It is important to have audience feedback to help you improve your trailer. After our first draft was completed we did our first focus group screening. Focus groups are a common tool used in Hollywood to see what an audience thinks of a film before it is released to the general public. When we showed our trailer to our audience of classmates for the first time for the focus group screening we had a mixture of valuably positive and negative comments.
The audience seemed to like our body horror effects and many mentioned the sewed up arm: such as 'Gore effects on the arm looked real' and 'Body horror was effective'. Many commented on our good use of creepy location: including 'Good creepy location, effective abandoned spooky place'. The audience also highlighted how well our music went with the trailer to build suspense and quickened with the fast rising pace of action: 'The music worked really well and was well paced and helped to create suspence'. We were pleased with this as we’d taken a long time to create the music for 'Insanitarium' using lots of layers of sound on Final Cut Pro. A lot of the focus group audience also mentioned they liked the range of angles in 'Insanitarium', like the high (on the victims) and low angles (on the killer at the end) on the characters: 'What I liked most about were the angles'.
The most common negative feedback we received was that the text at the start of our trailer was too quick and disappeared before the audience could read it. Two quotes that show this are 'The writing was a bit quick at the start and it was hard to read all of it' and 'The beginning text faded a bit too quick for me'. The end of the trailer seemed to get the second-most amount of negative feedback and the audience said it didn’t really fit the style of the trailer. Two people noticed that one of the actors has their throat slit and then after this we see them throw up. Other comments included how the sound effects of the trailer needed to be more dramatic and well timed, which we hadn’t realised until watching ‘Insanitarium’ on the big screen. Some of the audience also mentioned that our needed to be more dramatic and well timed, which we hadn’t realised until watching ‘Insanitarium’ on the big screen and that ‘Some shots were too long,’ so we needed to create a more exciting montage.
The average score for our trailer was 7. This was a reasonable as our trailer needed improvement in the majority of areas. As this was our first draft we knew all these problems can be corrected and made many last minute changes.
We slowed the text down and added screeching sound effects to fit with the text to make it more dramatic. We also took scenes like the vomit and slowed down the shots of the building at the start of the trailer so the sped up part at the end is more noticeable. We also made the ending more powerful by echoing the scream. We also made the transitions between each fade smoother by using the pen tool to made it more gradual.
The final evaluation screening for 'Insanitarium' showed the changes really helped to boost the mark of our trailer. The audience were happy with the changes, as shown by a lot of the quotes on that post.
After completing the evaluation screening we are very happy with the audiences responce. We noticed from our audience feedback that the vast majority of people where scared or 'shuddered' at the body horror scene, especially the scene where a wound of my arm is sewed up. We think that the horror features in our trailer such as the creepy location were successful and appealed to the horror fans in the audience. We were happy that most people found the text easier to read. They also said that the trailer was sped up slightly and the shots were ordered clearly, and a piece of feeback that supports this is: 'The text was clear to read and the shots flowed together nicely and the trailer was easier to understand'.
My favourite part of the trailer was our body horror scene. It took a long time to make the wound, but it was well worth it. Like in films like 'Maniac' (1980) and it's head explosion, horror fans remember parts of films with good body horror scenes. Quotes from the audience included 'Good use of body horror, looks effective', 'Body horror looks real' and 'My favourite part was the arm being sewn up because it looked really effective'. Overall, I think the trailer for 'Insanitarium' is a success because the evaluation screening audience liked it so much.
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