Test screening

A test screening is a preview screening of a movie or television show before its general release in order to gauge audience reaction. Preview audiences are selected from a cross-section of the population, and are usually asked to complete a questionnaire or provide feedback in some form. Harold Lloyd is credited with inventing the concept, having used it as early as 1928. Test screenings have been recommended even for starting filmmakers "even if a film festival is fast approaching".

Roger Ebert, the late reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, has written that test screenings by filmmakers are "valid" to get an idea of an audience response to a rough cut. But "too often, however, studio executives use preview screenings as a weapon to enforce their views on directors, and countless movies have had stupid happy endings tacked on after such screenings." Ebert writes that Billy Wilder dropped the first reel from Sunset Boulevard after a test screening. Producer Tim Bevan emphasizes that the goal of the film editing process is to turn unedited film "into 85 to 110 minutes of story that people are going to want to go and see", and he "absolutely believes in the testing process. 99.9 times out of 100 the audience will speak louder than anybody else". Even though "editing rooms can be very combative places" with directors, the test results make the process "less combative." While filming Johnny English (2002) with director Peter Howitt, testing led to reshoots of the beginning of the film to set up the character better, and "test scores leaped considerably."

Edgar Wright, writer and director of Shaun of the Dead, said in an interview that in test screenings done before the film's special effects were completed, audiences remarked that the ending was "a bit abrupt" and "lame". After being given a low budget and two days to finish shooting, the filmmakers added a "15 second" ending, which followup press screening audiences liked, leading to one reviewer changing his earlier bad review, giving "an extra star". Dan Myrick and Ed Sanchez, directors of The Blair Witch Project said, "We had a 2 1/2 hour cut [...] We had no idea what we had, so we had to show it to an audience and get their reaction." At this screening, the filmmakers met their future producer.

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