How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
When starting this journey of creating my CCRs, I knew I wanted to brainstorm some creative approaches to answering the questions. I turned to social media and drew inspiration from this questionnaire interview-type video where famous actors of movies would answer questions on the most searched things on Google for various prompts regarding the actors or the movies they were promoting. I thought that this would be great to replicate for a movie opening question, and planned out how I would do this. I went to Canva and designed the sheet, printed it out, and glued it to some cardboard. Then I drafted a script to answer the questions, reviewed it some, and then decided I was ready. The editing I knew would take a while, and I tried to replicate the style of these videos on YouTube to the best of my abilities.
CCR Question 2 "Gameplay Voiceover":
How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
When I was brainstorming ideas on how I would answer the CCR questions, I knew that I wanted to fuse my love for video games into this process. Therefore, when brainstorming on how to incorporate this, I thought of the type of YouTubers that I watch, such as Joe Bartolozzi or CoryxKenshin, and also researched the techniques they use to make their videos engaging. By doing this, I was able to recreate to some degree how they could commentate on stuff outside of the game. I used a voice recording and gameplay from a screen capture, combining and editing with effects using Premiere Pro in order to deliver this CCR question.
CCR Question 3 "Magazine"
How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
I struggled to find an idea for this CCR question, but after carefully considering several options, I decided to produce a magazine covering this question. It took some getting used to InDesign, but having prior experience from earlier in the year meant I was not a total beginner. I wasn't liking how the result was coming out on my first couple of attempts, but eventually I pulled together a magazine in which I feel confident.
CCR Question 4 "Guess the item"
How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project?
To come up with the idea of this CCR, I wrote down in my notes a bunch of challenge games popular on social media. This included the box challenge, where people had to reach in the box and guess what was inside. When I read question 4 of the CCR questions, I knew that I could apply this idea to the hardware and use a computer to link the software and online resources we integrated. I had my family help me out by randomly selecting items and having me guess said items. Once filming was done, I needed to start editing. This took a while as I wanted to try new things out in Premiere Pro and expand my knowledge on editing. After all is said in done, I am happy with how this CCR has turned out.
All in all, and with all the hard work that has been put into this film's opening, I am now finally complete. It took a lot of effort, especially in the last few days, to pull through for the CCRs, but the dedication has paid off, and I know I gave it my all. I am grateful for this project and for being given the opportunity to learn and grow from this. I hope you enjoy my portfolio and all the dedication from numerous people who went into this!
Below is the link to our film opening, "Brutal Sentencing," which we believe turned out quite well despite some quality issues. For better quality or to edit the quality, view the video on YouTube and set it to 1080p.
After lots of hard work and collaboration from my group, we have learned a lot about filmmaking, and we have grown in our abilities from the start of this journey. We are excited to share the film opening, and we hope that you enjoy what we produced.
After a little bit of a delay, I was able to pick back up on the editing since the filming for day 2 had been completed. This day of editing took a lot more work, and a lot was involved in the process today.
Process
I began by entering all of the clips onto the editing platform from the USB file, which we used to transfer the clips from my friend's computer onto mine. Then, when we had all the clips, we had to choose which clips to use. We took into account how it would flow and fit with the other scenes of the movie's opening. After, I began to actually cut the clips together, adding transitions between some of the clips and leaving others without to create a natural straight cut. The sound layering also had to be completed to finish up. I added the sound effects we needed to use and made them fit into the timeline as well. Then I also played with the audio levels of certain clips to keep the movie opening flowing and working how I wanted it to.
Title Card Creation
To create the title card for brutal sentencing, it took a little bit of trial and error, but eventually, I got a result that I am very proud of. I had no clue where I had to start, so to begin, I started looking for a horror title tutorial. I gathered some ideas from a variety of different sources, but none of them really looked how I wanted, so I decided to gather what I had learned and make what I felt fit the movie opening. The way the title expands and the fade to the next scene really turned out well in my opinion, and I am proud of what I did.
Final Timeline
This is what the final timeline looked like, and overall, I feel like the editing process went smoothly. With this, I am also done with the film opening and am ready to post the brief. I will now only be looking for some tiny improvements I can make, and then I will actually post my brief.
As I have begun editing our film's opening, one of the most crucial elements I needed to focus on was finding the right audio. Unlike a lighthearted or dramatic film, horror relies heavily on sound to build tension and make the audience feel uneasy. Without the right music and sound effects, the suspense of our opening scene would fall completely flat. Our film opens with a character being killed by the main killer, so every audio choice I make needs to build the suspense and aid in the jumpscares. I needed two things specifically: suspenseful background music that would carry the tension throughout the scene, and realistic sound effects that would ground the horror in something that felt real. Finding both of these was going to be one of the most important decisions of the entire editing process.
Suspenseful music
The music I chose for the majority of our intense scenes comes from ErikMMusic on YouTube. His music has this dark, building quality to it that starts subtle and grows heavier as the tension rises, which is perfect for a horror opening where the audience slowly realizes something is very wrong. What I love most about it is that it doesn't feel overdone, which is a problem I ran into with a lot of horror music I came across during my search. It feels cinematic, and it gives our scene the suspense and immerses the audience in the moment. The way the music naturally builds also gives me something to edit to, allowing me to time cuts and movements in the scene to the progression of the track.
