What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We screened our trailer in our class, which are full of our target audience of 18year olds, (with the target audience being 18-25 year olds). We asked the audience each what they thought were good points and things that needed to be improved for our trailer, and so I recorded notes of their ideas and opinions.


Mise-en-scene 

• The audience felt that the CCTV editing made our trailer unique and effective, as we were determined to make the trailer seem realistic with a narrative to why their was a camera filming the action.
• They also felt that the location of a normal house was effective because the horror was more realistic and they could link the horror the existing films like 'Paranormal Activity' which is a popular horror that involves mostly CCTV.
• Some of the audience said they would have liked to have seen more gore and death, but this was due to personal preference.
• Trailers are specifically designed for the audience to be given flashes of shots that are not in the same sequence during the film, the audience did agree that we were successful with this because we gave numerous shots that would be in different parts of the film without giving too much information away about the plot.
• Most trailers have the name of the film come up at the end of the film, and we followed this idea as it worked well with our last scene that would scare the audience.

Camera Work/Editing

• The audience felt that there was a good use of ranging shots, with the swings moving, with the slow zooming in to the girls face when she's rocking being one of the audiences favourite. Other shots they particularly liked that were effective as both a teaser trailer shot and following conventions of horror are:- the morph face at the end, the establishing shot of the home, when the girls on the swings and repetitive shots of the girl rocking. They felt the swings created a very effective shot to the horror convention as they were swinging absently, being binary opposites of innocence. 
• The editing that the audience liked was the morph of the face at the end of the trailer, this was a particular unique shot that brought our trailer to light. The build up to the end shot of the morph was complimented on, as the pace was effective. 
• However the criticisms were that they felt like they needed more information about the narrative and there was a lack of clarity with the narrative, they also wanted the pace to be faster throughout the trailer. The shot of the girl rocking was also said to be used too many times, which I can agree with looking back at the trailer.

Sound

• The audience generally agreed that the soundtrack worked well with the trailer, with the music having no bad transitions with the voice-overs/crackling with inter titles and change to heartbeats or the growl at the end. The audience also said that the sound allowed them to know the genre and built up the plot of the film because of the style we chose.
• They also said that the crackling effect with the inter titles and also with the bad TV/CCTV shots were effective as this gave the scare-factor of the sound and made the CCTV seem more relevant and important to the trailer
• The audience stated the voice overs helped shape the narrative and explained what was going on in the shots, also they liked that the voice overs were from various characters rather than one main voice.
• Criticisms of the sound were that the voice-overs could have been made clearer as well as the fact the one that was supposed to be the doctor giving the parents advice didn't fit well which is what some of the audience felt.

Overall
Overall I feel that there was mostly good feedback about the trailer and some of the people did jump when the morph face came up, they felt that the trailer was unique as well as being typical as a horror teaser trailer. 
I feel like the negative comments are helpful with knowing what we would change and realising ourselves that when seeing the trailer altogether for a audience that it is aimed at, that some of the narrative could be shown more. 
I think that what has been said about the trailer has established that we have successfully created a horror teaser trailer, with effective camera angles, exciting shots and a dramatic sound mix.