Test Screening: How they have fallen

I use to go to test Screening religiously when I was much younger and still in college, but now the whole free test screening process is so unpleasant I rarely go anymore. Mainly because I don't want to have to stand in a line for 2 or more hours, just to be told that I might not get in in the first place, usually because I don't have the right look, or the right ethnicity for the film being tested. Case in point, I recently went to a test screening of Valentine's Day. A huge ensemble romantic comedy cast about the trials and tribulation of Valentine's day, by those who are both romantics and cynics. The film is obviously going to be geared towards couples or more accurately white couples. Hence a group of black people were turned away from the screening, or detained might be a better choice of words. For what a lot of screening or test marketing companies do is select people from the line that they feel are their target demographics or audience and give them preferential treatment. Which in the case of test screenings is a better seat in the house. So they will often pull people out often line and move them to the front so they get in first and get better seating. Which annoys some people in the line, especially people who are not familiar with how the whole test screening thing works. As such the group of black people noticed that a lot of people were being moved in front of them, and took great offense. Especially since all the people being moved in front of them happened to be young white people. Which is understandable, as it looks blatantly racist, and to a certain degree it is. But the film is not being marketed towards black people, and hence they do not really want black people's opinions. Though their mistake is in thinking that Black people are only interested in seeing movies staring Black people or horror movies. Which in the world of studio and Hollywood test screenings, is exactly how black audiences are viewed or categorized. So if you are a person of color and you are ever approached by a movie recruiter, you can be assured the film is either a horror film or stars a major black actor.


On another less controversial note, the film Valentine's Day itself was just so so. I actually saw a trailer for the film yesterday and there are even some scenes that I did not see in the version I saw, which tells you they are still making (much needed) changes. Only a handful of the some 12 odd story lines were any good or even remotely interesting, while the rest were pure filler if you act me. Meant to bring in some younger audience members, and that's it. Like Taylor Lauter vacuous teen jock character and equally vapid girlfriend played by Taylor Swift ( Which now explains why they are dating in real life). In a nutshell I would recommend that you wait til this film is on cable or you can rent it for cheap, as it's definitely not worth the 10 plus dollars your average movie ticket costs nowadays.