Analysis Of Memento

The film I have chosen to look at is a pyschological thriller called Memento. I have chosen to look at this film as I believe its storyline is quite similar to our groups film. Also I believe that from this film we will be inspired to look at certain parts of cinematography, mise-en-scene,sound and editing.
The analysis that I have done on this film is for the first 15 minutes, in the film we as going to make it will only be 2 minutes long, so I am looking at this film to try and see what is used to hook the audience into watching the rest of the film.



The title sequence to memento is simple with smooth fades. The music plays a large part in the title sequence, as it gets louder and louder as well as it being a sad sounding but yet intreging section of music. Also the key part to the title sequence is the ever fading picture which reveals less with every shake. I believe that this is because the main character has a short term memory loss which you find out about 10 minutes into the film.

Within the first 15 minutes of the film memento there are alot of different locations like: a hotel room, a corridoor, a buliding that could potentially be a warehouse, inside of a car, a car park and a room in which a man dies. During the clip a few of the locations are shot in black and white, I believe that this is to show when lennie has forgotten something however, not everything he forgets is in black and white. The black and white parts of the clip give the audience a feeling that something is not quite right with lennie as they soon find out.

The editing in this clip is normal (there are not fast edits or slow ones) the only major editing done in this clip is right at the begining when the death of the man teddy (john) is shown in reverse. This could be a good technic to use in our film to show what has already happened and what is happening.

There is not much sound to the clip as most of the sound is normal dialogue however the two gun shots that the audience heres with in this short clip are very loud and over powering. Also the music changes when lennie starts to realise `the facts`.

I believe that memento well help use to create or film as memento starts at the end of the film (or very close to the end) and then plays everything back but in jumbled up orders until the audience realise what is going on. This will be good as our film is going to start in the middle and do a replay of the events that have taken place. Also, our film will have flashbacks to parts of the film that the audience hasnt seen to reveal more information. This is kind of like memento as it reveals information by haing it written on lennies body.