Sound Effects
Beyond the music, I also needed specific sound effects to make the scene feel as real and terrifying as possible. The three I settled on were a jump scare audio, a garbage can thudding audio, and a phone ringing audio. The jump scare audio was essential because there is a specific moment in our opening where the audience needs to feel that sudden shock, and silence alone simply would not deliver that impact. The garbage can thudding audio adds a thing that the character Derek is reacting to. The phone ringing audios were important to me because they serve as a storytelling tool as well, which enhances the audio quality. Together, these three effects make the world of our film feel lived in and terrifying.
Conclusion
Now that I have locked in both the music and the sound effects, I feel genuinely confident about the direction our film's opening is heading. Audio is truly half of the viewing experience, and I think the combination of ErikMMusic's suspenseful tracks alongside these carefully chosen sound effects will make our opening land exactly the way we intended. The goal was always to make the audience feel tense and uncomfortable from the very first second, and I believe these audio choices accomplish that. The next step is layering all of this into Premiere Pro and syncing everything to the visuals so that the sound and footage work together as one cohesive and unsettling experience. I am excited to see how much the audio transforms the raw footage into something that genuinely feels like a horror film.
Day two was always going to be the more logistically demanding of the two shoot days. Scenes 4 and 5 take us outside and into the driveway confrontation — the centrepiece of the whole opening — before closing on Lisa waking up to the police call. The stakes were higher on day two because the killer sequence is the moment the film is building toward from the very first frame, and we only had so many opportunities to get it right before we lost the light. There was also a practical layer of coordination involved in staging the confrontation itself, making sure every person in the scene knew their blocking and cues before we rolled.
Shot Outcomes
The driveway sequence in Scene 4 was where we spent most of our energy, and it paid off. The shot-reverse-shot between Derek and the bush as he approaches the noise created a real sense of tension in the edit — the pacing there should work well. The cut to the long shot from across the road, where the killer steps out of the shadows on the left side of the house, was the image we'd been building the whole film toward, and seeing it in the viewfinder for the first time was a genuine moment. We held that long shot through the confrontation and into Derek crawling out from beside the car, which gives the scene a cold, observational quality. The killer cleaning the knife before the cut to the title card was a small detail that I think will hit hard. Scene 5 was comparatively simple — Lisa in bed receiving the police call — and we kept it loose and naturalistic as scripted, letting the performance carry it.
Mise-en-Scène
The driveway at night gave us a very different visual texture from the interior scenes, and that contrast was intentional. The ambient outdoor sound replacing the music mid-scene — when Derek kicks over the garbage and finds nothing — gave the location a stillness that actually made the eventual appearance of the killer more effective. The killer's costume reads even better outdoors at night than it did indoors; the robe and mask against the dark exterior of the house has exactly the iconographic quality we were going for. Derek's play sword leaning against the garage door was a choice we kept from the script because it adds a layer of dark irony — he arms himself with something useless against someone who's been watching him for a while. For Scene 5, Lisa's bedroom was dressed simply and kept bright in contrast to everything that came before, which is a deliberate tonal shift to signal the start of her story.
Reflection
Day two wrapped later than we'd planned, but we got everything we needed, which is what matters. The confrontation scene required the most takes of anything across both shoot days — staging a physical sequence with multiple camera positions is inherently more time-consuming, and there were a couple of moments when the killer's movement and Derek's reaction didn't quite sync up, so we had to reset. But by the time we landed the final version, it felt right. Overall, looking back at both days, I'm genuinely happy with what we captured. The film has atmosphere, it has a clear visual identity, and the story is legible from the first frame. Now it's all in the edit.
With all of the scenes completed for day 1 of filming, my group and I decided to get a jump on editing since we know that it will be a while before we will be able to film again.
Researching:
My group and I already had some practice and background with Premiere Pro, specifically Kevin, so he taught us a little bit about how we can do certain things. Once I started to get the commands down, like c to switch to cut, or v to go to the mouse, I was able to smoothly operate Premiere Pro with no problems until I encountered a mishap.
Complications:
While Kevin was at my house to film on day 1, we also began to edit a little bit and came to the realization that the effects panel was not working for me. After toying around with the platform for what felt like ages, we had finally figured it out. We cleared the cache on premire pros opening as well as resetting all the settings back to default. By doing this, it gave us the effects in the effects folder back, and we were able to edit in full swing.
Process:
We began by importing the clips and getting them from the camera onto the computer. In order to share the clips with each other, we used a Google Drive in which we uploaded the folder of clips to. From there, we imported the clips into adobe premiere pro.
Working on the project together with the built-in team project feature was not working well, so we decided to use this site called TeamViewer, allowing the whole team to work through the screen of one person.
After day one of editing, the timeline looked like the following image. This was just implementing all of the clips with almost no effects and just the start of the journey on editing
Reflection:
Getting into the preparation phase for our second day of filming feels like a real turning point. The first shoot day is behind us and knowing what to expect going in has made planning for day two a lot more straightforward.
