Scene Analysis

Yawen Song

August 2010-08

Memento

Scene Overview:

Memento is about a man with anterograde amnesia which renders his brain unable to store new memories. The scene I chose to analysis is the very beginning part. During the opening credits(Which portrays the end of story),it is shown that Lenard kills Teddy for rape and murder of his wife.

The whole scene was shown in reverse order. At the beginning you only can see someone’s hand keep shaking a photo of a dead body. Then the pictures on the photo became more and more unclear and disappear into blank at last. Then the photo goes back to the camera, now it is cleared everything was going reversed. Then at last it shows the person who took the photo was the one who murder the person in the photo. The music is long, slow, pretty heavy that feels something series, the music changes when photo back into the camera. It became quiet and much more intense and weird feelings that you can feel clearly something goes not right.

The story of this scene is the end of the whole film’s story. It is unique and attractive by using reverse technique at the first scene of the film, and also give audience an idea that the movie would show in reverse order to tell the story.

Almost all the shots were CU or ECU during this scene. Only one Medium shot on Lenard after photo goes back to the camera. The first shot was long and no movement. Then the second shot become shorter and got tracking shot movement. And then every shot become even shorter. At last, after it reverse to Teddy’s death, everything happened really fast and with in very short shots. Those short shots attract the audience attention; let audience have strong interest about what was happened.

Editing:

Time:

00.00.44-00.02.00

00.02.00-00.02.11

00.02.11-00.02.13

00.02.13-00.02.15

00.02.15-00.02.17

00.02.17-00.02.20

00.02.20-00.02.22

00.02.22-00.02.24

00.02.24-00.02.28

00.02.28-00.02.30

00.02.30-00.02.31

00.02.31-00.02.32

00.02.32-00.02.34

00.02.34-00.02.35

Editing Style:

The scene have both many short sequences and longer sequences. A long sequences at first half of time, then it change to lots of short sequences. The style have a huge changes, which give the audience a unexpected feeling about what was happening.

Shot Analysis

Shot 1: 1 min 14 seconds

Shot Size: This is a Extremely close-up, you only can a photo and part of a hand.

Sound: In this scene, we only can hear the soundtrack and the sound effect when the hand shaking the picture.

Color: The back ground is gray, and a little bit green. We can tell it should be in somewhere internal. And the picture in the photo is full of blood. Generally it’s a pretty dark and intense feeling the color present.

Text: You can see a little bit words tattoo on the hand, but hardly read it. And the credits come up in the middle one by one slowly.

Shot 2: 2.5 seconds

Shot Size: Extremely Close-up. The blood flows reverse to the up.

Sound: The background soundtrack only, but the music become much more intense.

Color: Blood flows on dark color surface. It gives thrill and uncomfortable feelings to the audience.

Character Analysis:

Characters: Leonard and Teddy

Characters relationship: Leonard killed Teddy.

Movements: Everything goes reverse in this scene. At beginning, we can see Leonard’s hand shaking a photo. Then the hand puts the photo back to the camera, Leonard put the camera back to his suit and watch something for a little bit, then a pistol goes into his hand, he kneel down and point the gun to someone in front of him. Then a bullet comes back to the gun and gun fired and at last Teddy watched back and shout at Leonard loudly. The shots at beginning are pretty slow, and the shots become faster and it became really fast at the last.