What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Following the completion of our teaser trailer we obtained audience feedback. This feedback was gained during a media studies lesson. Each group’s trailer was screened to the audience. Each member of the class then had to come up with one thing good about it as a horror text and one thing bad about it as a horror text. They then had to comment on one thing good about it as a teaser trailer, and one thing bad about it as a teaser trailer.
The age rating for our film was 18. This was decided upon as we wanted people to feel that it would be a mature film and that it would contain a lot of gore conventionally of the horror genre. We also realised that people under the age would still find a way to see the film and want to see it more because they are not suppose to.
The target audience are teenagers and people in their twenties. Men are also more partial to the horror genre. This worked out well as our class members were all 17-19. So our feedback was from our target audience.

The audience had some negative comments on the trailer as a teaser. The audience felt that the soundtrack only works during the first part of the teaser that ends with the car screeching to a halt. After this it was commented that the music fell flat as the clips build up pace however the music remained the same. Some also felt that the soundtrack could have been improved by some dialogue, although others liked that there wasn’t any. It was commented that the shot of the eye closing at the end of the teaser didn’t fit in with the rest of the teaser. It was decided that the photoshoot sound effects were overused, although some people were in favour of these. This sequence gained praise from others as they liked the binary opposites of models and then the death/bloody bodies.
There was also a lot of positive feedback on the teaser as a horror text. Many people enjoyed the mise-en-scene especially the forest location and enjoyed the darkness of the lighting. Many of the shots angles were praised for example the shot of the hand being dragged across the ground, the axe going into the tree, the shot of the girl running following her closely then switching to be in front of her, the killer emerging out from behind the tree and the close-ups of the girls tied up. It was noted that the rain and blood made it look like they were sweating and in true panic. The part where there is a close-up of a text, a reaction shot from the girl, followed by the shot of the killer in the rear-view mirror was also praised as working well together. There were also positives about it as a teaser trailer. Our intertitles were praised by the way the cliché term “beauty is only skin deep” was twisted by adding “a knife goes deeper”. The opening of the teaser with the car driving sequence and ending by screeching to a halt was praised by our teacher. He stated that it looked like a professional production and the continuity was praised. It was also liked, how not too much narrative infromation was given, as it teased the audience into wanting to see more. There were many positive comments on how well the teaser advertised the film. Many commented that they did want to see the film after seeing the trailer. One person commented that they wanted to fill in the gaps in the narrative. Another though the idea of models being turned upside down was very interesting, and that they would want to see more of the film to gain insight into the killer’s mind