Media opening sequence presentation

1. Panic Room

2. What I like about this opening…
• I like the way the titles are displayed at the beginning. The camera is slowly panning
around the city of New York and showing all the sky rise buildings and the actors
names are displayed floating in between the buildings.
• It also has fast paced music playing over that is very eerie and sets the mood of a
thriller film.
• A mother and her daughter (the main characters) are being shown around a house of
which it has a elevator which the man who is showing them around describes it as
“unusual for a brownstone house to have this”
• When the mother is shown into the master bedroom she wonders why the room is
smaller than it should be. The man who is showing them around opens up a secret
door which leads them to the panic room. Inside the panic room is its own private
phone line and CCTV cameras of which the people inside can monitor every room in
the house
• The scene ends with the woman saying “I know they’ll take the asking price” and then
the removal trucks are shown so you can see that the women has bought the house.

3. How it feeds into the rest of the film…
• It shows that there is a panic room and it makes you suspicious as to why there is a
panic room and what it is used for.
• It shows them buying a new house so you know it will be their first night sleeping in
the house and also they will not know their surroundings very well.
• As they have found out about the panic room you can almost guess that there is going
to be an incident where they have to go into the panic room to keep safe.

4. Camera work
Uses close up on the faces to show the facial expressions. The flick between the
characters adds tension. The camera twists and turns, swooping through the massive
halls, sliding across kitchen counters.
Over the shoulder shots to show a conversation between two people.
Long shot shows the characters in a group together
Crane shots are used to show birds eye view of buildings.

5. Sound…
Starts of slow deep music and then it gets faster to set the mood of a crime/thriller genre.
Editing…
The names of the actors and actresses are displayed floating in the sky between the
buildings.

6. Introductions…
The characters are introduced at the beginning when they are rushing around the
streets trying to get to a meeting on time. The daughter is scooting around the streets
and she is dressed very boyish, this implies that she is not a “girly-girl”.
The mum is said to have a very well paid job as she has just bought a massive house and
there is only two of them living the house. She has also recently just got divorced so she
may have got money from that.
The plot was introduced by the introduction of the panic room. You straight away know
that the panic room is going to be the main part of the film because of course the title of
the film is called “panic room”
The introduction of the panic room also hooked the audience because the panic room is
not something I have seen in a film before and it makes me wonder what it is used for
and what is going to happen in it. In my opinion it makes me think of danger.

7. Plot of the film
A recently divorced mother and her daughter have recently bought a converted
brownstone in Manhattan and it is the first night they are sleeping in it. Inside the house
is an elevator and a panic room. What the girls don’t know is that there is supposedly
$3million is hidden in a safe in the floor of the panic room. 3 men (one of which is the
former owner’s grandson) plans on retrieving the money. The burglars believe that the
brownstone is still empty but when they get inside they realise that the house is no
longer empty. The two girls run inside the panic room and all 3 men know that there is no
way they can get inside the panic room, the only way in is if the girls open it up from the
inside.