Memento

Watched Memento at film club, a highly confusing movie! Whilst I enjoyed it immensely, due to its complicated plot and un-chronological playing order Memento managed to leave me completely puzzled and made me want to watch it again almost immediately.  In the most simple terms the movie was about Leonard Shelby (Guy Pierce) who was seriously injured during the raping (and apparent murder) of his wife and is left unable to create new memories. As well as coping with this Leonard is also searching for the man who left him like this. He’s helped with this by bartender Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) and ‘Teddy’ (Joe Pantoliano) who both seem rather suspicious characters.  Leonard is manipulated and mocked throughout the film by various different characters and this creates a lot of sympathy for him. With twists that’ll keep you guessing throughout this has quickly become a favourite movie of mine.

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writers: Jonathan Nolan, (short story) Christopher Nolan (screenplay)

Release Date: 20 October 2000 (UK

And just to prove how highly acclaimed the film was,

Nominated for two Oscars. Another 43 wins and a further 33 nominations.

Analyse the camera shots and movement, mise en scene and editing.

30 second film clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTyWfbvX0xQ, District 13, from 1:50 to 2:10

 1:50- (wide shot) This is a wide shot to show the audience the landscape and the horizon line so that they understand how high up the scene is and therefore create a sense of danger , excitement and also panic for the character. The use of a wide shot means that the audience can still see the character clearly and follow the action, whilst also being able to take in the surroundings. The bar used to climb up is almost central in the screen as that, as well as the character climbing it, is the main focus. However there is space left to the side for the character to run into. The rest of the shot is left more or less empty, apart from the distant houses and buildings in the background, again this emphasises the height at which they are and how far away they are from other places. Colours mostly used in this scene are dull greys as this represents the location, and doesn’t prove a distraction from the action. 

1:53 This is another wide shot, but this one showing the edge of the building, buildings in the background the sky and also the character jumping over the edge. This helps to highly stress the danger of the situation and wow the audience at the stunts. Again it also suggests the height at which this is taken place and how urban the surroundings are.

 To arrive at the next shot the camera follows the characters decent, so as soon as his head disappears from shot you see his quick fall and landing from another, where the camera almost lands with him. The editing between shots is so quick that it seems no time has passed and that you really are falling with him. This helps engage the audience with the story and make them feel at one with the character, as well as being more interesting than just a straight forward wide shot of him falling.

At 2:00 there is an aerial shot of the main character jumping the banister over a flight of stairs, although he is the main focus of the scene and is positioned in the middle you can see how dangerous this stunt is as there is a view of how far it is to fall. Then at of 2:04 there is another aerial shot down the stairs this time with a second character falling down them. This shows how far he has to fall and his slim chances of survival, it also means the audience get to see some of his decent from afar and this is highly entertaining. It then quickly flashes to a couple of shots showing him smashing into the banisters on the way down which keeps in flow with the high energy of the clip and captures the audience’s attention.

Throughout the clip there are many jump cuts with shots that don’t last very long. This helps to capture the speed at which the action is happening. There are also a lot of tilting and panning shots to follow the character and the direction that he is moving in. Hereby helping the audience to follow the action as its happening very quickly and it could be difficult to keep up otherwise. 

Preliminary StoryBoard.

So that our filming runs smoothly and to make sure that we all know what is happening when we have created a storyboard outlining the different shots we intend to use. For the storyboard we used basic pictures and written notes to show the different scenes, angles and shots.

Our storyboard is as follows:

Preliminary task.

The brief given to us for our AS preliminary task is as follows:

Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room, and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she then exchanges a few brief lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/ reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

After reciveing this brief my group and I sat down and discussed ideas that would follow the brief but be entertaining as well. Following the discussion we wrote a script that incorpirated all of our ideas and edited it until we were all pleased, our final script is below.

Character one walks down the corridoor toward the meeting room, places hand on handle and opens the door.

Character one: Where have you been?
Character two: What do you mean?
Character one: I have been looking for you, for ages.
Character two: Oh, I see. I apologise. I was working on "the thing"
Character one: The thing is of great importance, I understand.

Character two slides a brown padded envelope across the table, the envelope is marked with a question mark, and gives character one a 'knowing' look.

Character two: I think you should leave now.

Character one departs swiftly.

Once character one is outside of the meeting room she turns the envelope over to reveal the words ' DO NOT OPEN, PRIVATE.' Character one then opens it and reveals that it is a cookie. The scene is ended by character one walking away eating the cookie.