Test-screen any film or show on a digital twin of the US population.

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01 / WHAT YOU GET BACK
“It's brilliant. I can see how to use it multiple times during the edit as well as for audience definition for sales.”
Paul Katis, Director, Pukka Films

TestScreen for advertisers and content creators is coming soon. Join the waitlist →

Drag across the timeline, or jump to a moment, to see how the audience felt and what they said.

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    Viewer reactions

    • curiosity
    • surprise
    • amusement
    • satisfaction
    • tension
    • dread
    • sadness
    • boredom

    A TestScreen read, minute by minute. Drag through the first 55 minutes of a feature film across the entire audience. Every shift in the mix comes with what the viewers said at that moment.

    Real answers from a trailer test “Too flashy for me.” “Fun, fast-moving, and easy to get into.” A sample of real answers to three questions, and the people who gave them. Read the answers →
    Where attention sags

    The dips are your cuts. If fourteen seconds have to come out of the middle, this tells you which fourteen.

    Who it holds

    Split the same read by quadrant, or by whichever audience you actually sell to. A cut that works for 18–34 and dies for 45+ is a scheduling decision, not an edit note.

    Why they went

    Every reaction carries a timestamp and a named viewer, so you get the sentence behind the score.

    How TestScreen works, one question at a time

    02 / EXPLAINERS

    Test every stage, from the development slate to the final cut

    03 / WHAT YOU CAN TEST
    Shelved projects

    Most of a slate never gets made. See which shelved projects hold their audience, and what to change, before you revive one.

    Titles & concepts

    Six title options, a franchise name, a positioning line. Settle it with the audience instead of the room.

    Trailers & teasers

    Find the sag before the media buy, not after the impressions are paid for.

    Pilots & full cuts

    Run it past the demographic you made it for, scene by scene, while the edit is still open.

    TV spots & promos

    Read attention and fit across every audience you're buying, not just the one you researched.

    What they understood

    Comprehension in their own words. What they think it is, what genre, who the antagonist is, and who it was made for. A cut that loses the premise is a fixable defect, and you find it here.

    What it promised

    The expectation the cut sets, and what would disappoint them if the finished thing turns out to be something else. The mismatch is expensive after release and cheap before it.

    Where it blurs

    Whether the audience can tell which film this is. Tonal ambiguity reads as choice in the room and as confusion outside it.

    Screen a cut you care about with the audience you're making it for.

    Book a Demo

    Why a synthetic audience read holds up

    04 / WHY TRUST IT

    The audience is drawn from a population built to match real US demographics to within about 1% on the census margins, then checked against several hundred published human survey results. It's built to mirror the viewers you're targeting rather than a general panel.

    A grid of synthetic audience members, each a named, located person with a photo and a short first-person bio
    A slice of the audience. Each viewer is a specific, located person with a job and a life, drawn from the calibrated population.
    Step 1 of 5

    Built from the real population

    Every person starts as US Census and ACS microdata: age, sex, place, household, education, income. Across the whole population, the census margins match to within about 1%.

    US Census + ACS microdata
    Brianna Chapman
    Brianna ChapmanOne of about 340,000 synthetic Americans
    Age32
    SexFemale
    LivesRural West Virginia
    HouseholdSingle, one child
    EducationHigh school
    Income$36,750
    Openness
    83
    Conscientiousness
    36
    Extraversion
    60
    Agreeableness
    22
    Neuroticism
    54
    JobHair stylist, full time
    Her news
    MONTUEWEDTHU
    Several hundred published survey results

    Brianna, in red, is one person in the population. The population as a whole is benchmarked against Gallup and Pew.

    Real money on real events

    The same population, tested against prediction markets. An 18-axis map shows where it is reliable and where it is weaker.

    Drag the slider, or pick a step, to see how deep each person goes.

    How we make sure the results are accurate. The full method, the test against real-money prediction markets, and the known limits.

    See the validation →

    Coming next: advertising and creators

    The same engine, built for two more kinds of video. Join the waitlist and tell us what you would test first.

    The engine comes with a partner.

    06 / HOW WE WORK

    FishDog shows you signal that was invisible a year or two ago. But the technology is only half of it. Every engagement is run by a senior partner: somebody who learns how your business decides, pressure-tests the why behind the what, and stays. As a result, the tenth study knows what the first nine taught.

