What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Post-screening feedback:
Having used the previously shown audience feedback to shape and ultimately configure the film trailer, it was important to do a screening of the final product to gain reception of my peers/target audience. This was performed in class in a turn-taking ritual whereby the trailers of others and myself were shown. From this comments were made from each member of the class about positives and negatives of horror and trailer conventions.

The scan above shows the detailed notes taken within a period of class film screenings. In turn the entire class presented their individual film trailer and notes were made on it's positive and negative aspects as both a trailer and a horror film. This was a useful technique to see how my peers and my target audience created their own film trailers - it allowed me to see the varied use of horror and trailer conventions and the way sin which I could possibly incorporate them into my own piece.

The actual feedback generated was both generous and enciteful; the direct feedback from both my peers and the target audience of the horror genre meant that I could alter the trailer to most effectively attract the target audience. The majority of positive feedback lent itself to horror conventions. The iconography used; such as the Monk's outfit, lanterns, candles, ouija board and settings, were found to be particularly useful in setting the horror scene; the use of darkness was especially favoured for creating a dark and sinister feel. Additionally positive comments were made about the effectiveness of the music and camerawork and how it related to the theme - the sounds of Monk chanting and heavy drums, as well as the use of the hand held camera and close up shots to adhere to typical horror genre techniques. The majority of negative feedback was centred around trailer conventions and peers commented that the edit was too long and slow paced. In terms of the audio-visual content, it was suggested that the chronology was too confusing and that, although the music was fitting, it still needed some altering.

In order to enhance the quality of the horror trailer, it was imperitive to make corrections based on the constructive criticism of my peers and target audience. It was important to maintain the appearance of horror conventions and the praised iconography and darkness. From thereon most clips were shortened or quickened, with some irrelevant shots being removed in order to quicken the pace and shorten the sequence. The length of trailer changed significantly and the pace was much more impactful and exciting. Adhering to the feeback given, some scenes were rearranged so that the chronology of the sequence was more fitting. For instance; the original cut showed the car arriving at the scene at the end of the trailer, while this made sense to my group and I, others found it confusing and therefore it was moved to a much earlier point. Due to significant changes in the trailers speed and the speed of clips within the sequence, there was a considerable re-working of the trailer's audio. The soundtrack was altered so that the haunting piano played exactly at the right intertitles and the heavy pounding drums built up in direct relation to the visual side. The drum beats mimicked the pace of the visual portions while a more significant backing track was added which empowered the overall speed and suspense. The soundtrack was made to end fairly abruptly on a suspending image of a close up silhouetted view of the monk - a shot favoured in our feedback. The shot was lengthened as a way of increasing audience engagement, while it subtly faded to black and ended the advert. Rather critically was the removal of one scene dubbed "The Boy Band Scene" in the audience feedback; due to it's response, it was necessary for it's removal to avoid any humorous flair.

While audience feedback was incredibly important in shaping an already-existing final product, it was essential that a high level of audience research prior to filming was necessary as a way to mould the plot and storyline, as well as the way in which the trailer itself was constructed and conveyed.


Firstly, I created a questionnaire on the website http://www.surveymonkey.com/ which enabled me to configure a custom-made questionnaire that could be distributed digitally and interactively. Using the provided link/url requests were sent via Facebook and Microsoft Outlook in order to gather information from the main target audience; teenagers. I ensured the questionnaire covered questions that could gather a range of quantitative and qualitative data; this is so that I could ascertain definitive categories and facts, while at the same time, gathering personal trends within horror films.

The questions used are as follows:
1) Are you male or female? [c]
2) How old are you? [c]
3) Do you like horror movies? [c]
4) What type of horror movies do you like? [c]
5) What are your favourite horror movies? [p]
6) What aspects do you like within a horror movie? [p]
7) What horror settings do you prefer? [c]
8) How often do you watch horror movies? [c]
9) Who are your favourite horror directors? [p]
10) Why do you watch horror movies? [p]

The questions are divided into two categories for specific reasons:

[c]: Refers to answers that can be [c]atgorised or quantative data. These questions aimed to obtain general statistics about the sample group and to also evaluate whom the exact target audience is in correlation to demands made.

