Panic Room may not be David Fincher’s best film, but I would argue that it might be his
best technical showcase as a director.
On the surface it all seems relatively simple, one location, a home invasion story with a
handful of actors, but despite its apparent simplicity, it would become one of the most
complicated productions of Fincher’s career, a logistical nightmare that he described as
playing 4D chess, but it’s why I think it’s the perfect case study to showcase his talents
as a director, and is as a masterclass in creating a popcorn thriller.
Any great thriller has to start with a great script, and there were a few things that attracted
Fincher to the story.
“I like the kind of rooted respect for narrative freight training, there was never a moment
in the script where it was like: meanwhile, sunrise over central park.
It was like the next procedural thing, the guy has to tape the hose on to the tank, you
have to bring the tank upstairs, you have to bring the drill…
It could be, as it turned out, an inordinately complicated movie about people trapped in
a closet.”
Another aspect of the script that drew Fincher’s attention was the omniscient perspective of
the camera, with free roam to explore everything within these four walls, and rarely crossing
those boundaries.
To give the camera the freedom that Fincher needed, meant undertaking a massive engineering
feat to design the set itself.
Shots like this would be impossible in an actual home, but a set can be engineered in
a way that any wall can be removed, to get the camera in all kinds of creative places.
So Arthur Max designed the entire four stories of this brownstone to look good and function
as a space for the actors, but also to have the flexibility to cut away any wall or floor
or ceiling to place the camera, and for everything that a camera still couldn’t do, they could
achieve with CGI that still looks better than most movies today.
These shots serve to give the audience a better understanding of this physical space.
If the camera just cut from room to room with static shots, we wouldn’t really know how
it all connected.
But passing between walls and floors, gives us a much clearer image of this space in three
dimensions, which is vital for creating tension in the later scenes.
Panic Room is essentially a movie of back-to-back tension filled set-pieces, and to understand
why it’s so effective at creating this tension, I wanted to take a deeper look at the editing,
the framing, and the staging of the action, to show all of the subtle magic that’s happening
to bring these scenes to life.
Because all credit due to David Koepp, there’s a vast difference between writing a tense
scene, and making it all feel believable within the confines of shooting a movie.
Performances obviously go a long way to selling that emotion, but there still needs to be
that underlying filmmaking craft to make it feel real, and for the proper visual clarity
to punctuate every moment with purpose.
To understand what I mean I want to take a look at the first set-piece of the film, but
first we have to briefly talk about the breadcrumbs that build to it.
The earliest scenes in the film serve a few different functions.
It gets us up to speed on Meg and her daughter, and the family’s separation, giving us a
better idea of who these characters are, but underneath the character development is something
equally important.
The first ten minutes offer us a complete tour of the home, using movement to tie the
space together; Sarah riding on the scooter, or the camera moving between floors, until
we’ve seen every floor and room that will be important later.
These early scenes also plant many different concepts that will come back in significant
ways, but as far as what’s relevant for this chase scene, there are a few things worth
noticing.
Because not all thrillers follow the same rules, some take advantage of hiding key information
until the right moment, but Panic Room is essentially doing a trick of sleight of hand,
showing us all of their cards up front but always staying one step ahead of us, by placing
ideas that will return in unexpected ways.
Things like blankets, boxes, a basketball, or a bottle of wine.
Just small details as the camera moves through the house, or as we watch the characters,
but are worth remembering for later.
By the time the burglars arrive, we’ve already seen everything we’ll need, but this next
continuous shot helps to fill in any gaps we might still have.
“And this was an interesting opportunity to lay out for the audience, in no uncertain
terms, exactly where everybody is.”
“This was always I think for him, a chess game.
He wanted the audience to be completely involved in seeing everything, knowing everything,
in many cases before the characters know them in the movie.
But it also served the story I think really, really well, the audience knows exactly where
everybody is in the chess game at that moment.”
And now it’s time for every one of these ideas to make a return.
Meg was drinking enough wine that she woke up to go to the bathroom, turning on the light
in the panic room to help her find her way, and noticing the men on the monitors when
she goes to shut off the light.
She hesitates until Junior knocks the basketball down the stairs, and it connects what she’s
seeing on-screen with tangible reality, sending her running off after Sarah.
A quick note on this scene for context.
The burglars are trying to get inside the panic room, but they had no idea anyone was
supposed to be here, so their immediate priority is to go after these witnesses and make sure
they don’t leave, or arm themselves, or call the police.
Both Junior and Raoul have no problem with threatening and even potentially killing them,
but Burnham is here to open a safe, not to hurt anyone.