    We recruit the audience your question needs and land the signal where you work: a report, a working session, a live feed into your stack. The engine delivers the speed. We sharpen your judgment.

    The team behind FishDog

    07 / TEAM

    These are the people who help you see the signal before the market does.

    Rod Banner

    Rod Banner

    Co-founder & President
    Andreas Duess

    Andreas Duess

    Co-founder & CEO
    Phillip Gales

    Phillip Gales

    Co-founder & CPO
    Gianluca Angelici

    Gianluca Angelici

    Co-founder & CTO

    How TestScreen works

    08 / METHOD

    Every screening runs on the same digital twin of the US population. Here is how it is built, and how your audience comes out of it.

    01

    Start with the census

    We build about 340,000 synthetic Americans from US Census and ACS microdata, then check the population against the census to within about 1% on the census margins. Each one is a model of a person, never a copy of a real one.

    02

    Give each person a life

    On top of the demographics, each person gets a personality from a trait model that extends the Big Five, an occupation, and its own news sources and interests. News comes in every hour and each person's selection is updated daily, so your audience knows what happened this week.

    03

    Recruit your audience

    You give us a brief, say women 25 to 44 who subscribe to two streamers and watch true crime. We recruit the people who match it from the population.

    04

    Screen, read and compare

    The audience watches your cut and we track engagement every 10 seconds, with what each viewer says at the moment it changes. Screen the next cut with the same audience, or put a second audience on the same cut. Results come back within 24 hours, and your video never trains a model.

    Questions, answered

    09 / FAQ

    A recruited test screening costs up to $35,000 and takes weeks to organize. So most films get fewer test screenings than the team would like. TestScreen runs the screening on a synthetic audience recruited from a digital twin of the US population, with results within 24 hours.

    Because testing is rationed. At up to $35,000 a screening, the trailer cut, the title and the alternate ending usually get decided by the people closest to the film. And the room is whoever turned up locally on a Tuesday night, not the viewers the film was made for. With results back within 24 hours, TestScreen makes it practical to test every cut on the audience you're actually selling to.

    Traditionally, by renting a theatre, recruiting a room and waiting weeks for one night of reaction. TestScreen screens your cut on an audience recruited from a digital twin of the US population. You get engagement and eight emotions, every 10 seconds, with what viewers said at each moment, within 24 hours.

    Yes. Most of a development slate never reaches production, often for financing or timing reasons, before any audience has seen it. Put the pilot, animatic, sizzle or short in front of an audience recruited from a digital twin of the US population, and within 24 hours you see which stalled projects hold their audience, who they hold, and what to change before you put budget behind reviving one.

    Yes. Put the same cut in front of two audiences side by side and see exactly where they split, on one timeline, and what each audience said at that moment.

    Yes. Each screening is its own session, so the same audience comes to the new cut fresh. You compare your edit, not two different rooms.

    We build about 340,000 synthetic Americans from US Census and ACS microdata, checked against the census to within about 1 percent. Each one has a personality from a trait model that extends the Big Five, a job, and their own news sources. We recruit your audience from that population, so when the real audience skews, ours skews with it.

    Yes. Each synthetic person reads their own news sources, and their news is updated every day. A trailer lands with an audience that knows this week's headlines.

    The population is checked against the census, then benchmarked against real-money prediction markets and published Gallup and Pew results. The prediction-market benchmark maps where the population is reliable and where it is weaker, so you can see that before relying on an answer. Our validation papers set out the method and its known limits.

    We recruit every audience from a standing population calibrated to official statistics, the way you would recruit real viewers. When it skews, we tell you rather than smoothing it out.

    A chatbot answers as one voice, from training data frozen at its cutoff. TestScreen recruits an audience of individual synthetic people, each with census demographics, a personality, a job and their own news, and reads how each of them reacts to your cut, every 10 seconds.

    Ad testing puts a commercial, promo or campaign in front of a sample of the audience before it runs, to see whether it lands and with whom. It has usually meant recruited panels and a wait of several weeks, so most advertisers test the flagship spot and nothing else. TestScreen for advertising is coming next; join the waitlist and tell us what you would test first.

    No. Your cut is what the audience watches. It never trains the model your competitors use, or anyone else's. A model calibrated on your own content is yours alone, and only happens with your sign-off.

    Your footage and briefs are used to run your screenings inside your private workspace, nothing more. We do not sell your data. Production runs on AWS, with full DPAs and NDAs available.