Test Screening Results

First of all, thank you to everyone for coming out to the test screening and providing your valuable feedback. As I mentioned before, this feedback is critical to finding the proper pacing, voice and thread for any film - especially this one since I am delving into an unfamiliar play on the documentary. The feedback form had 5 questions with a rating of 1-10 (10 being the highest - positive). Here are the questions and results.

Was the subject matter interesting?
Result was 84% positive
How would you rate the documentary?
Result was 72% positive
Originality
Result was 86% positive
Effectiveness of documentary and drama elements being combined.
Result was 71% positive
Would you recommend it to a friend?
Result was 77% positive

I also asked if the people thought the film was too long – long first cuts is a problem with me, I always seem to do that. The first test screening of Bangkok Girl was 115 minutes (which ended up being 43 minutes in the final cut)

Result was 57% NO and 43% YES

Last question was ‘Do you understand the story?’

Result was 37% YES, 0% NO, and 63% answered I THINK SO

After reading through all the comments the overall negative feedback that kept occurring was this:

- Certain scenes (which I won’t get into here) dragged on. These will be cut down for the next cut. I feel I would like to take another 15 minutes out of the film and have it come in at 75-80 minutes as opposed to 93 which it is now.

- Some people had a tough time with the Filipino accents. I subtitled the accents in Bangkok Girl and I will do the same here. I am so familiar with the Filipino accent that I didn’t even consider it.

- The ending was not very clear as to what happened with Maria. Hmmm I kind of like the confusion at the end. I will try an alternate version and see how it sits. I always joke,’ if you want a successful festival film, make sure nobody understands it’ – but I won’t do that here :)

- A little more clarification of Maria’s reality vs. the documentary reality. Yup, as I’ve mentioned before I don’t have a template for this play on documentary so I am kind of winging it and this feedback really helps.

- A few technical comments that will be addressed during the online edit.

The positives that were mentioned overall:

- The film and subject matter was interesting. Thank God.

- The film was genuinely creepy during the creepy scenes. Thank God again.

- The music score was incredible. Thank God and Charlie Armour (the god of film composition).

- Very original concept.

- There were also some really nice comments on the cinematography

That was the overall feedback. There were also hundreds of individual comments and suggestions as one might expect. The idea is to take the reoccurring comments, evaluate and make change. If it comes up over and over again, there is most likely a problem or issue that needs to be addressed. I take the individual comments and decide if they are just a personal preference or else I say, “Wow, what a good idea!” and pretend I came up with it - kidding.

In any case, this has been a very positive experience and it will make this film so much stronger. Also, I saw Dino taking some pictures, I will see if I can get a copy of them and post some here. Thanks again.