Killer journal

Killers journal

For my practical task I decided to create a 'killers journal' inspired by the 1995 film 'Se7en' where in the opening credits the film shows detailed shots of some sort journal, clearly showing the obsession of the killer through the pages as they go into extreme detail. With Se7en the killer is interested in the seven deadly sins and this is shown through the amount of writing on the page (in the picture below shows a title Greed, linking with the seven deadly sins and with a whole page written about it with dedication)

I thought making a book like this would be useful for our own media project as it would show the extreme obsession of the killer whether it would be used in an opening scene of credits. It would also fit in with the genre Thriller and Slasher, which we are interested in doing.

What I did:

Unlike Se7en i wanted the journal to look old and worn down, to make it look like it has been an obsession for years and looks more rough, fitting in with a slasher environment for our film idea. I used tea to darken the pages, putting tea bags in a container before soaking the pages in them.

Once soaked I transferred it to the cooker before heating it up, drying it and hardening the pages. To give it a more old and ancient looking and as if the pages have been used a lot, I crumbled up the pages after heating them before straightening it out again, creating this look:

(I did this with a numerous amount of pages. enough pages to create a book from it)

To create a cover I used a cardboard outline to give it a hard feel, before gluing a tea covered paper onto to fit in with the old theme of the book

As well as this, to make it look even more ancient, I wanted to darken the ages as if they had been singed or burnt. I did this with a black felt tip pen and colored the edges in making them look as if they had worn away

After finishing the look of the overall look of the note book, I needed to fill the pages in. Wanting to fit in with the idea of obsession and religion, however still focusing on the idea of Slasher being our overall genre I began drawing an outline of a human body onto the pages before getting a red felt tip pen, as blood, and writing word's such as 'Hell' to feature a religious theme. The red felt tip pen didn't look realistic so I used red and brown eye shadow and swiped it over the red pen to make it look more realistic as if it was dried blood. To include the religious theme even further i copied out parts of the bible, especially quotes about devil worshiping and the sin of it, in black inky pen, writing messily over the outline of the body.

As well as this, I decided to draw the Killer's weapon of a dagger onto the page. Showing the genre of Slasher again and the violence of it. Again I copied out bible quotations onto this page as well

My finished product:

Overall I thought the idea of the killer journal was effective in giving an insight into the killers mind, giving us the idea to do our film opening/credits as a hybrid genre of psychological slasher. It was quite an easy task to create the booklet together, however was difficult in coming up with ideas of what to put onto the pages. The blood I put onto the page didn't look realistic enough and if I were to do it again I would put more thought into it, perhaps by making it look darker or using more red pen.