I built the visual language around restraint, black and white throughout, with red as the only colour allowed through, tied directly to blood and threat. I researched title sequences properly before filming a frame, Coraline's texture-led stop motion, The Invisible Man's water-based typography, 13 Reasons Why's black-and-white-plus-red palette, which became a direct influence on my own colour choice, and Magpie Murders, which ended up being my closest reference point overall.

Filming itself ran across several weeks: a crime-scene-styled first scene with newspapers, fake blood, and lipstick, arranged so the camera could glide smoothly across them, then evidence bags, tape, and scene markers for the second scene, held steady with warp stabiliser, and a final scene of a book and title being written, which I re-edited more than once, an early freeze-frame version felt too static, so I replaced it with actual flipping-page footage for a smoother transition. I graded the whole thing down to black and white with red isolated through Lumetri colour, and added sound and a layer of animated noise at the end to hold the atmosphere together.