How you too can become a Hollywood insider at a test screening
By Grant Keller
To most people the film industry is impenetrable, but even if you can’t channel your inner Seth Rogen and land a job as a Hollywood boss like in Apple TV’s hit satire The Studio, you can still have a modest impact on Hollywood today.
Anyone can sign up to attend a test screening before a movie is completed. Visual effects are rough, color hasn’t been corrected, and the score is built up of snippets of music from other movies. The previews help filmmakers and studios gauge how audiences feel about an upcoming release and of course, figure out how to make more money out of the film by making tweaks. All that assumes the thing isn’t a complete turkey from start to finish, of course. Remember Disney’s 2013 remake of “The Lone Ranger” starring Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp? Me, either.
Ads on social media, flyers distributed at the movie theater, or emails alert people to these screenings. You can also Google “test screenings near me” and you’re on your way, baby!
Once you and the at-capacity crowd are settled in your seats, the movie begins. When it ends, you fill out a survey explaining your feelings on the film. You rate the movie, every character, and every performance on a scale of five. You’ll list your three favorite and least favorite scenes, and judge the pacing of the movie on the Goldilocks scale: was it too fast, too slow, or just right?
The most important questions are “would you recommend this movie to people?” and “would you recommend seeing it in the theater?”
After all the surveys are completed, a portion of the audience will be asked to remain in their seats. They are the focus group, who are recorded and more thoroughly interrogated. They receive some compensation in the form of a $12 million mansion in the Hollywood hills, or a gift card or movie passes. Usually it’s a gift card or movie passes, but I’m holding out.
Filmmakers might make changes to the film after a test screening, as they did, for example, with 1982’s Bladerunner, insisting that a voiceover added a more positive ending so that the female love interest didn’t “expire” weeks after it ended. Test audiences for Back to the Future also insisted on knowing whether Doc’s dog Einstein survived a test run in the DeLorean time machine instead of, er… disappearing.
More typically your input from the test screening will be used to craft the movie’s marketing campaign. Favorite scenes appear in trailers, enticing audiences to have the great time you (hopefully) did.
Join me at a test screening soon, and start saving for a cravat and a director’s chair.
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