Screen Test: Audience Feedback

 This post explains how we showed a rough draft of our film opening to some members of our target audience in order to receive helpful feedback. This blog was made by Maisie.

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if there are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use Google Forms to create a survey to share with our audience because it is very quick and easy to use for both me and the respondents. 

Questions:

1. What do you like about the video?

2. What improvements can be made?

3. What do you think of the effects so far? (sound, lighting, coloring, etc.)

4. If you rate it low, how do you think we can improve?

5. Mention 3 words to describe the cursed book.

6. Mention 3 words to describe Drew (the boy).

7. Would you watch the rest of the movie?

8. Which title is better?

Evaluation:

We specifically chose these questions because we want to make sure that all of the elements and techniques we chose to implement into our opening scene successfully reaches and affects the audience correctly. At the same time, we are also making room for improvements by directly giving the respondents the freedom to express their opinions and thoughts. Furthermore, we chose these questions to further understand the extent of how immersed our respondents feel while watching the video, as it is one of our main goals (to make the audience feel like they're a part of the events).

We showed the clip to three members of our target audience to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Finding people for the screen test was easy, because we used social media (Instagram story) to spread the word and ask for volunteers. Thankfully, due to how quick social media connects us with other people, we got three different volunteers to help us out in no time. 

Draft:

Results:

Conclusion:

From the feedback, we learned that our opening scene needs to have more prolonged suspense to make the events more intense and unpredictable. However, we also learned that we have successfully conveyed some of our messages to our audience. For instance, we've succeeded in making the cursed book seem creepy and unsettling. We can tell from the words our respondents selected when asked to describe them. 

Since this is only a draft, there are many things missing in this opening scene. We are going to change some of the edits, because a respondent suggested to add more quick cuts involving black/blank screens. We will also change the coloring of the whole video, as it has been our plan from the start to make the opening scene seem more eerie. Lastly, as suggested by one of our respondents, we will also add more background music to help increase the thrill and suspense. 

This screen test was a useful part of our process because it helps open our minds towards broader aspects that can help us improve our project. Opinions from different people are really important because it helps us think of things that we couldn't think of ourselves. By being open to feedback, we are exposed to constructive criticism and advices that will help us better our project.

Reflection:

This blog post was done by Maisie and she said that the feedback that we received will help us immensely because one of our respondents was a senior that also studies media. My team and I now know what we can do to improve and how we can make our film better.