Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After we completed our trailer and ancillary tasks our trailer, along with everyone elses, was screened to the class so we could get feedback.

Since our target audience and the general target audience for horror is 18 to 25 year olds or young adults we felt that the feedback would be perfect as everyone in the class fits into that age range, mostly leaning towards the lower end however. 

The responses, both good and bad, are as follows:

·         Our overall story was well-received, the idea of a classic and TEENAGE SLASHER movie.

·         Whilst people liked the idea some thought the narrative was unclear, partially down to bad quality voice over (The actual sound quality that is) and confusion in the identity of the killer. Whilst some would view this as bad we were aiming for this when we were filming, our research that was done prior to filming told us people liked Psychological horror so we threw in some elements into the trailer that were meant to confuse as to who the killer actually is



The hardest part of making the gory effects work was trying to stop owen from swallowing the fake blood!

·         The special effects were praised, especially the gory effects used, however some people thought that the amount of gore and death was overkill and that whilst it looked good too many characters were killed off in the trailer leading them to feel like they needn't watch the movie as they know the fates of the characters just from watching the trailer. Despite this we felt that as a horror and particularly a teen slasher it's common knowledge that almost every character dies anyway and that they reason for our audience disliking the amount of deaths shown was more to do with the fact that the death scenes are key points in a slasher movie and that showing too many was almost like showing the Death Star being blown up in the trailer for Star Wars.

·         Many people liked the visual effects used on the trailers titles, which used a series of pre-set effects as well as some simple key-frame scaling and fades.

Jason Voorhees - An inspiration!

·         A few thought our "killer" was a good, chilling, antagonist. We opted for a more Jason Voorhees style antagonist as opposed to a ghost or paranormal force which was what we had originally planned to use. Whilst I believe there is a thin line between scary and non-scary when it comes to showing and familiarising the audience with a slasher movie killer I think we got it right by literally keeping our killer in the dark for most shots where he is present. In fact it was suggested that one shot, a close up of his face, should be darker because he is too visible. 

·         People enjoyed the soundtrack choice which was composed from small audio clips we made in Garageband and a series of royalty-free music tracks and sound effects found online. The beginning of the trailer uses some slow paced, eerie music to help build tension and when we get near the end and what I like to call the "Montage of death" the music turns into a fuller sounding piece where not only the texture is built up but also the tempo is. Not only did this help us with the pacing throughout the trailer which our audience mostly thought worked well  but the final piece had a few sharp notes played on string instruments and we took advantage of this by syncing up some of our clips, for example our character Dave running through a doorway and slamming the door behind him, to those notes which both us and our audience feel worked well.



This scene was praised well, it even got a few scares!

·       The ending to our trailer where our killer grabs our character Charlie from behind her car seat seemed to work well, not only was it mentioned frequently in our feedback but during our screening it even managed to make a few people jump which was exactly the response we were hoping for!

In conclusion I feel that with our audience feedback our trailer was generally enjoyed. Whilst there are parts we could improve and we will most certainly do, the trailer was shown to employ good use of both horror conventions and trailer conventions and we believe that this is what led most people to enjoy it.