Genre Research: Panic Room

Another movie that came to my mind after talking with my group was Panic Room. Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart star in this movie as a mother and her daughter whose house is invaded by robbers and they have to stay safe. While watching this movie, I paid close attention to all of the details put into it by its creators. Such details include camera movements, angles, shots, mis-en-scene, editing, and sound. The camera angles that I noticed throughout the movie were establishing shots, two-shots, three-shots, low and high angles, medium shot, close-up, medium long shot, over the shoulder, and medium close up. The camera movements seen in this film lacked variety since there were only a couple used. These were pan, tilt, tracking shot, and zoom. As for mis-en-scene, there was a lot of thought put into each scene. For costumes, the characters wore clothing that was appropriate for who they represented. For example, the police officiers wore their uniforms, a robber wore a black ski mask, and a neighbor wore his pajamas during the middle of the night. There was a variety of lighting as well such as natural lighting in the daylight and at nightime and articial lighting in the house. Also, in the house's panic room, there were fluorescent lighting that at one point began to flash. The acting in the movie by each actor and actress was exceptional as was the makeup that was able to showcase a burn on a robber's face, sweat from the mother's face, and blood on a captive's face. Some props seen in the movie were a gun, flashlight, cell phone, cameras, and a watch. The setting in entire movie was set in one specific house with a panic room that was mainly filmed too.

Unlike "Secret Obsession," in this movie there wasn't a large range of editing techniques used. After watching the complete movie, I noted that there were only a select amount of editing techniques used that would be repeated and replicated in the remaining scenes. Such techniques include jump cuts, cutaways, eye-line matchs, and action matches. The most common technique used similiar to most crime movies was cross cutting. This allows the audience to see what is happening to both the criminals and the innocent with two different scenes that are occurring at the same time. This movie also used a couple of sounds. Like most movies, there was dialogue, diegetic and non-diegetic sound present. However, this movie also had incidental sound and ambient sound. At one point, no sound was used to accentuate the importance of a lamp falling down in the near future which would alert the robbers.

There were both elements that I liked and disliked in this film. I believe one element, not commonly used in crime movies, were the allusions to certain things such as Edgar Allen Poe and the Titanic. These allusions incorporated some relationship between the audience and the characters since it helped me personally better understand what the characters were doing or thinking. Another element that I liked was that the movie began with incidental sound right away. This made me gain interest immediately on what was going to happen in the future. An element that was commonly used in this movie that I didn't like so much were the scenes that were supposed to create tension but actually made me bored. Such aprts included conversations that would've been better if they got to the point faster. In these scenes, the directors decided to make it longer than necessary making the situation last for a while and this led to multiple scenes that were dull.