The audience provided feedback on the student's initial rough cut trailer, noting it was too short and lacked gore for a horror film. The student agreed and wanted to add more effects but lacked experience with After Effects. They received a score of 13/16. To address the feedback, the student filmed more footage including gore scenes like a neck bite and gunshot wound using makeup tutorials. When screening the final trailer, most of the audience responded positively, scoring it 7-9 out of 10 and praising the makeup effects and narrative. Some still felt it lacked gore and closeups. The student was pleased with the improved feedback and effort of the group.

1. A2 MEDIA EVALUATION PART 4
What have you learnt from
your audience feedback?
By Jack Bricknell

2. What was the audiences reaction to your
rough-cut screening?
Section A:
When we first showed our rough cut trailer to the class most of them liked it overall but the
main criticisms were that it was too short and that for a gory horror there wasn’t enough gore.
I agreed with both of these because our trailer was only forty seconds because we didn’t
have enough footage at the time. I did plan to add more gore in with Adobe After Effects
but I had almost no experience with the programme and couldn’t find a simple tutorial or
appropriate effect downloads due to the college restriction on many of the websites. As a
result I was never able to add in the effects I wanted with after effects.
After counting the score we got 13 out of 16 overall for our rough-cut which I was pleasantly
surprised with.

3. What changes did you make after the
rough-cut screening?
Section B:
The two main problems with our original trailer is that it was too short
and it didn’t have enough gore which was pointed out by almost
everyone. At the time we hadn’t finished filming everything so we had
to meet a deadline for a rough-cut with the footage we which ended
up being forty seconds long after editing, we knew this was short and
were determined to film more. We also had to appeal to the members
of the audience who wanted more gore which we wanted too so we
got more people to be zombies and victims so that we could film
more gore scenes. One of these was the neck bite effect which was
made with fake blood and liquid latex, to make the bite I followed a
tutorial on YouTube at home (Zombie bite tutorial). The other effect
was the gunshot to the head, for this I bought an old Halloween mask
that had a pump mechanism and hid it under the clothes and hat of
the actor, who squeezed the pump which then squirted blood out of
his head.

4. How did the audience react to your final
product?
Section C:
When we showed our final version of our trailer to the class I was surprised with the amount of
positive feedback seven people in the class scored us a 7/10 which was the lowest scores we
got four others scored us an 8/10 and one person gave us a 9/10. Most people said that they
liked the make-up and gore effects as well as the music and narrative, however some
people still don’t think hat there was enough gore and some also thought we needed more
close-ups which I agree with. Overall was very pleased with these scores because the group
put a lot of effort into making this trailer and it feels like we’ve achieved something.
Originally we wanted our target audience to be eighteen and over however I think the
finished product is more of a sixteen, this is mainly because it wasn’t gory enough and didn’t
have any jump scares. I think we reached the sixteen year old target audience well by
including some comedy moments such as the running away shot and the egg throwing.

5. Continued
I think I played a large role in the group by doing the make-up and gore effects on our actors
for which I did a lot of research to find the most simple and effective ways to do zombie
make-up. The most helpful source was from the Indy Mogul channel on YouTube which has
got a large selection of different effect tutorials on it. I tried several different techniques with
the make-up which included attaching scrunched up tissue on the cheeks with latex and
going over with fake blood which was the best looking way to do it but it took too long so I
tried applying thin layers of liquid latex on to the cheeks, forehead and nose of an actor and
then rubbing it to peel some off giving it a decaying look.

6. Trailer

7. Poster &
magazine