Memento (Nolan,2000, US) opening sequence

Within the opening of Memento the most common used shots are close up and extreme close ups. We can see this from the opening shot after the titles where we have an extreme close up of a polaroid with a picture of blood spatter on the walls and a man dead on the bottom right of it. A close up is used on the killers face to show that he is not that bothered about what is happening. The use of only close - ups creates a sense of mystery about whats happening in the background and it only focuses on specific details within the scene. Within the opening eye line match is used when the murderer is looking at his victim and before the guy is shot a reverse shot is shown to show who he is begging to. This will influence the audience to ask questions about what is happening as they cannot see that much apart from the killer and the victim.

Within the shots their is a variety of objects such as the running blood, the polaroid and the glasses. Some of the shots give us small clues about who the character is and what they do. This is because throughout the shots you can see that the murderer is smartly dressed, has tattooed hands,has scratches on his face and doesn't seem to react to what he is doing; this shows that he is used to killing people and the fact that he takes a picture afterwards gives us the idea that he is a contract killer who needs proof that the job has been done. Also the shot of the glasses implies that the person who was killed was a highly educated person and we do not know what he has done to give someone a reason to kill him. Also the small amount of background shown to us suggests that the killing was done within an isolated space. The audience should react to the killer in quite a cold way because as a reaction to him not caring about someone else then we wont really care about him.

this is one of the adverts for memento, showing that the polaroid is an important piece of the film.

The editing from shot to shot is simple cut editing but the clips are being played in reverse which can easily be seen by the fact that glasses lift off of the floor without any assistance. The titles used within it last for a duration of five seconds, they fade in gradually and suddenly fade out in time with the music. The pace of editing at the beggining of the intro is slow to show that everything is calm and it represents that the killer is a proffesional and isnt really worried about getting caught. During the action in the opening it is fast editing which shows that the guy was killed very quickly which could make the audience think that the killer has a professionalism within his job and that he does not like to mess about.

Sound used within the momento are non-diegetic slow strings which gradually get louder to try and create tension and a slight climax. Diegetic sounds used within the opening sequence are that of the gunshot as the murderer is killing the other person, the metallic sound of the bullet casing dropping onto the floor and rolling away, the sound of the guy yelling before he dies, the sound of the polaroid flapping as it is developed but the clip is in reverse so it looks like its undeveloping) and also the sound of the camera whiring as the photo is taken and then dispensed at the bottom of the camera.