We’re not in San Diego, but from all accounts, if we would have stuck our head out the window yesterday when the Twilight panel kicked off, we would have heard the screaming from several states away.

Capone from AICN writes:

Although this is my first time at this event, I had a pretty good idea what to expect at the panels, but nothing quite prepared me for what I’m guessing is an atypical event here. The panel for TWILIGHT was louder than any rock concert I’ve ever been to, with each of the cast members being greeted by a slightly younger-than-normal audience of several thousand adoring, mostly female fans of the book by Stephenie Myer. The result of the nearly hour-long panel was partial deafness for me.

This is echoed across the board, with several journalists shaking out the ringing in their ears before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the Twilight panel…

/Film picks up with the actual footage shown to the screaming masses:

Early on Catherine Hardwicke introduced a clip from the film. The Twilight title card flashed on the screen and at this point, the screaming has reached a fevered pitch. You couldn’t just taste the anticipation, you could hear it (if you could hear anything over the screams).

The clip was taken from near the end of the film. Bella (Rachel Stewart) opens up a door and sees a home video playing of her and her mother, taken years ago. Suddenly, James (Cam Gigandet) grabs her by the throat and slams her into the wall. He begins taunting her and takes out a camcorder to videotape the assault, presumably to give to Edward (Robert Pattinson). James starts roughing her up, throws her into a olumn, then appears to break her leg using only his super-powered hand. As his attack is just about to reach its peak intensity, Edward comes out of nowhere (the audience goes insane at this moment of the clip) and tackles James. The two have a fight that lasts a couple minutes, but a lot of it is spent throwing each other into things, while Bella is trying to stay out of the way. The clip ends.

This sounds like an extended version of the clip that premiered earlier on MTV. If you’ll remember, our gripe with it was its TV-looking wire effects and the fact that in the book, this scene is the climax. It was also the first thing they shot on Day One of principal photography.

Since vampire-fighting looks like it’s finally going to make it into the film, we’re a little disappointed that it’s mostly going to be tossing and crashing.

Though the screaming fans sent a message: this film is going to be big. Which means there’s probably no surprise that director Catherine Hardwick told Film School Rejects that she’s up for shooting the sequel book, New Moon:

I got to ask Meyer and Hardwicke if they were interested in turning “New Moon” into a movie after Twilight. It’s no surprise that Meyer was interested - especially after saying her experience on Twilight has been so fantastic - but it was also good to hear that Hardwicke was enthusiastic about returning to the director’s spot if the film gets made and if she’s given the chance. Both said they “had their fingers crossed,” but hadn’t heard any official word on whether the studio was planning on it.

Hardwicke has a background with teenagers, directing Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown and Nativity Story. As for portraying teenage romance and sexuality, she hit the ground running with the controversial Thirteen, but she said she found the “Twilight” story fascinating because it’s “so sexy that [Edward and Bella] can’t get together.”

We don’t think that’s really sexy. We can’t get together with anyone, and people usually describe us as “loners” or “geeks.”