Planning the test screening, I carefully select the participants. I'm looking for filmmakers, or incredibly film-savvy people, who are intelligent and forthcoming. I want people whose work I respect and who will give me an honest and candid opinion. I also carefully screen those participants for 'baggage' that they might bring into the screening. IE: If someone has recently had a failed short or a similar project that wasn't successful, their personal feelings could taint their opinion of my film. Although it might be useful to compare notes with someone who has done similar work and failed - that kind of discussion is best kept one-on-one to save influencing the whole group. I want people who will speak their mind freely and not be easily swayed by popular opinion; people who can think for themselves and form their own opinions. I want people who watch, make, and enjoy the genre of film I'm screening. If I have someone who hates movies in elevators - their opinion at this stage will be of little use to me. Then I carefully go through my list again and mark those people with the strongest personalities; those people who are more outspoken and will tend to dominate the conversation. I carefully examine this smaller list and make sure I've got a good balance of outspoken people with widely different points of view. If I have two strong personalities who are likely to agree on everything, that can adversely affect the group. Basically, I want a mixed bag of articulate and experienced people who I trust and respect. If I have a wide variety and half of the room, or more, agree that one area is a problem, than that area is a definitely a problem I have to look at. If I had a room full of like-minded people, those issues wouldn't be so clear-cut. I also want filmmakers at this point because most of my questions are technical ones. 'Does this moment properly tell the story?' 'Can I get away with this cheat?' 'Does the edit work?' I want people who can professionally articulate potential solutions, rather than just give more common audience-like abstractions such as: 'I don't like him.' That doesn't do anything for me now. I need 'He's not sympathetic cause every time he starts to show any sign of emotion, you cut away!' Now THAT's an opinion I can use. I make these screenings an open-forum. We watch the film, which I preface with nothing more than the typical 'work-in-progress' speech. Then I might ask a fairly vague question 'What does the end mean?' or 'What happened in scene three? Why is she so mad?' I don't want to lead anyone with direct questions because I want to hear that they got the story points without my prompting them. I will rarely defend, agree, disagree or explain my position - again I'm not looking to prompt them, or convince anyone of my point of view. I'm there to see if they get and agree with my point of view purely from what they've seen on the screen. I've also got to keep the group small - 8-10 people tops. More and people don't' really get a chance to talk and be heard. Less and I might not get the wide scope of opinions as I need. That's the general gist of my 1st preview screening philosophy!
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