Post production: changes based on feedback

Having received our audience feedback, we felt that there were still some elements of the trailer that needed improving in order to produce the best trailer we could. The first issue that needed addressing was the scene that involved the car accident; both the audience and ourselves thought that the camera was successful in connoting the death of the antagonist, however we were unsure on the closing of that scene, as we felt the connotations of death needed to be slightly stronger. To alter this, we made the decision to include the sound effect of an ECG heart monitor that displays the sound of a heart beat before flatlining - this will show the audience that the female has died, and have a larger dramatic impact on the audience, who may have formed a connection with the female.

A second improvement that we thought needed to be made was to ensure that some of the montage shots produce the correct sinister connotations; some of the audience feedback suggested to us that the shots were too bright to have negative connotations and that this should be changed in order to improve the trailer. As this was the start of the thriller conventions, where the audience begins to feel tension building in the trailer, we needed to change the brightness and contrast of the footage. We began by introducing a tint effect, where we put the opacity to 35% as this helped to bring the colour out of the footage and remove bright colours that may have connotations of happiness. Following this, we lowered the brightness and the contrast to increase the level of darkness and therefore produce stronger connotations of tension and suspense. This process was applied to all of the shots in the montage that displayed the figure of the antagonist, to ensure continuity throughout the trailer.

A further improvement that we made was the transitions that accompanied the title on the trailer. Before any changes had been made, we had titles that faded from black, after a fade to black from the previous shot; the audience feedback suggested that this was quite boring and had no real effect on the overall trailer. Because of this, we altered the transitions so that a blank slate would appear for a few seconds before the text cross-faded onto the screen. Doing this made the transition much smoother and gave it a more professional feel; while doing this we also lengthened the time that the titles were on screen to have a more ingrained impact on the audience and to allow them time to fully digest what has been shown on screen.