "monster" has killed someone and is carrying the body away so it can't be seen. Although a small proportion of the audience felt that it looked as though the feet in the drag shot were too far away from the trail of the blood and it may have not been that persons blood. The other shot that the audience didn't seem to agree on was the hanging shot where you just see, from a low angle, the bottom half of someones legs swaying with a church in the background as though they have just been hung. What some of the audience thought was interesting was the idea of mystery behind was has just happened with the victim and the church in the background that ties in with religion, which is a used horror genre in mass market production of real horror films.

Some of the audience however weren't too keen on the use of shots being in an exterior location and felt that the use of both interior and exterior locations throughout the trailer was slightly confusing and misleading. The audience also picked out the narrative structure of my trailer and thought that it established the characters as being pupils in the school toilets and that by saying "Bloody Mary" three times that it would unleash terrible and unknown consequences. From the other point of view a small amount of the audience felt that it went from normality, then suddenly came into the action of the events that unfold.

The following features weren't liked by the audience. A strong feeling was that the music that was used throughout the majority of the trailer was to action like and maybe would be used from a sci-fi type film. Continuing with music nobody thought the transition of the slow eerie music at the start to the faster paced music was that successful as it happend to quick and didn't allow a bigger enough lead in. A final point that people thought could have been improved was the shot of Bloody Mary walking through the graveyard. In the shot we see her as just walking through as if everything was normal and didn't let off any sinister or frightening expressions to make the audience scared.

From asking the class, the response was that the majority of people were sufficiently "teased". This was said to be as the trailer progressed and mainly through the middle section as there was fast cuts with the aid of the music that built up suspense within the viewers and produced uncertainty of what would happen at the end. At the very end of the trailer, with the shot of "Bloody Mary" jumping into the camera and hissing with the use of "booms" integrated into the soundtrack felt like a realistic ending to a teaser trailer according to the class. As a whole, again most of the class said they would want to go and see the movie if it was released at the cinema although the ones who didn't was because they didn't understand how the trailer went from a normal day where school chilren are in the toilets to the odd events that followed.

Overall, i feel that my horror trailer was successful with a lot of the interior shots as the use of lighting was effective for what was trying to be created. Which is to make a product that would draw in a mass audience and for the product to be realistic as if it was a normal trailer on the market. Also we seemed to manage to integrate a narrative strucure that worked well with a school being introduced at the sart of the trailer and the events unravelling from that point. Possibly the exterior shots could have worked if we shot them in the dark or later in the day so we didn't have as large a contrast between the brightness of the interior and exterior shots.

In respect of the comments i received back from the audience i feel i would definately change a few aspects of my teaser trailer. The main issue for improvement would be to make the contrast in music between the two pieces more subtle and to lead the story into the main part as a gradual transition instead of sudden. Due to audience feedback i would consider changing the main piece of soundtrack that runs through most of the teaser trailer. It would still have pace and create tension but try and find a soundtrack that was more dark and eerie. I would also probably limit the shots to interior locations even though i feel that a couple of the exterior shots worked well, such as the hanging shot. I would redo the beginning and probably film this section in a house instead and have it filmed when it is night to follow horror conventions more effectively.
In light of my audience feedback i have decided to change the end of my horror teaser trailer. Originally the order of the shots was the jump cuts of "Bloody Mary" coming down the stairs followed by the shot of "Bloody Mary" jumping into the camera and hissing as a close up and then the two inter-titles of "Bloody Mary" then finishing with "Coming To Cinemas 10/10/10". After altering this the new order is "Bloody Mary" coming down the stairs followed by the two inter-titles of "Bloody Mary" and "Coming To Cinemas 10/10/10" and then finishing with the close up shot of "Bloody Mary" jumping into the camera and hissing. I feel this has improved the end in terms of the audience, in my opinion, will feel as though the trailer has finished but it really hasn't and would make people jump a lot more than it did in the previous order. Although i said i would have liked to change the part of the teaser trailer where there is a large contrast in music between the two soundtracks and make this more subtle, i have not managed to do this because i would have wanted to re-film the very beginning of the trailer as well but this couldn't be done due to deadlines and other work that had to be completed.