Evaluation Question 4What have you learnt from audience feedback?

The average score for our trailer was 7/10, which I am reasonably happy with but would have preferred for it to be more successful. The music and intertitles were the most successful aspect of our trailer which I completely agree with and am glad the audience felt this too; I think that the intertitles are perfect and fit really well with the theme of the movie. Our intertitles are similar to those featured in the trailer for The Babadook (2014) in the sense that they are both ‘broken’ and both connote the theme of the movie. For our trailer, the broken glass symbolises the broken mind of Leo (Oliver Butler) and the intertitles for The Babadook (2014) represent the torn pages of the story book and how it tries to tear the family apart.

The music is also very effective and adds more of a horror atmosphere. The clear narrative was also something that was successful, which I would agree with. We included a shot of the main character Leo (Oliver Butler) firing the gun in the flashback with the drinking session to explain why he has been driven to be suicidal and isolate himself from society.People also seemed to like the editing, effects and body horror which I think is good because I put a lot of effort into trying to get the editing and effects spot on. I don’t think they turned out perfectly but for someone with almost no experience with editing I think it’s reasonably good.

The body horror I personally didn’t think was that successful which I expected from a student trailer due to the low budget, and I don’t really think it was as effective as it could have been. I think that the reason this didn’t work was twofold. Firstly, the time we had to do it was minimal and there was only really one lesson where we had time to film these scenes and secondly, the fake blood doesn’t look realistic enough due to the low budget.Our most occurring negative feedback was the lack of varied locations. Most scenes in the trailer are filmed in a house and the audience felt that there should have been more diverse mise-en-scene. I personally feel as though it works for most of it to be in one location because it shows how Leo (Oliver Butler) has become depressed and is broken, so stays in one place and doesn’t engage with the world.

Another comment made quite a lot was the fact that the back story wasn’t very clear and we needed more scenes showing what actually happened to Leo, which I agree with. The audience also felt that the trailer needed more body horror which I don’t think is necessarily true. Our trailer is a hybrid of three sub-genres and gore isn’t the primary one and so to add more body horror in would highlight the gory horror sub-genre too much and make it the primary one. If anything, we aimed slightly more towards the psychological horror genre, which can be seen through our emphasis on Leo’s fracturing personality.

The lighting also seemed to be a problem during the evaluation process. With the trailer and people felt that we needed to alter the brightness and contrast of the clips a little bit more, which I completely agree with. Two people said the narrative wasn’t clear but most others said it was very clear and so I think maybe certain people didn’t grasp the narrative first time but I don’t think this is a problem.After the focus group, we decided we needed to make a couple of last minute changes in response to the criticisms I’ve highlighted. As a result, the evaluation screening went reasonably well. I was quite happy with the feedback and the criticism was quite constructed and suggested ideas for how we could make it better.

The most suggested last minute changes for us to make were to add some more back-story to the trailer in the form of flashbacks which also solves the problem of not enough variation in the location. We also consciously edited the brightness and contrast of the clips to help with the dark, horror aesthetics of the trailer. Our average score was 7/10 which isn’t bad but I would have been happier with an 8 or 9. However, considering there were issues with my group – especially with one of the team being absent for long periods and arranging enough filming time - I think we did quite well.