Evaluation Activity 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Above I have posted our audience feedback that we took in class, after hearing our audience feedback we went back and improved all the reponses we got from our audience.

• My group and I had decided that we did not want to base our trailer on just one other trailer, instead we wanted to take many features from other trailers that we had enjoyed, found exciting, frightening and overall stood out to us against other trailers.

• With these different features, we then formed the inspiration for our own trailer. Such as the bench scene whereby Emma was sitting alone which was really original and we had seen this scene used successfully in other films such as '500 Days Of Summer' which gave the image of the character as a victim in the film.

• Before deciding on our final music for our trailer, my group and I looked into other trailers which had the music playing through the intertitles which we thought worked effectively throughout the trailers. Many of the trailers we looked into had really effective music in creating a tense mood to the audience. This is a typical feature you find in horror trailers and so we looked into many non-diegetic music tracks from non copywright websites and chose our music to create the same intense atmosphere with our audience. We are really pleased with the way in which the music fits in with the footage in the trailer.

• I also feel that the fast montage editing in our trailer really suggests the horror genre of our trailer, although there are a few longer shots in our trailer, we have still managed to create a conventional film trailer.

I think that the strengths of our teaser trailer are:

• The music for our trailer worked well in which it managed to represent the genre of our film. The music managed to create a tense vibe throughout the trailer, keeping the audience in suspense.

• I thought the titles that we managed to create, with the black background and white writing and also blurring out the writing towards the end of each word really exaggerated the features of the titles. We thought this worked effectively throughout the whole trailer which kept the audience intrigued.

• My group and I used a range of different locations which fitted into the horror genre. I think this worked effectively as we used locations such as woods, house, alley ways which followed typical conventions in a horror film and by having our trailer in more than one location it made it more believable to the audience. By using a variety of locations if created an extra advantage by highlighting features with in the scenes such as when the victims eyes move, sensing a vibe of vulneralbility and something is not right, or when the 'stalker/killer' is looking through the window stalking the victim. I feel that if we did not use the variety of locations, the audience may not find our trailer realistic and believable.

• What I also thought worked well, was being able to edit in a scream right at the end of the trailer, just after you see the victim walking through the alley way, which then cuts to showing the 'stalker' following on behind. I would say this is quite un-conventional as I haven't seen this happen in many film trailers.

• I also feel that the way in which we edited the shots together, by using a variety of transitions and effects, was also a strength as the audience do not know much about the narration but understand the characters and their roles, due to the non-linear narrative in a film trailer.

I think the weaknesses of our teaser trailer are:

• I feel that one of the things that we should have done better was include a bit more dialogue, as we had very little dialogue which you could barely hear due to the music running over the footage throughout the trailer.

• Even though we were making a trailer and trailers aren't supposed to give away too much of the narrative, I feel that we could have improved the narrative a little better. We didn't follow too much of the story line that we had written before hand, by which this made it harder for ourselves.

• I also feel that we could have improved on our transitions, editing together each shot to follow on from one to the other. We could have improved this by picking different transitions to make our trailer run more smoothly, possibly adding in a few more flash's.

Comments that we had recieved over social networking sites:

From putting our film on the social netowrking site Facebook, my group and I gained many comments which I have placed under particular questions.

In what ways does my trailer remind you of other trailers?

• 'I like the way in which you have used fast past shots which you find in many trailers such as 'The Strangers'.
• I think it looks effective how you have used credits at the end of your trailer.

What do you think are the strengths of my trailer?

• 'I think the contrast between the Black and White colour scheme, it fits in well with the genre of the film'.
• 'I really like how the music fits in with the film, I definitely felt that the music in some places matched bits of the footage, by the way in which it started to create tense in some parts'.
• ' Well done guys, I thought this was good! Liked how you used a variety of locations which made it look realistic.
• 'The scream at the end I thought worked really well, and it was good how it came in just after the characters went off screen'.

What do you think are the weaknesses?

• 'One thing you could have done was put it more fast past shots towards the end of the trailer to give the audience more suspense, other than that I thought it was good'.
• 'I think one thing that would have made it just that bit better, would have been maybe adding in a voice over?'
• 'You didn't have much dialogue in your trailer, maybe you could have added in some dialogue from the stalker'

Overall I am please with what my group and I have managed to produced and that it is indeed an effective horror trailer, I think that should we have had more time than we could have edited our trailer further, after hearing our audience feedback, correcting our weaknesses.