What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

I have shown my teaser trailer to a number of people which all have had different opinions and views regarding the overall outcome of the product. I have shown different groups of people so that I receive a wider variety of feedback.
There was a very good range of feedback that enabled me to improve on the trailer and also feedback that has shown me what was effective. I have received comments such as "Creepy" "Jumpy" and "Varied Shot Selection" I also got comments such as the structure of the trailer enables the audience to "identify with the main character".
Other comments such as "good use of effects for portraying nightmares" this was more specific and related to a certain part of the trailer where the viewer almost saw inside the protagonists head and saw her thoughts, This idea was risky to include but we decided as a group we should put it in and see how it works out. The reason why it was a risk was because throughout the research we did not see the effect/style in many other trailers, I thought that It would be a good way to summarise what has been going on without going into to much depth or boring the audience with the typical structures of expressing the storyline such as subtitles or voice overs. The outcome was proven to be successful and the target audience seemed to respond well to it. Comments that were taken on board to improve the production (constructive criticism) were "Didn't think the sound matched what was going on visually" this was quite a big debating point which we received likes and dislikes for this section of the trailer, some of the audience members agreed that the music and background sounds matched the visuals well but on the other hand some people did not. This was very tricky and we decided to tweak a few things but not by a great deal, the overall result and theory about the music was that it was sort of an acquired taste. The other main aspect of the criticism was referred to the detail of the villain some said that we needed to "explain more clearly about the villain" this was quite a tricky concept because we didn't want to give away to much detail about the scary element of the film otherwise this would effectively lose its mystery and therefore scariness.

The comments of the audience feedback which I received back about how it worked as a teaser trailer as a whole were mixed, along with the comments about the narrative, what was given away and what wasn't. I was again pleased with the majority of the comments but there were certain comments that were quite negative. The positive Comments such as "Didn't give away to much" and "The creepy factor was increased because the audience knew less about the villain", this was then challenged because we got comments also that said "Didn't reveal enough about the villain" although the feedback was mixed I feel that it went well overall. By not revealing a lot about the evil or villain left more mystery and creepiness, this therefore increased the scariness of the trailer and therefore reinforced the key conventions of the horror genre. Although some of the feedback said that It did not reveal enough we decided to keep the narrative of the trailer as it is, because the majority of the feedback said that it was a good aspect of the trailer that it didn't reveal much. The narrative was done like this so that the trailer wasn't just like watching the entire film. As a group and with the audience feedback we knew that one of the most important aspects of a trailer is to leave the audience wondering and wanting to see more. With the feedback comments received as a group we felt that we have accomplished this, and therefore in the trailer holding back certain information about the story/narrative but also at the same time giving away details as well.

Overall I feel that the feedback helped a great deal to tell me what  I have done well and what I have done not so well. I was very pleased with the majority of the comments that I received and have tried my best to incorporate them into the final products as much as possible.