2. The average score for our trailer was 7/10, which I am reasonably happy with
but would have preferred for it to be more successful. The music and intertitles
were the most successful aspect of our trailer which I completely agree with
and am glad the audience felt this too; I think that the intertitles are perfect and
fit really well with the theme of the movie. Our intertitles are similar to those
featured in the trailer for The Babadook (2014) in the sense that they are both
‘broken’ and both connote the theme of the movie. For our trailer, the broken
glass symbolises the broken mind of Leo (Oliver Butler) and the intertitles for
The Babadook (2014) represent the torn pages of the story book and how it
tries to tear the family apart.
3. The music is also very effective and adds more of
a horror atmosphere. The clear narrative was also
something that was successful, which I would
agree with. We included a shot of the main
character Leo (Oliver Butler) firing the gun in the
flashback with the drinking session to explain why
he has been driven to be suicidal and isolate
himself from society.
People also seemed to like the editing, effects and
body horror which I think is good because I put a
lot of effort into trying to get the editing and effects
spot on. I don’t think they turned out perfectly but
for someone with almost no experience with
editing I think it’s reasonably good.
4. The body horror I personally didn’t think was that
successful which I expected from a student trailer due to
the low budget, and I don’t really think it was as effective as
it could have been. I think that the reason this didn’t work
was twofold. Firstly, the time we had to do it was minimal
and there was only really one lesson where we had time to
film these scenes and secondly, the fake blood doesn’t look
realistic enough due to the low budget.
Our most occurring negative feedback was the lack of
varied locations. Most scenes in the trailer are filmed in a
house and the audience felt that there should have been
more diverse mise-en-scene. I personally feel as though it
works for most of it to be in one location because it shows
how Leo (Oliver Butler) has become depressed and is
broken, so stays in one place and doesn’t engage with the
world.
5. Another comment made quite a lot was the fact
that the back story wasn’t very clear and we
needed more scenes showing what actually
happened to Leo, which I agree with. The
audience also felt that the trailer needed more
body horror which I don’t think is necessarily true.
Our trailer is a hybrid of three sub-genres and gore
isn’t the primary one and so to add more body
horror in would highlight the gory horror sub-genre
too much and make it the primary one. If anything,
we aimed slightly more towards the psychological
horror genre, which can be seen through our
emphasis on Leo’s fracturing personality.
6. The lighting also seemed to be a problem during the
evaluation process. With the trailer and people felt that we
needed to alter the brightness and contrast of the clips a
little bit more, which I completely agree with.
Two people said the narrative wasn’t clear but most others
said it was very clear and so I think maybe certain people
didn’t grasp the narrative first time but I don’t think this is a
problem.
After the focus group, we decided we needed to make a
couple of last minute changes in response to the criticisms
I’ve highlighted. As a result, the evaluation screening went
reasonably well. I was quite happy with the feedback and
the criticism was quite constructed and suggested ideas for
how we could make it better.
7. The most suggested last minute changes for us to
make were to add some more back-story to the
trailer in the form of flashbacks which also solves
the problem of not enough variation in the location.
We also consciously edited the brightness and
contrast of the clips to help with the dark, horror
aesthetics of the trailer. Our average score was
7/10 which isn’t bad but I would have been happier
with an 8 or 9. However, considering there were
issues with my group – especially with one of the
team being absent for long periods and arranging
enough filming time - I think we did quite well.
