#10 - Audience Testing with Stephen Hornyak - Pt 2

The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com/podcast. Terms apply. You can find and subscribe to the premium episodes of this podcast @pitch.supportingcast.fm. Welcome to Pitch, a podcast bringing storytellers and stories to the world. This week's premium episode features Austin Kimmel's fantasy comedy pilot, Dunce Macabre. Make sure to check that out. This week, we're gonna finish off our chat with Steven Hornyak, who is an actor, producer, and an audience testing specialist. We're gonna continue right where we left off last week with me asking if the process ever doesn't work. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, check it out. You'll You'll get to hear the first part of our chat with Steven. Here we go. Were there any surprises? Have you ever seen have you ever tested a movie and either the filmmaker doesn't fix the parts that the audience is saying should be fixed, and then it comes out and then you're like, well, well, that audience was wrong. This movie is great or beloved. Or you've seen something that, like, the audience is like, fix it. The filmmaker did it, and then it and then it didn't work. Have there any been been any surprises, basically? Meaning in terms of the opposite of what What you tested for. Yeah. You test for something and then the opposite happens. Yeah. I mean, no. The answer I mean, the short answer is no. And and the thing is that, you know, one thing we always say is we we have never seen a movie get worse with audience input. Wow. It always gets better. Right? Yeah. Which is simultaneously surprising and the most obvious thing ever. Right. Because you're making a movie for an audience. Yeah. And actually, you know, you brought up poetry before, which is very interesting to me. Because what part of what you said is poetry and who's your audience. Right? Now I would think as a poet, you'd go, this is self expression, man. I don't give a fuck about the audience. Right? This is self expression. And I think think a lot of filmmakers think that this is my expression, my artistic expression. Yeah. And, who are you to tell me, what works and what doesn't? You know? So You have to start saying to them, even poets think about their audience. Yeah. They do. Yeah. It's a good that's a good, you know Yeah. Because because poetry is supposed to be about this internal emotional landscape. Well, who is that landscape for? Yeah. Are you …