Evaluation: Part 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our first piece of audience feedback came from the focus group screening we had in class. During this the audience had to fill in short questionnaires about the trailer, and their was also a class discussion with was recorded on film. We were really delighted at the level of positive feedback we received from our trailer, and this encouraged us to work even harder on improving the quality of our trailer to try and gain the highest mark possible. Out of the six trailers that we saw in class ours received the highest mark which was an average of 8.5/10 from each student, which myself and my group were very happy about. The students in class only highlighted a few concepts which we could improve on in order to gain a higher mark which was very positive as they couldn’t see much that could be improved on.

The positive feedback we received from the focus group screening were similar to my own personal opinion of "The Possessed" trailer, quotes from students such as; “it was well put together and really does have the look of a true handheld trailer” and “camera angles/shots worked well towards a handheld trailer”. Feedback such as this was what we were hoping for as we were trying to create a good handheld trailer which our target audience actually like which has been proven difficult in other handheld films other than "The Blair Witch Project". A comment that praised our editing was “the style and pace of the end scene of the jumpy close up of the possessed monster left the end of the trailer with a good impact”. This was excellent as we worked very hard on the end scene in terms of editing on how we could make it jumpy. In fact, in the focus group screening, it's possible to hear and see a couple of audience members jump. This shows how successful the collision cutting was. 

 

 

In order to try and gain this effect on the audience we tried to build up the tension, and one audience member said the trailer was “atmospheric and jumpy”. The atmospheric comment probably refers to when we are walking down the staircase into the cellar and how the takes are longer to build suspense. The camera also starts to go wrong more often and the flicks the "white noise" lead to restricted narration and the audience feel they are missing something. However I think the final "jump" of the possessed Ford jumping towards the handheld camera at Courtnay is the most effective bit. This really helps stick "The Possessed" in the viewer’s mind.

 

However the feedback I was most pleased with was comments such as; “generally looked real” and “it looked natural and believable,” with the mise-en-scene and acting both credibly convincing. The reason I was so happy with this feedback is because this is what we were aiming for when deciding to create a handheld trailer. As the camera is from my point of view, the audience is placed into my shoes throughout. If the audience feedback is right, just like "Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield" our trailer for "The Possessed" seemed to achieve the same feeling of "being there" which instantly makes a horror more terrifying.

We were also given constructive criticism which we took into account in order to improve upon our trailer. There was a few people who agreed that we used the “Distorted static possibly too much,” we listened to our audience feedback and made changes to the final trailer and reduced the amount of static effect which a lot of people agreed improved the trailer overall. Also another comment which was “could have been creepier” let to further changes in the final scene. I decided to add a face morphing effect using ‘Adobe After Effects’ to the final jumpy scene to show that Ford is more of a ‘quick monster’ since his possession instead of just a normal human. This is scarier and shocks the audience more than it did in the orginal version of "The Possessed" trailer.

There were criticisms given by other students which I didn’t agree with, one being “Possibly the camera was too shaky” and the other being “Text at the beginning could have been on two different slides.” The reason I didn’t agree with these comments is because of the type and style of horror we were trying to produce. We were heavily inspired by "The Blair Witch Project’s" (1999) amateurish, documentary style of production and also "The Tunnel" (2011) which is an Australian film also recorded using the handheld style. We wanted to recreate this realistic approach and that is why the camera is shaky throughout to create a sense of documentary style realism. We really weren’t aiming to create a blockbuster, high budget looking trailer which is possibly what that particular viewer preferred. "The Possessed" is aimed at a niche market and is very much an ‘indie’ movie with a low budget to capture the amateur documentary style. And our choice of characters (as seen below) seemed to appeal to our target audience of 15-35 years according to the very positive evaluation screening.

I believe that "The Possessed" also successfully appeals to general horror fans who like handheld films such as "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) and "The Tunnel" (2011) but also people who are into more psychological horrors such as "The Exorcist" (1973) and the "Paranormal Activity" series of films. The genre of these horrors I have mentioned including my trailer "The Possessed" are realistic horrors which focus more on tense and creepy atmospheric aspects and cinematography in replace of body horror which is evident in horror films such as George A. Romero’s "Dawn of the Dead" (1978).

The comments in the final evaluation screening confirmed that the trailer was a success with our target audience. As you can see from the video, the vast majority of comments are positive. Overall both mine and the audience’s favourite aspect of the trailer was the final jumpy scene. The build up to it we use long cuts in order to build up the tension. Then as we approach the possessed Ford and turn him around unknowing that he has been possessed the bad TV effect comes into play. The effect is used for a few seconds on purpose so that the audience doesn’t expect the jumpy element that is coming. Collision cutting then comes into play where fast paced montage editing is used to shock the audience when Ford appears and quickly jumps at the camera. The enclosed location we recoded the scene in makes the audience feel trapped which works perfectly with the handheld aspect which in effect makes them feel that they are also trapped. This, along with the low key lighting contributes to the creepy use of mise-en-scene shown in the clip.

I was particularly happy in the evaluation screening that the audience thought that our ending scene had improved due to Ford's face being "morphed" on Adobe After Effects. This clearly shows that audience feedback can be very useful as this point had been highlighted in the focus group screening. Audience feedback definitely helped "The Possessed" improve and hopefully become a successful horror trailer.