I assume they still have these for movies.
What do they do that’s different from a regular showing?
Do they have surprise previews like the first sneak “peek” of “Gone With The Wind”?
What about Broadway theatre?
I was given free tickets for a test screening a long time ago. I’m sure they still do those but doesn’t happen very often in New Jersey that I know of.
Test screenings require that you fill out a card with your thoughts about the movie. Some movies have major changes based on test screenings.
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Here is an article on them. I must not be on any lists any more, but when I was in college we went to what I think would be considered a sneak preview of Zacchariah, a rock and roll western from the early 1970s.
There are test showings of movies about to come out with selected audiences who are instrumented up the wazoo so the producers can tell what works and what doesn’t.
For theater there are previews before the official opening - when the critics come - which are sold in all the normal places, including TKTS. I saw Tomfoolery in preview in 1981 because my wife was extremely pregnant and we couldn’t wait until the opening. No one asked us for feedback, though the audience, being Tom Lehrer fans, knew the words of the songs better than the singers.
I imagine there are different sorts. I’ve been to two types.
Independent films doing the rounds in anticipation of various festivals in hopes of earning a more conventional release. These might have some people involved with the film present, there might be a Q&A. If there is some kind of local connection there might even be an after party or fundraising thing.
More mainstream films where still, I’m guessing there is some question about how to market the film. So they do some previews to gauge audience reaction, handing out surveys. Serves double purpose of gaining some good will which might result in word of mouth while also getting a sense of any tweaks that might need to be made and how to advertise. Sometimes they might be a free showing, like Dark City. Other times they just piggy back on regular showings at an Indy theater, like Sorry to Bother You.
I would think things get even more elaborate if you live in L.A.
I’ve been to two:
In early '84, there was an ad in the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, announcing a test screening, that evening, of a new film by the creators of *Airplane! *(who were from Wisconsin, and had started in Madison, with their “Kentucky Fried Theater”). My roommate and I went a few hours before the scheduled time, and got in line – they were holding the screening in the student union’s theater, which held ~1200 people, and there was already a considerable line.
We were able to get in, and the movie being screened was a rough cut of Top Secret!, with Val Kilmer. Before the screening, there were some announcements, and they noted that the film’s soundtrack wasn’t yet done, so there was a “temp track” of music from other films (there was a lot of Star Wars music in there). They were trying to judge the flow of the film, and whether all of the jokes worked with a live audience. The audience loved the film, and the three creators did a Q&A afterwards, which was hilarious – they said that, after Airplane!, they couldn’t decide if they wanted to spoof spy films, WWII films, or Elvis films, so they made something that spoofed all three. 
They also discussed why they had nothing to do with Airplane II (short version: Paramount wanted a sequel, they didn’t want to work on a sequel, and Paramount owned the rights).
I was always sad that it hadn’t done better at the box office, because it’s a very funny movie.
The second one was a test screening of Company Business, a 1991 spy film with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gene Hackman. I think that I’d gotten the offer to attend through a phone call, and that was one where they did do a paper-and-pencil survey of the audience afterwards, to gauge reactions to the movie.
I’ve been to two: Kung Fu Panda and RoboCop 3.
I don’t remember any audience questionnaires for RoboCop 3, though everyone did get a poster.
Kung Fu Panda had questionnaires.
My friend Keven, a member of the Screen Actors Guild, has been to several pre-screenings of films in L.A., and they often have cast Q&As afterwards. He got to see A Star is Born and then have a Q&A with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga; I’m sooooooo jealous.
I went to a sneak preview of Weekend at Bernie’s, because I was a big fan of Andrew McCarthy. We had to fill out cards at the end. I’m still fond of that movie.
My entire family saw a special preview of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Whistle Down the Wind in Washington, D.C. (I believe my father knew an attorney involved with the production). We were asked to provide a critique, and I wrote up a long letter describing our feelings about the show and how we thought it could be improved. That production received very negative reviews, and the planned Broadway opening was cancelled.
The show was eventually reworked and produced in the West End. There have been several U.S. and UK tours, although it never made it to Broadway. I’ve always wondered if my suggestions had any influence on the revised version.
I won tickets way back in the day to a sneak preview of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Everyone in attendance got a free poster (which I still have).
While in university in the early 90s I got in to a sneak preview of Pulp Fiction, the night before the official premiere. The only bonus was that we were seeing a free movie the day before its opening.
And then a couple years ago (wow, was it almost six now?!?!) my wife and I got tickets to a sneak preview of World War Z where they had studio hacks outside taking down notes from the audience about their opinions—ours was I’m sure very much like most everyone else’s, which was that the movie had nothing to do with the book.
