Evaluation Question 3.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Once we felt our trailer was up to a successful standard we then presented it to our class. We asked them each for three positive points and three negative points. We were looking for aspects that we needed to tweak and make better and parts which worked well. We received a wide range of feedback.

Positive points

Graveyard good setting x3

Good shot with mask x3

Good lighting x2

Good head shakes x4

Lurking in trees shot

Good sound effects x7 - "Draws the audience in well","Good, creepy horror feel to it"

Good shots in the night

Good ending shot x3

Nice shadows

The standing out point for our trailer was our use of sound effects to draw the audience in and create a suspense within our trailer. Comments made on this point was that it "Draws the audience in well" and that it has "Good, creepy horror feel to it". The sound was


A feint shot of myself being spotted
by Kieran and Louis.

The main setting of
our trailer.

a key feature in building up the suspense in our trailer and helped define what type of category the movie would be placed in too, so I am very happy people agree with the sound that we produced. We also tried to create suspense with the character played by Louis Caseley, as you are able to see the steps he takes to becoming insane, using the head shakes you see in the trailer. This was another key point we wanted to include in our trailer to show the crazy, delusional side of his character and with 4 people agreeing with it we believe it was successful. Another specific idea we wanted was a setting which gave you ideas of what type of movie it would be and Kieran Browne is looking for his friend, Louis Caseley and stumbles into a pitch black area in the church where myself, Isaac Reeder is waiting for him to appear and notice me as I lurk behind his shoulder, the shot is only a few seconds long and is built up with the suspense of the sound effects to make the shot more effective, two other people pointed this out in our class as well so I am happy other people realised what we were trying to show with this shot.somewhere which no one else would have in the trailer. The abandoned ruins/graveyard which we shot in was one of a kind and not included in anyone else's trailer, making it individual and key to our trailer, three people approved our setting scheme and said that it helped shape the genre specific idea we were looking to create. Our main shot used in our trailer involving two of the characters is where Kieran Browne is looking for his friend and stumbles into my path without noticing. The audience can see what is about to happen but he can't, creating a scary suspense. Three people agreed that this shot worked well with the suspense of the music and worked well at the end of the trailer too. The head shaking in our trailer was to show a suspect feeling of insanity and craziness. We wanted to single out Louis Caseley to have this effect throughout the trailer without creating a storyline in the trailer rather than in the film. People said that the effect worked as it made them watch his every move in the trailer and said it worked well with the aspect we were trying to create. With the night setting in the background of our trailer it created a much more scary scene, we wanted the dark to create a tense and intimidating atmosphere, but it did make it tricky to film certain bits and get the footage across without it being poor quality, which is why we had to use lighting effects whilst we filmed and on the computer. Two people picked up on our lighting effects so im glad they see the effort put into trying to get good quality clips included. Overall I am very happy with the positive feedback that we received as a group for our trailer. We spent a lot of time making specific parts very detailed and to the best standard we could so it is great to receive positive recognition for these areas. 

Snippet of the head shake
in our trailer.

 

                                                                     Negative points

   Could be longer x3

Text too hard to read x5-"Wobbling too much"

Needs more scary scenes x2

Camera work out of focus x2

No storyline x4

More locations x2

No final shot x5

Little pace at ending

One of the settings used in our
trailer, points made that more
settings could of been used.

With the positives come the negative points and criticism. Parts which we thought looked well and had our teacher agree with too, others flagged as amateur and needed remodelling. The one which stuck out the most was the use of our text. The red wobbling text we thought fitted well with the


The red wobbling text used in our trailer.

horror aspect, linking in the colour red with the associated use of blood, which our teacher also agreed with and said looked very nice. However five people thought that it should be changed and that it was "Wobbling too much", the text would be something we would recreate and look at again in a way that people would find it easier to read and flow with the storyline of the trailer.  Something else pointed out was that our trailer didn't follow any sort of a storyline. Before we started making our trailer we were told that they did not need a storyline as we were trying to sell the movie to the audience in order for them to witness the full story line when they eventually saw the movie, so I wasn't too sure why a storyline was a relevant negative point. For or the positive side we had three people say that our final shot was good, but five people complain that we had no final shot. There was an issue with a final shot we had included in our trailer after the final text appeared that it had been deleted the day before we were due to show our trailer to the class for feedback, so we were aware of the no final shot issue that five people picked up on. It was an issue that we were trying to fix but didn't have enough time to remake the clips to the standard and time we had put into the clip, it wouldn't reflect against the other clips used in our trailer. I agree that we could of used more locations within our trailer, as it could of drawn more people in to watching it if more scary locations were used. The out of focus use in the camera was used on purpose to try and give it a more frightening effect, as it was a horror trailer. However I also agree that it could of been longer, but we didn't want to give too much away, and the use of the quick clips keeps you on your toes and drawn into what is on the screen, but others have different opinions and we will take the feedback on board. The full trailer was only 1:30 long, I think it may of been longer but we didnt want our scenes to drag on too much as we wanted to build pace and suspense towards the end of the scene, so we wanted something around the minute and a half mark, some may disagree but we felt it fitted in well.

A shot which people complained about
being blurred.

Overall we appreciated the comments we received as it shew us the areas in which we excelled in and places which needed improvement. However some areas we put in purely because we thought it looked good, others may disagree but we felt it was fitting to the style model we were looking to fill. With the trailer shown I feel we reached our target audience well with the techniques used. The main piece of criticism that I will take on board was more scenery and settings could of been used, if ever given the chance to edit my work I would definitely use more creepy and intimidating settings.