Meg makes a run for it and Junior take Raoul’s gun, while Burnham backs down the stairs.
Junior holds the third floor, sending Raoul to the top floor, who’s notably hesitant
without his gun, while Meg is trying to wake up Sarah.
All of this is crystal clear even in real-time, but let’s slow the scene down, to better
understand the purpose behind what we’re seeing.
Because now that we’re familiar with this physical space, the camera can afford to move
and cut more quickly, to keep the focus on the motivations of the characters and the
logistics of what’s happening in near real-time.
Burnham in center frame, frantically looking around and a match cut to Meg, also frantically
looking and drawing our attention to the water bottle in the foreground, as the bottle moves
to the right of the frame there’s another match cut that keeps the bottle in the same
space, but with a new perspective of Sarah being woken up.
This type of match-cutting happens a lot throughout this sequence, and it’s essentially drawing
the path for our eye to follow.
With quick cuts like this, we don’t have time to analyze every corner of the frame,
and this ensures that we’ll be looking in the right place to follow what’s happening.
More centered framing shows us Junior is still on the third floor, but Raoul is making his
way up the stairs.
And we cut back to Meg and Sarah as they run out of the room, the camera struggling to
keep up with them.
This is another trick you’ll see a few times, because while intentional, it gives this feeling
of spontaneity to the action.
When Meg and Sarah leave the room, they don’t initially notice Raoul, so we don’t see
him in the frame, until another match cut reveals him, but being so heavily obscured
by the banister we can see why Meg and Sarah notice see him at first, and when we cut back
to them, we’re reacting right alongside them in real-time.
The camera pulls back as he hurdles into the frame, completely covering half of the screen
in the process.
But where there was once darkness, a cut reveals a light in the form of the elevator.
The sharp head turn shows us she’s thought of this too, and they make a run for it.
Raoul calls down to Junior to catch them in the elevator, which he tries unsuccessfully,
but we get another intimate close-up with these antagonists from the safety behind the
glass, using their direct POV to trade glances as they descend another floor, and the camera
falls to Burnham with a choice.
After another cross section view of the elevator, the camera tracks Junior as he runs towards
the stairs, with more of this deliberate delay with the camera, tilting upwards to keep him
in frame before a sharp turn downward, as Burnham makes his choice not to interfere,
backing into the light.
“They’re going down stairs.”
Hearing the footsteps, they see an opportunity, sending the elevator back up to the third
floor that’s now empty.
Junior starts racing back up the stairs and calls out to Raoul, trying to cut them off.
They swing the door open and run out towards the left of the frame, and another match cut
keeps the eye following the action, doing the same again when Junior reaches the landing,
as the door condenses the frame to a small sliver.
The next shot positions them on the left side of the frame, the camera tracks as they make
their way across the room and cut to Junior running from the right side, reflecting how
this distance is closing between them, and also revealing that Raoul is making his way
down the stairs.
Then more left-to-right motion from Meg and Sarah, with the camera stopping abruptly when
Junior notices them through the door, mimicking his own reaction.
He sends Raoul running after them with more right-to-left motion, barging through the
door as Junior looks off to the right.
The camera then sits in the previous perspective, but we see Raoul make the wrong turn, the
camera following this mistake and cutting to match when Junior realizes where they’re
going, sprinting down the hall after them.
The camera tracks as they run towards the panic room, another sliver in the doorway
brings our focus towards the right of the frame, pushing us into the center through
another POV shot, and the next shot cuts to a still, the immovable object and Junior still
in motion, where we see the unexpected significance of these boxes.
Just as he’s colliding with the door, Meg and Sarah are making their way through the
center of the frame, and when the camera cuts the boxes are still centered, an obstacle
that’s bought them precious microseconds.
With Junior on the left making progress, we cut to Meg on the right dealing with her own
obstacle, the blankets that Sarah had left behind.
As the camera cuts to show both obstacles in center frame.
This side by-side battle to see who will clear the path fastest, and Junior barges in covering
half the frame, but like with the elevator, a cut reveals hope where there was darkness.
The door slams shut just as we see his shadow come into view, fractions of a second away
from catching them.
This kind of near-miss tension doesn’t happen by accident, it comes from careful planning
of every single frame to ensure continuity; like the door still remaining open, or characters
facing in the right direction between different shots, but most importantly, to maintain the
proper pacing of every action.
Before they shot any footage they built this entire set in a digital environment, going
through an extensive pre-viz process to plan every shot in the film.
“This sequence is indicative of where the pre-viz was invaluable, because especially
on this sequence, allowed us to really be able to go: ‘they’re going to do this
action, where are we going to cover from?
Where are we going to put the cameras?’
