Investigation Blog Post 13

 Introduction: This weeks blog post is about film reviews and test audiences, a film/movie review is the analysis of the film made by one person, or collectively expressing the opinion on the movie. A test audience is a group of people who preview screening of a movie or television show before its general release to gauge audience reaction. This often will then influence how the movie is received and viewed. These reviews also help give insight to how the movie is made and done. To know you have a good movie, you honestly have to have good and bad reviews. Its good to see and know how people review your movie and what they think of them. A lot of the time test audiences either agree or disagree with how a film is made, and it can effect how the final film is made and sent out to the public. 

Inspiration: I found a article about movies that where changed due to test audiences. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/64467/11-movies-changed-because-test-audiences

• Goodfellas: It was reported that during the first test screening in California, about 40 people walked out on the movie during its first 10 minutes because of its level of bloody violence. Test audiences also found it very uncomfortable to sit through the final act, in which Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) spends his last day as a wise guy just before the FBI catches up with him. Viewers felt that the scenes were too long and too tense. Scorsese and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker went back to re-edit the final act with a series of quick jump cuts to move the narrative along faster. The jump cuts also managed to make the audience feel as though they were in the same manic, drug-induced state as the character on the big screen. 

• Little Shop of Horrors: The original ending of 1986’s Little Shop of Horrors had both Audrey (Ellen Greene) and Seymour (Rick Moranis) being killed by the evil alien plant Seymour had dubbed Audrey II. Although the ending was more faithful to its stage play source material, test audiences hated to see the loveable couple die at the end. They had to cut that ending and make it a happy ending, or a satisfying ending. They didn't want to, but they understood they couldn't release it with that kind of a reaction. [Audiences] loved the two leads so much that when we killed them, they felt bereft. Warner Bros. gave the production an additional $5 million to shoot a happier finale, and the original ending wound up on the cutting room floor (and, eventually, on YouTube).

• Sunset Boulevard: During a preview screening of the drama Sunset Boulevard in Evanston, Ill., the audience laughed so much at the opening—which occurred in a morgue with the corpse of Joe Gillis (William Holden) recounting how he was murdered to the other cadavers—that director Billy Wilder walked out. And he wasn't the only one; many audience members walked out, too. The audience thought the opening was funny, but didn’t know how to react to the rest of the movie—was it a drama or a comedy?—so, Wilder shot another opening with Gillis’ lifeless body floating in a swimming pool while a voiceover recounted his murder. With a dramatic tone established at the beginning, Sunset Boulevard opened to rave reviews from audiences and critics alike in August 1950. 

• License To Kill: Well into post-production of the sixteenth film in the James Bond franchise in 1989, MGM changed the film’s title from License Revoked to License To Kill after American test audiences reacted unfavorably to the title. They believed it referred to Bond’s (Timothy Dalton) driver's license instead of his license to kill from the British intelligence agency MI6. Longtime Bond film producer Albert Broccoli had already commissioned posters and other movie memorabilia with the title License Revoked, which were scrapped before its release in American theaters.  

• Pretty in Pink: Test audiences didn’t like the original ending of Pretty in Pink, which featured Andie (Molly Ringwald) and Duckie (Jon Cryer) going to the prom together and dancing the night away to David Bowie’s "Heroes" with the implication that they’d be together forever. They wanted to see Andie end up with her high school crush Blaine (Andrew McCarthy) at the end of the movie instead—so the final cut of Pretty in Pink ends with Andie and Blaine passionately making out in front of his BMW. "I thought the new ending was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking," admitted director Howard Deutch. "I thought it was unfair and wrong, and that’s not what the movie was intended to be. It felt immoral."

• 28 Days Later: At the end of Danny Boyle’s original cut of his 2002 horror film, Jim (Cillian Murphy) gets shot in the stomach and slowly starts to die, while his two female companions try to revive him in a hospital. Jim ends up dying, while his would-be rescuers venture off into the zombie apocalypse to fight for survival. Test audiences felt the ending was too bleak, so the studio made Boyle alter the final scenes to make them more optimistic. The film now ends with Jim surviving his wounds and the zombie-like creatures starving to death.

• Titanic: The first version of James Cameron’s 1997 epic that was screened for test audiences featured a running time nearly four hours long. One of the sequences cut from the final version was a fight scene between Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner), Cal’s (Billy Zane) English valet and bodyguard. The scene took place after Rose (Kate Winslet) rescues Jack from the master-at-arms' office, where he was handcuffed to a pipe after being "caught" with the Heart of the Ocean jewel. Test audiences felt the fight scene slowed down the film’s pace, while some also believed that the scene was unrealistic in a life-and-death situation. Cameron ended up cutting 45 minutes out of Titanic to make it a digestible 194 minutes (and, thankfully, didn't go with this ending, which is pretty awful).

Brainstorming/Experimentation: Looking at these movies that where changed due to test audiences and then talking about movie reviews, really give a perspective of how much it takes for a film to be made and released. I've never written a movie review myself, but I would probably write some If I felt strongly about a movie. I definitely do think that movie reviews do help give insight to what a movies about and more. I have looked at movies reviews and I've heard about test audiences, but most of the time I like to see the movie for myself to see what I think. Critics for movies honesty help push movies and help people to see movies and gain prophets. Its good to have people view your movies and have opinions so that way people know if its worth a watch or not. Then test audiences help the film makers decide what the movie needs or does not and gives critiques. Test audiences help give feedback and along with reviews.

Reflection: After looking at movie/film reviews and test audiences, it helps us get more of a an idea of how these work. Movie reviews and test audiences really are reflections of these films themselves. I will definitely look at movie reviews and maybe one day I write one if I feel compelled to. Movie reviews do help me especially when I look into moves to see if I’ll like it or not. I would love to be part of a test audience and help a movie be finalized and put out into the world. These two things really help films be boosted into the media and be watched and gained prophet. There’s so much that goes into films and its unbelievable how much there really is. These do help boost the film into the media along with advertising and trailers and more. Although movie reviews and test audiences aren't talked about too much, at least that I've seen.