ABSTRACT
The majority of movies produced by a major Hollywood studio undergo the process of audience previews, or Recruited-Audience Screenings (RAS). With the goal of achieving maximum success at the box office, marketing research experts engage in data collection, exit polling, and qualitative analysis. This is designed to scrutinize the integral elements of a film as well as its efficacy for attracting a particular audience demographic. Preview audiences are probed through their responses to strategic questions about a film’s plot, its actors, scenes, music, and pacing. It is frequently understood as a critical step that can profoundly impact a film’s final production. For example, the preview audience’s appeal for retribution for the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction (dir. Adrian Lyne, 1987) reputedly resulted in the re-shooting of a completely new ending (Leonard 2009: 63; Marich 2013: 60). 1 As Ivan Radford argued, the common perception is that power is transferred to the audience through the preview screening process: “In the final reckoning, it’s not the producers, the moneymen, or the stars who call the shots: the reactions of audiences at early test screenings can lead to lines being dropped, scenes being scrapped, even entire plots being rewritten” (2008).