China Syndrome
There are two sorts of such things that I’ve gone to. The first is the Washington, D.C. Film Society, which I’ve belonged to for decades. They do three sorts of events (and require payment of dues each year for membership). First, they have an Oscars party each year where we go to a cinema and draft house to watch the entire event on the movie screen. We can arrive there as soon as a half hour before the red carpet events begin and can stay until the end of the Oscars. Second, they have a trailers night twice a year where we watch about three dozen trailers for upcoming films at each of the two trailer nights. Third, they show about sixty to one hundred (non-blockbuster) entire new films about a week and a half before the movie opens locally. They announce what movie they are showing beforehand. Each of these events costs something, but if you go to a fair amount of those movies that year you will easily pay less money than if you had to pay to see them when they come to local theaters for regular showings.
There is also the Washington, D.C. Cinema Club, which I’ve gone to several shows of over the decades but haven’t joined. They show a number of films just before they open in regular theaters locally. They don’t announce what the films will be beforehand (I think, but I’m not sure), but you will find out what it is when you get to the theater just before buying your ticket. It costs more than what it would cost for a regular showing. There is a speaker afterwards who talks about the film.
I got a free invite to an early screening of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a few weeks before it was released. It was a first-come-first-served deal where more people were invited than they had room for and I was one of the last few people they let in before they cut off the rest of the line. I don’t recall being asked to fill out a card or anything, and as I recall there were only a few small differences between the version we saw and the official release.
Years ago, I went to see The Fox and the Hound and they had a special sneak preview of Condorman. I actually was thrilled, since I knew the book that the latter was based on, though the result was only so-so. But I don’t recall if they handed out surveys or not.
I’ve been to one back in the mid 80s. Free passes were given to a bunch of my fellow college kids to see the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin film All of Me. It was a full house (in an admittedly small theater). I don’t recall if there were questionaires or anything like that. Really the only thing I remember was me and my fellow music majors getting a big laugh from the piano-playing mystic at the end of the film.
It seemed like that when I saw the actually released version, there were things that were missing from the one I’d seen, but that might have been my imagination.
When I lived in Utah I got tickets for a lot of test screenings at local theaters, and they also ran them at the University. I think their idea was that Salt Lake City was kind of a good “average viewer” territory, and sufficiently isolated from the rest of the country that word didn’t leak out so readily. While I lived there I saw or heard about
The Little Drummer Girl
Harry and the Hendersons
Creator
Ladyhawke
Body Double
Many Yharen ago, when I was one of the managers of a large movie theatre, we got a sneak of Back to the Future. Security was tight–the film cans arrived chained to the transporter. I made up the film, ran it for the sneak and broke it down as soon as it ended, since the transporter was sitting next to the projector, still chained to the cans. No idea if they did surveys–I had 11 other movies to keep running in addition to the secret squirrel stuff with BTTF. This was about 3 months before the movie opened.
Brazil
Gilliam wanted to show ‘his’ film. The studio wanted it changed and wouldn’t allow him to screen the film. Lots of waiting, sitting around. Whole thing was somewhat of a cluster-fuck, but I got up to go to the bathroom and ran into Terry in the lobby and got to talk with him for a while and he gave me an autograph with a little drawing also.
That was cool!
Didn’t see the movie for years after that…
I’ve been to a few:
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The Lost World: Jurassic Park. I won it on a radio station. Didn’t have to fill out anything afterward (which was good, because I didn’t like the movie despite being very excited about it).
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Several preview screenings as perks for the spouse’s job (he works at Apple, and sometimes they’d do screenings before the movie opened). Didn’t have to fill out anything for those either. Not sure this counts since it was only a few days before it opened. Best one was The Avengers.
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Bad Samaritan (David Tennant thriller): Went during San Jose Comic Con, to a screening about a month before it opened. The director and Tennant were both there to introduce it, so that was awesome since I’m a huge Tennant fan. The director asked us to talk it up on social media if we liked it (which I did–he even gave me a retweet!).
I’ve been to two. We (me, wife, and two kids) got into a sneak preview of The Lego Movie two weeks before the release date. Most people at the time thought that there was no way that it could be good. There were no questionnaires but the preview accomplished what I imagine was the goal - for the next two weeks we told everyone with kids that it was a really good movie and that they should see it.
I also saw a sneak preview of Chuck and Buck. I was hanging outside of the theater waiting for someone when a guy from the studio asked if I wanted to see a movie for free. I said OK. We watched and enjoyed it. We filled out very short questionnaires which asked us to rate a few things about the movie, like how much would we recommend it to others, how much did we like the leads, etc. I’m not sure what the point of the whole thing was since there was no chance that a movie like Chuck and Buck would become a hit. I could have recommended it to everyone I know and none of them would have gone.
How are spoilers and leaks avoided any longer this era of twitter and other social media?