They started shooting in January and I was talking with him one day and he told me a bit about it, because Fincher told him. And it goes like this:

1. The story goes like this: Jodie Fosters' character has been being cheated on by her husband and either gets a divorce or they break up or something to that effect. Well there's this one room in their big house with all this rich stuff called Panic Room. This room has all sorts of booby traps and death traps and stuff. Anyway the guys who designed and built the friggin thing plan to break in and steal all the rich stuff and they plan to disable the Panic Room since they know how it works. But they don't realize that Jodie Foster and her daughter are in the house when they break in. These guys just want the rich stuff but they can't leave now b/c Jodie has control of the Panic Room and won't let these guys leave. To sum it up my friend told me that Fincher said this movie is like a grown up and twisted version of Home Alone.

2. The plan as it stands right now.... is to present the film in REAL TIME as it's actually happening. Remember the movie Nick of Time with Johnny Depp? Well it's the same deal. No flashbacks, no fades, no cuts in space and time, no blackouts, nothing like that. Just pure REAL TIME, AS IT HAPPENS. This is 100% Fincher's idea. The problem is that Sony pictures might not like the idea and they could change it in the editing process if they see fit. I hope to God they don't. I drool at the thought of Fincher and Home Alone and real time!

3. This film is supposedly SOOOOOOOO fucking dark! I asked my friend, "like Blade Runner dark?" and he said "I'll put it like this.... it's so dark that if you were to take a video camera and film the screen it probably wouldn't even show up! It's THAT dark. Remember now, my friend has seen ALL of the footage, I mean EVERYTHING, every set up, every camera angle and he said Fincher is using up to 8 camera at one time! He says it all looks Fincher-esque but it looks like nothing he's EVER seen in ANY MOVIE. He said it looks incredible. The attention to detail is supposedly fucking mind blowingly enormous! To give you an example: He said "you know how when most DP's light a film, EVERYTHING is lit, even in dark films.... like you can see a table way in the corner even though there's supposed to be NO light over there?" I said yeah, and he said that Fincher CAN'T STAND THAT. Fincher will come and watch Panic Room dailies and go ballistic if something that isn't supposed to be lit IS lit. Think about it. When it's the middle of the night and you have a bad dream and you wake up and go to the bathroom, you can't see ANYTHING right? Well that's how Fincher is thinking on this movie. Anything that isn't supposed to to be lit.... he doesn't wanna fucking see it. My friend said that he saw a close up of Forest Whitaker and he said the shot was so dark that you couldn't see Forest's lips move when he spoke! All you could see was his basic outline and his features, like you were looking at someone in the dark... but the lighting is incredibly realistic like that and Fincher likes it like that. They're shooting on a giant 4 level sound stage at Raleigh studios here in Hollywood (just blocks from my apartment)

4. Darius Khondji is NOT the DP anymore. He was supposedly booted for reasons my friend didn't wanna explain. Some sort of dispute or something like that. Instead..... and all you Fincher fans who know about his promoting within policy of hiring the 2nd unit DP of his last film as the 1st unit DP on his current film should know who the new DP is. That's right.....

Conrad Hall Jr.

Fincher supposedly liked how he shot the montage sequence in Fight Club and hired him after Darius left.

6. Fincher is doing something brand new with Panic Room. Basically he's shooting 35mm negative on 3 perf film this time instead of 4 perf film (the norm). The reason for this is because since he's utilizing Super35 (like always) and a 2.40:1 aspect ration (scope) only a portion of the frame is being used. He feels that a 4 perf setup wastes film negative with all that extra space in the frame. Why waste film? Also... and this is a doosey.... Fincher is shooting film but transfering it to digital form, tweaking and coloring the shit out of it to his liking, then dumping it back onto film and making release prints from that or he can use the digital version for digital projection. This way he has COMPLETE control on the "look" of the film. Instead of telling his DP how he wants it to look and hoping for the best, he can tell the colorist EXACTLY how he wants it to look since the colorist can make it look ANY way possible. Similar to what he did with Se7en DVD with taking the original film negative and making a new digital transfer.... same thing, except he's doing that for the theatrical release. That way we can now see 100% of Fincher's mind on the fucking film. Isn't that scary?

5. I'm writing this on 3/28. On 3/29 a TRAILER is being cut for the film. YES. I'm hoping to catch a peek, I'll let ya know what I see. He didn't tell me when we'll see the trailer but it shouldn't take too long. How long does it take on average?

Excited-Guy out!