What We Changed

After completing our first draft, we received detailed audience feedback from a focus group of 17-20 year olds on how to improve the piece.

It was suggested that the beginning section of the trailer did not effectively convey the Psychological Thriller genre, due to the slow pace, continuity, and high-key lighting.

The opening montage was seen as too similar to a film opening, rather than a teaser trailer, and conveyed aspects of Social Realism, as opposed to Psychological Thriller. Because of this we decided to remove the opening montage, in order to focus more on her drug addiction, and added in drug shots, such as an extreme close up of a syringe, the protagonist drinking alcohol, and pills spilling onto a counter.

After listening to the feedback we decided to make the trailer more effective we needed to further display the protagonist's descent into addiction and insanity. In order to depict her powerlessness and breakdown, we needed to add more drug fuelled shots, and more shots of her breaking down into madness, such as multiple drug shots.

For the drug taking scene it was brought to our attention that there was not enough variation in shots, there were too many repeated shots with red lighting. Therefore, we subsequently removed several of the shots that we had repeated of her dancing, and added in more shots of her breakdown, such as the protagonist breaking the fourth wall and laughing into the camera.

Additionally, in our draft it appeared that the protagonist's mental instability occurred over the process of one night after the party, however we had intended to portray a breakdown over a longer period of time. In order to change this we added more locations, such as the living room, and also styled her with a multitude of costumes. This also more closely followed the conventions of a teaser trailer, which display events that take place over a longer period of time.

One of the main issues that came to our attention was the main drug used during the initial drug taking scene. Feedback from the focus group told us that the drug appeared too unrealistic and unintimidating, therefore to really emphasise the dangers of the drug use we changed this to multiple drugs all falling onto the camera, we did this to highlight how the increase in drug use, within society, as visually they are everywhere, covering the screen completely.

We were told that a way we could improve our trailer would be to add more creative editing, and camera angles. We achieved this by creating unique shots with the GoPro, this included
experimenting with taping the camera to the bottom of a glass bottle, we edited this into a
match on action shot of our protagonist drinking alcohol. Additionally, we put the GoPro at the bottom of a full bath and created an ambiguous shot of the protagonist screaming underwater. This follows the conventions of a Psychological Thriller as it adds a sense of mystery. We also expressed creativity through the trailer with graphic matching at the start, before she attends the party. In these shots she is facing away from the camera, getting ready and walking, the repetitiveness of the shots mirror the normality of her life before it is disrupted by drugs.

To make the pace of the trailer more effective we most shots, making them shorter, and added a variety of very fast paced new shots. We edited this in a way so it was in time with the non-diegetic music, so at each new beat there was a new shot. This new faster pace was not only parallel to the music, but also the narrative as it created tension and created a sense of lack of control, as it goes so fast the audience is almost unable to focus on the whole thing - similar to how the drug addiction is affecting the protagonist.