What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From the audience feedback I learnt that my media product needed more body horror effects, as the audience felt that it was too much like a ‘crime/thriller’ although I had added some aspects of body horror, such as the slashes to the husband’s (John Ashburn’s) face and neck which the audience said they liked. To overcome this issue we added some more scenes which involved the audience seeing ‘John’ getting brutally attacked by the original murder weapon (a knife with an orange handle) which is shown in the evidence bag. These can be seen towards the end of the BEHIND THE SHADOW trailer with extreme close up shots of John’s face getting slashed and then spitting blood. A woman’s hand is holding the murder weapon, but we were careful to ensure the audience doesn’t know who the murderer is; they just know she is a woman with deep red nail varnish. This added scene also use collision cutting and a quick montage of shots in order to speed up the pace of the trailer. The pacing of our trailer was another problem that we picked up in the focus group screening; the audience felt that although the pace did get quicker towards the end it just wasn’t quick enough.

Responding to audience feedback and adding these extra, shorter, quicker shots definitely made the trailer better and a bit more exciting towards the end, but we still made sure to keep the slow, fade-in-wipe transition on all the intertitles (and the first half of the trailer) to make these slower shots contrast with the quick editing. Like in the start of JAWS (1975), the contrast between slow and fast shots makes the dramatic shots even more powerful because they are contrasted to slower ones.

Another point that was highlighted in the focus group screening was that the audience didn’t really understand the narrative of the media product and felt that the ending was unclear. We had worked hard on trying to introduce the other character (the dark haired woman Nicola who is played by me) and had tried to make her seem suspicious, but I don’t think we thought about how much we had made the main character (Susan Ashburn) look like the murderer. So when added the shots of ‘John’s’ murder we added an extreme close-up of Nicola's mysterious character’s mouth as she smiles after his murder. We hoped that the audience would understand our subtle hints to make them question who is actually the murderer, and this complicated narrative had actually helped us be the most successful poster idea in our initial planning/research.
We thought that the audience would understand that you wouldn’t normally expect the whole narrative to be told in the trailer, and putting Susan as the ‘blatant’ murderer, we thought the shots of Nicola would have made them question the narrative and be intrigued as to what would be in the full film. We added text such as ‘Can you trust your friends..?’ and ‘Can you trust anyone..?’ in order to lead the audience into questioning Nicola’s role in the murder of John and her friendship with Susan.

From the first group screening (before some of these changes had been made) we got an average score of only 5.5/10. I was really unhappy with this as I felt that we had a really suspenseful, twisted narrative, and really wanted to make it successful. But these criticisms forced us to improve our film. This is why we made the changes we did, we understood that the main problems with our media product was the lack of body horror and the slightly unclear narrative. To overcome this we started switching the order of some of the shots and also adding more text to tell the narrative that little bit more clearly. Our hope was these problems would be resolved, and the evaluation screening showed we had some success.
Then from the second group screening we got an average score of 7/10, and I was much happier with that. There was still the problem that we needed something else at the end which is why we have added shots of John getting brutally murdered. So as a very-last-minute change we added in the shots of the slash to the face. Hopefully this will make our media product better and push for response like "Successful" and "Very Successful" when people watch the final version on my blog.

In summary, I think that the final re-edited media product will appeal to the target audience. Helped by what we learnt from audience feedback, there is just the right amount of body horror and the suspense is built at the beginning of the trailer with the slower establishing shots introducing the narrative and the characters, before we then cut to more excitement with collision cutting towards the end of the trailer. Our target audience of the media product is more into thriller horrors (REAR WINDOW, STAKE LAND) that create suspense and tension rather than the ‘gornography’ genre (HOSTEL, SAW), so I think that BEHIND THE SHADOWS will appeal to them as from the audience feedback I have found that the audience liked the suspense and tension that is created and also the body horror effects that we have added so that it has some more horror elements and not just crime/thriller.

My favourite aspect of my media product is the narrative; the husband (John) has been murdered and his wife (Susan) a detective, has to investigate into his murder with the help from her friend (Nicola). The best moments come from how confused Susan is. Strange things happen to her like her reflection disappearing, her hands randomly covered in blood and then gone again. The narrative in the trailer clearly show she is starting to suspect herself, even though Nicola is seemingly caring, innocent, supportive friend. This complicated narrative was often showed to work when presented to the group and when we received audience feedback.
I think that without the help of other psychological trailers such as BLACK SWAN (2010), SOLITARY (2011) and PSYCHO (1960) I found the production of my media product a lot harder that the AS coursework, but feel the final product is a success because we constantly responded to audience feedback. I had the narrative in mind and with the help of my research into successful horror trailers I was inspired to create a suspenseful media product that was a little different from other trailers but still appealed to my target audience of horror fans.