Evaluation Activity 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As a group we had decided that we did not want to base our teaser trailer on just one other teaser trailer instead we wanted to take many features from other teaser trailers that we had enjoyed, found exciting and frightening and stood out to us, these then formed the inspiration for our own teaser trailer. Some aspects such as the mask was really original we felt and we had seen masks used successfully in other horror teaser trailers such as 'The strangers' and 'Triangle' which gave the strong image of killer and victim. We also found that within 'The Haunting of Connecticut' the non-diegetic music was truly terrifying with the eerie out of tune piano playing a high melody that continued throughout the trailer into the inter-titles, again we thought this was really effective in creating a tense mood in an audience and I think that we choose our music again an eeire piano to create the same intense atmosphere with our audience and we really pleased with the way the music fit to the images in the trailer. I also feel that the fast montage editing again really suggest the horror genre of our teaser trailer such as in the trailer 'The Blair Witch Project'.

I think that the strengths of our teaser trailer are:

• The way in which the different effect that we have used on each of the shots really suggest the nature of the characters. The black and white effect is only ever used when the killer is within the shot, we felt that the black and white effect really exaggerated the features of the mask and made the mask feel like a really big USP of the whole trailer. I also feel that the 'old film' effect used over the scene when the victim is being dragged through the wood suggested the order of events and suggests to the audience that this particular event happened before some of the other events seen in the trailer. The night vision effect I also feel gives a great sense of reality to the scene making it more believable to the audience that it is in fact nigh time when this particular scene is playing even though we did not shot this scene in the dark. The spotlight shown within the night vision effect created an extra advantage by highlighting features with in the scene such as when the victims eyes move, sensing something is not right, or when the killer walks in behind the character in the fore ground, I feel that if it were not for this effect the audience would not notice these details.


• I also feel that the way we edited the shots together was also a strength as the audience do not know much about the narration but understand the characters and their roles. The way by which the scenes are reversed and speed up again I think refresh the audience's mind in what they had just watched and I feel it shows great technical abilities. The overall impression given by this use of editing was 'If you could turn back time'.

I think the weaknesses of our teaser trailer are:

• I feel that one of the things that we should have done better was the scene with the dog growling. Within the shot you can see hands, this could have worked well or poorly. We decided that the hands would belong to the killer in an attempt to quieten the dog, however some of the audience may not have thought this when they view the trailer and this can take away the effect of the scene and instead look like a poorly composed shot.


• Another thing that I feel we could have made more progress in was quietening the background noise on the production company clip I feel that this interrupts the quiet piano playing, and can ruin the light 'eerie-ness' around the music.

Comments that we had recieved over social networking sites:

• 'Its really good guys well done, just one thing is that the trailer doesnt really tell you anything about the film like any plot or anything its all very vague?'


• 'I like the bit with the writing, where it looks like she is erasing it. I thought it was really effective as it could show the character is trying to erase her actions. I also liked the contrast between the Black and White colour scenes and the Coloured scenes.


• 'good bits: ambiguous plot, makes people want to find out more editing is really quick by the end which makes it really exciting? idk its cool :) the reverse thing is really cool & memorable :) i liked the nightvision & how you can only just see the person in the background, tis creeeepy i liked the jumpy bit with the murderer (where they move really suddenly) maybe its a little too vaigue, but tis no biggie'


• Overall this is a really good video. It's really well put together and I think that the quick editing works really well with the horror genre. The green night vision effect looks really creepy. Also the fact that you've made Hannah and Milly smile and act normal makes it seem even scarier, in the sense that it could happen to ANYONE. The music fits in really well and adds a really creepy effect to the whole video. The only negative comment I have is that I feel in places, the plot isn't clear

Overall I am pleased with what we were able to produce and that it is indeed an effective horror teaser trailer, I think that should we have had more time than we could have edited our teaser trailer further after hearing our audience feedback, correcting our weaknesses.