Going back through the footage from day one also gave me a clearer sense of the visual direction I want to carry into day two. The shots with shallower depth of field and more intentional composition are the ones that stand out the most. Knowing that, I have a better idea of exactly what I want to be capturing in the driveway sequence and Lisa's scene tomorrow.
Day one of filming was finally here, and honestly, it felt like a long time coming. We've spent weeks getting the script where it needs to be, sorting the costumes, locking down our locations, and going over the shot breakdown until it felt second nature — so actually showing up with a camera and doing it was a relief. Day one covered the first three scenes of Brutal Sentencing, all of which are set indoors at night: Derek at his desk, the kitchen phone call, and the moment the call ends before he heads outside. On paper, these scenes feel quieter than what comes later, but they carry a lot of the film's atmosphere, so getting them right mattered.
Shot Outcomes
The interior scenes gave us a lot to work with, and for the most part, the shots landed where we wanted them. The opening close-up of Derek writing in his notebook read exactly as planned. The over-the-shoulder cut as he rips the notebook paper worked well, too, and we made sure the body bag on the floor was visible without drawing too much attention before its moment. In the kitchen, the fridge POV angle was one we were cautious about pulling off, but it ended up being one of the stronger shots of the day. We did a few takes before the framing felt right.
Mise-en-Scène
A lot of what makes the first three scenes work is what's in the frame rather than what's happening in it. The bulletin board in Scene 1 was an important detail — we dressed it with photos and crossed-out names to immediately establish who Derek is without any dialogue doing that work. The desk space felt lived-in and specific, which is what we wanted. Lighting across all three scenes was kept deliberately low and directional, using practical sources where we could to keep things feeling grounded rather than stylised. The dark house in Scene 2 reinforced Derek's isolation, and the contrast between his calm, domestic routine and the figure standing outside the window was something we worked hard to make land visually. The killer's costume, the judge's robe, mask, and mallet, reads immediately as a threat even at a distance, which was a relief to confirm on camera.
Reflection
Day one went better than I expected, though not without its struggles. The indoor lighting setup took longer than planned, which put a small amount of pressure on us toward the end of the session. There were also a couple of takes in Scene 3 where the audio from the phone call wasn't clean enough, so we ran those back. That said, the crew stayed focused, and we got what we came for. Looking at the footage back, the tone of the opening three scenes is genuinely unsettling in the way we hoped the slow build would work.
Before picking up a camera, one of the most important steps in any production is sitting down and mapping out exactly what you want each shot to look like before you ever step on set. Storyboarding is the process of visually pre-planning your film shot by shot, giving you a reference to work from on the day of filming so that no time is wasted figuring things out on the spot. It bridges the gap between a written script and what actually ends up on screen. For a project like this, where every second counts and we are working within a tight runtime, having that visual guide is essential.
Learning How to Storyboard
Going into this I wanted to make sure I was doing it properly, so I did some research on how professional storyboards are structured before putting mine together. I found that good storyboards do not need to be polished artwork — what they need to do is clearly communicate the shot type, camera movement, and what is happening in the frame. I used the shot breakdown document I had already created as my primary reference, pulling directly from the editing techniques, camera angles, and sound design notes I had already laid out for each scene. That made the process significantly smoother since the thinking had already been done — the storyboards were just giving that thinking a visual form.
Production for the Two Scenes to be Filmed on the First Day:
Scene 1 — The Garage
The first storyboard covers Scene 1 of the script, which takes place in the garage at night. I mapped out shots 1 through 4, covering the opening ECU of Derek writing on the blueprint, the MCU of the bulletin board, the OTS shot with the body bag in the background, and the medium shot of Derek standing and exiting. The diegetic sounds noted on the board include the pen scratching on paper, paper folding, and footsteps, while the non-diegetic underscore — a sustained strings or drone pad — begins low and carries underneath the entire scene as a sound bridge into the next action. This storyboard sets the tone for the whole opening and was the most important one to get right visually.
Scene 2 — The Kitchen
The second storyboard covers all of the kitchen scenes, mapping out shots 5 through 7. This board captures the tracking shot following Derek into the kitchen, the fridge POV shot during the phone call, and the slow zoom toward the window where the killer becomes visible in the background. The diegetic sounds include footsteps, subtle house ambience, and the quiet hum of the refrigerator, while Lisa's voice is noted as filtered through telephone audio processing. The score drops out entirely during the phone call, and the non-diegetic single low stinger is marked to hit at the moment the killer becomes visible in the background — one of the most important sound cues in the whole opening.
Additional resource used to gather thoughts on my shots
Reflection and What's Next
Getting the storyboards done feels like the last major planning step before we actually get to work. Having everything mapped out — from the shot breakdown to the storyboards — means that when we show up to film, everyone knows what we are going for and we can move efficiently. If anything, this process also gave me one more opportunity to look at the scenes critically and make sure everything we planned is actually executable on the day. From here, the next and final step before editing is filming itself, which is set to take place in about a week. That is the moment everything we have been building toward finally becomes real, and I am genuinely excited to see it all come together.
.png)
