Evaluating the Main Task (The Calling)

1. Evaluating the Main Task(The Calling) By Tarjau Bowen & Alec Boyle

2. In what ways did our media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The film was burnt onto a DVD making it possible to be sold online or in shops. The editing of the film and including sound and transitions gives the film a professional feel along with my media product having a menu at the beginning giving the consumer the choice to watch our main task ‘The Calling’ and our preliminary task, showing our filming skills and editing skills before we attempted our main task.

3. How does our media product represent particular social groups? Making our main character a female shows the stereotypical idea in the thriller genre, that women can not defend themselves in serious cases of kidnapping or murder which often and most regularly occur in a thriller movie. We also focused on our female main characters age, as teenagers and young women and mainly targets in thrillers. Using a character that caters to teenagers and young women, we were able to respond to the thrillers age focus. Our main characters class shows again the stereotypical middle class young woman. Using a Caucasianand blonde young woman relates to the usual victim throughout the Thriller genre, showing she is the other and highlighting her innocence and purity.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute our media product and why? Online stores like Play.com and Amazon.com Teenagers and young adults tend to use the internet. The internet has become a way to venture to easy access to purchase media goods and even to check prices and if the item that is desired is in stock in some stores.

5. Who would be the audience for our media product? Our media product would cater to teenagers and young adults along with anybody interested in the Thriller genre. How did we attract/address your audience? Using a female teenager as our main character encourages other teenage girls to watch our media product as it caters to their age group and some may be able to relate to our main character, from the simplicity of our main character wearing jeans to the other clothes she wears. Teenage girls acknowledge that the actress is compatible to their age group and they grow an attachment to that specific character making her their main focus throughout the media product.

6. What have we learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? We have learnt about the editing process. Choosing what shots we use and what music and transitions compliment each shot. Deciding on the perfect music and the perfect transitions for our media product that continued the basic identification of a Thriller was extremely important during the editing process. The editing was done at the CLC, this made it possible for us (as first editors) edit with ease with the help from professionals and professional editing equipment. Burning the film on a DVD outlined the fact that we had created an actual media product and gave the film a very official feel to it.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do we feel we have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? We struggled with continuity during our preliminary task and although we had believed that we had learnt from our mistakes with continuity errors. We were proven wrong by the running water in our full product. Making sure that the water was running in the right shots became difficult and during editing some mistakes became apparent, although we were able to correct for our final product. The editing in our full product had improved because we were slightly more experienced as we had been given help and we had edited our preliminary task. Working in a two was fairly easy for us as we were both committed to filming and creating the full product, whereas the reliability of our actress proved to make filming for our media product difficult, as we has decided we wanted the opening set at night, we had to find a day where our actress was free and also able to film in the evening. We struggled with natural lighting in the full product and how unpredictable it is. We were determined to film at night to cater to the usual setting of a Thriller.