So that we could kind of see how to best optimize the actors moving through the space.
And it showed extremely specifically where the camera was going to be, and what walls
needed to fly - because in a house like this, every time you put a wall, take a wall out
and put a wall back in, it’s 45 minutes.
You gotta cut the plaster and the paint, you’ve got to move the thing out, you gotta unscrew
it, you gotta secure it, you gotta move it down; so it’s a big deal if you go ‘I
need to be here and we need to move this wall out of the way’, so the pre-viz allowed
us to know that stuff weeks in advance.
But the chase sequence up and down the elevators was actually invaluable in terms of the pre-viz,
because we could work out how fast the elevators were supposed to move, how fast the doors
were supposed to move, you know if you put a little pneumatic door closer, like how fast
did it have to be able to work in order— because somebody running at this many miles
per hour to cross the— so it allowed us to work out a lot of the issues before we
got there.”
It’s a set-piece that works because everyone is in the right place at the right time to
create all of these close calls, that back and forth happening in microseconds of real
time, with believable choices being made by every character and creating the feeling that
no one is holding back.
This is just one sequence, it’s barely over two minutes long, but it has 92 cuts across
73 different camera set-ups, and is still able to maintain almost perfect visual clarity
and continuity.
Every camera setup involves changing the lights, or the lens, and often in this film it meant
moving the walls themselves, which meant cutting and plastering and re-painting portions of
the set every time they put the camera somewhere different.
Some of these shots took multiple days of filming just to appear on screen for a few
frames, and yet the characters always manage to be positioned correctly, keeping the right
distance from each other even when running at full speed, maintaining the same eye-line
held in previous shots, and the camera is always there to catch everything vital, even
if we’re only peering through the smallest crack in the doorway.
There’s a persisting logic to everything we’re seeing, everything is playing out
mostly in real-time.
How fast everyone is moving, how fast the elevator is moving, where everyone is in relation
to each other and how quickly they could potentially get from one place to another, it’s a kind
of logistical realism that you don’t find in nearly every thriller, but it’s maintained
throughout the entire film, and the camera is always working overtime to help sell the
tension.
Helping to focus our attention, or to put us in the character’s direct perspective,
and to keep things in constant motion.
But this is something that might sound a lot easier than it actually is, certainly when
you add in the complications that came with using security monitors so frequently in the
film.
It might seem like a freebie at first, after all this is a fully built set with actual
security cameras running throughout, so in theory all of that footage could just be captured
live while they were shooting everything else.
But the problem is that a security camera is considerably more sensitive to light than
a film camera, so the lights needed to shoot everything else were too bright to be used
for any of the security footage.
So every time you’re seeing footage through any of these monitors, it’s an entirely
different setup, likely on an entirely different day, where they had to remove all of their
lighting equipment from when they got the master coverage, and then reshoot the scene
just for the security cameras.
“These TV’s, you know, it seems like such a simple gag to have 8 television screens,
it was such a clusterf*ck.
Because no matter what happens, you have to edit that material.
So you have to get into tape loops, and you have to get into moving sync and continuity
around in order to make, in order to give your actors in the foreground enough time
to do certain things.
And everything has to play for a master that’s looking at the screens, and then you turn
around and you pull the screens out, and getting the screens to match made the movie exponentially
more complicated.
So, I don’t recommend it, don’t make movies with security monitors.”
Most of the movie takes place inside the panic room, and every single time we have a clear
view of the monitors, this same exact process had to be repeated, but somehow it’s all
seamless.
Even in scenes that literally have the characters breaking through walls, making multiple takes
require a lot more setup than just having the actors redo their lines.
And honestly based on the reviews for this film, I feel like most people just don’t
appreciate how much work went in to making this all happen.
It may not be my favorite movie, it’s not even close to my favorite of Fincher’s,
but to commit such technical mastery to a self-admitted Friday night lurid thriller
is part of why I love Fincher in the first place, and if this is known as one of his
weakest films then I think that just speaks to how incredible everything else he’s made
has been.
But I do wish more people would talk about Panic Room, because I truly believe that it’s
the gold standard in thriller filmmaking.
It is a masterclass in staging, creating tension and suspense, and sometimes that’s all you
need from a movie.
“Hitchcock once said, I’m not making slices of life, I’m making slices of cake.
You know, we’re not curing cancer, we’re just making a movie with actors pretending
to be burglars.”
I think a lot of people get questions when you release a movie, ‘what were you trying
to say?’
it’s like, I don’t know, I was just trying to say that two chicks got caught in a closet
and three guys try to get in, and the burn the place down.”
Thanks for watching.