My log book of our thriller opening process.

1. DATE SUMMARY OF MY WORK WORKED WITH
16-17/04 These were the days that we used to film
our opening. The role I played was that
of Cinematographer, Director and
brought the props in such as the books
and newspaper articles. We spent the
afternoon looking around the property,
which belonged to Bianca’s
grandparents. I filmed some shots of the
woods, which we used for the opening
credit sequence. We went back just
before the sun set, and I set up the
camera and tripod and recorded about
45 minutes worth of footage which I
planned on using for a time lapse. In the
evening we filmed inside the room, after
setting up all of the props, furniture. I
then filmed the shot of William walking
and Bianca screaming in the morning, as
we had forgotten to do so the night
before. We had a decent amount of
usable footage to work with which was
promising for the editing stage.
William Owen
Bianca Escobar-Flaunty
Zali Wright
01/05 Editing. By now I had already begun to
play around with the footage and see
what we could and couldn’t use. I made
the time lapse by speeding up all of the
footage from that scene, which I think
ended up unique and effective. Without
the credit sequence and logos, it was
sitting around the 1:30 mark (time-
wise). Our media teacher, Mrs Bell,
reviewed what I had done so far, and
gave constructive criticism, and thought
we have revealed too much by showing
shots of the antagonist, portrayed by
Will. We talked about it as a group and
thought that, despite the time spent
getting these shots, it would be more
effective and show more ambiguity if we
didn’t show him, and focused more on
shots of the location and Mise-en scene.
William Owen
Bianca Escobar-Flaunty
Zali Wright
10/05 Continuing on with the editing, at this
stage I had removed all shots of the
antagonist from the film, and made sure
the shots I put in were effective and
relevant to the concept as a whole. I
minimised the length of the time lapse so
it would be more effective, and not drag
Zali Wright

2. on too much. I played around with the
saturation and exposure of the clips in
order to make the lighting look more
low-key, thus fitting in with the thriller
codes and conventions more. I added a
few subtle cross-dissolves as well in
order to make a few shots blend together
better.
11/05 Soundtrack/score. With previous cuts, I
had added a classical music piece,
Passacaglia by Handel, and manipulated
the pitch to make it seem more
unsettling. While I didn’t mind this I
thought it was too distracting. Instead I
went on garage band and created my
own piece. I drew inspiration from the
violin screeches in the Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, and the drum beat from
American Horror Story. I created a
drumbeat and added a violin screech, in
timed but random intervals. I played
around with the pitch so it didn’t get too
repetition, and was happy with the end
result.
Zali Wright
15/05 Credit sequence. Since Bianca had
already designed one of our logos, I
decided to play around and see what I
could do regarding the opening credit
sequence. After looking through the
footage we didn’t use, I found a lot of
hand held and shaky shots of the woods.
I cut particular shots from each of these
and added them all together, and used a
blur effect. I chose an animated title
feature, where each letter comes up
individually, and the font was also
effective. When discussing with our
teacher again, she suggested making
them slightly smaller, and either appear
at the top left or bottom right hand
corner. The effect was that the credits
looked crisp, and even though they were
simple, stood out and fit in with the rest
of our thriller opening, later on I decided
to have the opening title appear at the
end.
Zali Wright
20/05 This was the day our final cut was due. I
felt confident with our film, and mainly
played around with things such as shot
Zali Wright

3. lengths, and added the other logo that
Bianca made. While I found it a lot of
work, it was something I really enjoyed
doing and view as a good learning
experience as well.