Audience feedback is extremely important when producing an ad campaign for a film. It gives produces and distributors information and ideas of how to edit their trailer and also how to advertise it to make sure that it appeals to their target audience. This includes ideas for the music in the trailer, the storyline, text/font used within the trailer, type of language used. The movie poster is another thing that must look appealing to the target audience because it helps to compliment the trailer. Colours are very important and must suit the genre of the film. For example, use of red and white on black are conventional colours for a horror trailer.
We had a screening in class of everybody's trailers. This was our main source of audience feedback. The demographics of our target audience would be male or females, aged between about 17 and 25, so the screening was played to the correct audience. The trailer was played on a big screen twice and students took notes about the trailer - giving constructive criticism and also commenting on parts of the trailer which they thought worked particularly well. This was extremely beneficial to us because as they fitted our ideal demographics it meant that we would be able to edit it in a way to appeal to them. Our group was also involved and we did this for other trailers. Other sources of audience feedback includes parents and friends watching the trailer and giving advice. All of our feedback has been very helpful. Even as we watched the screening of the trailer ourselves, this gave us some ideas of what we should improve too. Each person was giving a sheet to fill in with different sections. As mentioned above, there was a section to write about parts which worked well in the trailer, favourite sections or shots for example. There was also a section for parts which should be improved and a section for any additional comments on the trailer. Each student filled this in according to their opinion of the trailer. As a group we read through the feedback and wrote down the points separately onto a blog post. This meant that the information was easy to read, understand and refer to when reworking our trailer.
After looking through and writing up our feedback as group we then decided on the things we needed to edit. We decided to add in some different clips that we left out so that we had a better variety of shot types. A lot of people said that this was needed when they watched our trailer. Another popular comment was that the montage section of our trailer wasn't 'pacey' enough. We took this into account and we not only sped up the montage, but we took a closer look and realised that not all the clips in the montage had equal timing and it looked a little odd. Now we have changed it so that all the clips fit together nicely and it runs smoothly and much faster than before. There were some shots that were included in the good feedback section, but again the speed didn't seem right. For example we have a shot of a hand sliding down a door. Many people particularly liked this shot but believed that it was maybe a little too slow. Other people wrote that they thought it was a good contrast to have a slow shot after some faster ones. We discussed this as a group and decided to agree that actually it was a little too slow, so we sped it up slightly but it's still much slower than some of our other shots. This is to create variety in shot types/lengths, to make the trailer more interesting. Some other comments we had involved the sound. Some people thought that the sound needed another look. We went back and looked at the sound and added in a little bit and changed the timing of some as well. We didn't completely change the sound however, because some people wrote that they liked the sound and thought it was effective. One particular mishap was noticed when screening our trailer. There was some talking over the hand sliding clip which we had forgotten to take out and had not noticed when working on it at our own computer. This was easily fixed. The main issue with our trailer at first was that the audience were a little confused as to the plot and the relevance of certain shots. To help make it more clear we moved around certain clips in the hope that the trailer would then make more sense. For example there is a shot at the end of our trailer of a girl standing by a gate, seen through some car headlights. Earlier on in the trailer we had shown the main character driving, so we thought this made sense, however because of the time between the two shots the audience had got confused. To make it clearer we moved the shot of her driving to just before the headlights shot. This should clear things up for the audience.
There are some things which definitely worked in the trailer, such as the acting of our main girl, and the fact that we filmed in the dark to create tension and fear. These points were mentioned by the audience after the screening. Another clip that was particularly liked was the hand sliding down the door shot towards the end of the trailer. Main points mentioned that were positive was the location and lighting. Many people said that the haunted house idea worked really well. The establishing shot at the beginning of the trailer seemed to be popular as well. We thought to include this because it's a horror convention. A few people said that they liked the music - which we created ourselves on Garage band. It's simple yet effective. We didn't want to overload the trailer with lots of random sounds. We believed that high pitched strings were very effective as they would keep the audience of the edge of their seats. Another shot which was liked by the audience was the stairs and mirror shot. We decided to use long shots of the main girl walking up the stairs and looking in the mirror. We angled our camera so that it was not seen in the mirror. We then quickly cut to the same clip but with an added character/ghost standing in the corner of the shot.
Watching each other's trailers definitely benefited us because we saw the reactions of an audience and which bits worked and which didn't. There were a few rather random and unhelpful comments but other than that it was very interesting to look at. As I've mentioned in the paragraph above, we took the feedback very seriously and we editing nearly everything that was mentioned by the audience.
The clip below shows Adam Nelson, a member of my group, talking about the audience feedback.
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