What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

There were equally, as expected, positive and negative points made by the audience of the screening of my trailer. There were many positive comments on the use of the demonically possessed girl crawling out of the cupboard. Although, what it was about the girl that people said was good, they were unclear about. Similar opinions were made about the scene with the bed strangling and blinking effect in between some shots. A few people made a comment on the demonic eye make-up, saying that it had a truely horrific look to it. The candle light was said to be very effective for motivated lighting, as with the torch-light in the woods. But there were some issues with other shots being too bright in daylight. The mirror writing was said to be very good as well, but no specific points were made as to why. However there was a negative point made about the mirror shot, apparently there was not enough time to see what the girl was writing. This would be something to think of if I do something like this in the future. The use of night vision was said to be effective in combination with the motivated lighting as it gave the trailer some added darkness to go with the dark theme. A positive link to the use of night vision was the way the audience complimented on the transition from indoors to outdoors, however a negative was that some of the daylight shots, i have mentioned before, were too bright and therefore spoilt the quality of the shots. The point of view shots, as the audience explained, were very effective at putting them in the place of the villain and the main protagonists at the same time. Mostly due to camera angles and movements like the freehand crabbing and camera lift from the floor. The audience also commented on the effectiveness of the tease itself. They said how they wanted to find out what this entity was that was featured in the trailor and how the story would turn out. This I found particularly reassuring that I had achieved what the trailor was meant to do. These points I shall be sure to keep in mind if I do another production like this in the future.

Like with any critique, there were some negative points. There were some issues concerning the inter-titles, the audience said that they appeared too much like they belong to another genre. Particularly, the audience was unsure about the quality of using the flashing title montage of "blood, death pain and demons", they seemed to think it didn't stand out very well and also that they didn't get the chance to read it properly. There were several complaints about the narrative of the trailer. There was no particular storyline evident from the trailer and characters seemed to be cropping up randomly making it hard to keep track of the villains and the protagonists. Sound-wise, complaints were few and far between, but there was a point which an audience member made about the music being more dream-like than horrific. Personally I feel that the music was supposed to be mysterious, but its the audiences' opinions. Another point made to sound was the use of the screams sounded too artificial and therefore gave the trailer a slightly artificial sound. To conclude I think I need to think more like the audience when creating products like these, but I shall definitely consider these points in any possible future production.