The filmmaker conducted audience research including a focus group and survey to get feedback on their horror film. From the survey responses, they learned sound was most effective at conveying the horror genre followed by lighting, typography, and camerawork. For lighting and sound, most audience members felt it was good but some scenes could be improved. Based on the feedback, the filmmaker made adjustments like increasing silence, adjusting lighting in some shots, and removing shaky shots of the antagonist. The focus group was also positive with only a comment about dialogue volume, which the filmmaker felt was an intentional directorial choice.

1. Evaluation Q3
What have you learned from your audience feedback?

2. Audience Feedback:
Methods Used
I conducted primary research to discover
what our target audience (teenagers)
thought of our horror movie, so I could
make some editorial changes or re-shoot
some of the scenes. I conducted a
audience focus group, as this allowed them
to speak freely and give their honest
opinions on the film, with no restrictions. I
also created a survey in order to obtain
some more specific answers on certain
things, to see if they believed we needed to
change anything that I had highlighted
through the questions. Their feedback was
vital as I wanted to please our target
audience, so it altered my artistic decisions
when it came to editing.

3. Survey
Here is the survey I gave to
10 people who fit our target
audience.

4. Question 1: Was it easy to decode
the film as the horror genre?
ew we had included enough conventional codes of the horror gen

5. Question 2: If 'Yes',
Why?
0 25 50 75 100 125
Sound
Lighting
Typography
Camera
Out of the 10 people, all of them said that they realised it was the horror genre because of the sound. This was vital to me
as I believe sound is the most important aspect of portraying a genre, and the fact we received 100% recognition of this,
meant that my directive decision was to focus more on sound and add/alter a few more layers. 80% of people said that
they also decoded the genre through the lighting, which is strong feedback, but I was aiming for 100%, however the
answers may be unreliable as they may have been lazy with their answer and not included this. This didn’t change my
decision in lighting as I believed it was perfect. The typography was decoded by 50% of the audience, which was slightly
disappointing, however it could have been for the same reason as previously explained. My editing software did limit me in
the choices of typography, but I believe I did the best I could, by adjusting the tracking of the letters to make it fill the
screen. Finally, only 20% decoded the film as the horror genre through the camera, which I believe is a good result as
genres aren’t really portrayed through this, but there are a few things, such as long shots to show isolation, free hand to
show someones watching, slow zooms to focus on a fear.

6. Question 3: Did you feel the
lighting was good throughout?
70% of people answered yes, which I believe is a good result, however I
was aiming for 100%, so I decided to adjust the exposure/saturation on
some shots, such as the approach to the house shots. These 2 screenshots
show how I adjusted the lighting in this instance.
30
%
70
%

7. Question 4: Was the sound effective? Is there
anything you would change regarding the
sound?
20
%
80
%
80% of people said the sound was effective and wouldn’t change anything, which was a good result to see,
however the other 20% didn’t think the sound was entirely effective throughout. Both people said there should be
more areas without any sound, or just diegetic sound, as its conventional for this to be in a horror film, as its builds
suspense. I agree with them and regret not focusing on this more when filming, as the shots have to be effective
with the silence, such as a close ups. I did manage to take this on board towards the end of the film, when you can
just hear the protagonists breathing, in order to build suspense just before the climax, however I would have loved
to include more of it during the main areas of the film. I tried to leave sections of the film silent, such as when she
looks round the house, however what we filmed limited us and it wasn’t effective as the shot types and speed of
editing didn’t fit well together. For silence to be effective in a horror film, the speed of editing has to be slow, and we
didn’t have many sections in the film where silence would have been effective because of this.

8. Question 5: Did you feel
tense/suspenseful throughout?
viously the perfect result and therefore I won’t need to change anythi

9. Question 6: Was the ending
effective?
60
%
40
%
fear, dragging out the antagonists arrival to really focus on the fear of the unknown/otherness.This wo

10. Question 7: Are there any shots you
would remove? If so which one(s)
of the male antagonist as they were too shaky and the lighting wasn’t scary enough. I took this onboard a

11. Question 8: Any Final
Comments?
Only 2 people made comments in ways to improve our film
he film, and changed the colour to black and white, which audiences could portray as either, it was there in the past (a flash

12. Question 8: Any Final
Comments?
ut any human force, to show the audience that ‘something’ has entered the house. We also showed a

13. Audience Focus Group
We gathered 5 people to watch our horror film and discuss what they liked and didn’t, in order to see if we
could use their feedback to influence our decisions. I showed them the final cut, to see if they had
anymore improvements that can be potentially be made within our limits. Some said they struggled to
hear the dialogue between the 2 antagonists, which isn't a major issue as I could easily increase the
volume on their audio, however I feel that the dialogue is meant to be slightly unclear as they’re speaking
through Skype, which isn’t the clearest in real life, and we wanted to create an accurate representation.
We also felt that it was loud enough, and any louder would drown out the non-diegetic music too much,
which is really important to me. Other than that, everything else was positive feedback, and therefore I left
it, but the focus group good as it was reassuring to hear that the film was effective.