[p]: Refers to answers that are [p]ersonal or qualitative data. These questions aimed to give the answerer the oppurtunity to offer answers that could not otherwise be covered in set categories. For instance, the range of personal reasons for favouring; settings, directors, aspects and themes are tangible. However, using qualitative allowed me to analyse certain recurring styles, themes and ideas that I could use as a basis for emulating.

It would be stupidity to gather such research and then disregard the responses; for this reason, the trailer is directed to the views of those shown within the questionnaires. The usefulness of such research was imperative and ultimately helped shape the style of the trailer and created bank of ideas for which I could work from.

Having gathered the data, presentation of analysis was necessary to understand the trends within. From here on, I divided male and female responses to [c] questions in order to understand the gender patterns relating to horror; this also accounted for outliers and enabled me to understand what females or males particularly liked or disliked or what was considered unnecessary or average. This procedure was vital to me in understanding the target audience and I felt understanding the preferences of each gender would help to create a product that would appeal to both. As is obvious in the graph there is an order of trends, where the most favoured category is the highest bar - using this representation it was easy to ascertain which areas and which attributes to focus on to appease and entice the target audience. In terms of the [P] responses I looked for common trends within response to the question and from thereon formed a style basis. Gathering a range of answers was a useful way to collect an idea of attributes such as; the need for gore, suspense or whether the prevalence of religion or paranormal activity was necessary but, it also accounted for the personal flair of certain directors which helped to identify shot types and cameras to use.

The following show summary of the responses collected from questions and the ways in which it shaped the construction of the final movie trailer:

Gender and Age:
This was important to identify that the majority of responses were derived of a typical horror genre audience. As was shown by the questionnaire the majority of those who took the questionnaire were aged between 15 and 20. Interestingly, there were a higher number of female participants and so analysis had to account for this.

Gender and Liking or Disliking of Horror:
In order to further assess the need for accounting for the weighted sample of genders, this set of data was useful to ascertain the balance. An even number of males and females like the horror, while the remainder, obviously, dislike the genre. This meant that all subsequent answers could be taken into account without worry for bias.

Gender and Frequency of Viewing:
It was clear from the data that males watch horror films more frequently than females which suggested to me that more consideration must be taken in order to attract the female viewer while maintaing the attention of the male viewer.

Gender and Preferred Horror Style:
The top findings showed that the favourite horror styles were psychological and thriller based. The ratio to male and female was, again, even and lead me to deeply consider psychological and thriller based plots. Additionally, a high number of females purported to enjoy supernatural horrors and considering the female frequency of viewing, I felt it was important to address this. It is clear that "Monk" covers aspects of thriller and the supernatural; while the psychological side may be somewhat less obvious, but it is something definitely incorporated in aspects of the exploitation of teenagers, their curiosity and whether the "Monk" is physical or psychological.

Preferred Setting
For this, I felt it was less dependent on gender as to the favoured setting. But from the results it was unanimous that the most favoured horror settings were "Unknown places". This was exploited fully within the monk and as shown in the trailer, the exact location of the church/graveyard remains ambiguous with strong feelings of isolation and entrapment - all key conventions of the horror genre.

Favourite Horror Films:
The main trend of favourites here considerably juxtaposed trends noted previously and films such as "Saw", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Dawn of the Dead" and "American Psycho" which is highly suggestive of violence, gore and death. Death is something vastly exploited in month with the idea of the resurrection of the tortured spirit of the monk. However, I tried to coordinate the trailer in a way that is suggestive of gore and violence in order to entertain the wide range of audence expectations.

Favourite Horror Film Styles:
The recurrent demand of participants was the need to "feel scared" and while this seems like a simplistic idea; it was important to me to create a trailer with a scary and horrific feel without accidentally inducing a level of boredom or comedy that is common in a lot of horrors.

Reasons For Watching:
Here the majority of answers regarded the notion of thrill seeking and perpetuates the aforementioned idea of a thriller-style horror. This solidified the idea of creating a fast paced, thrilling horror trailer.