I. Scene Overview


I want to analy the opening scene of Memento. The first scene is of Leonard shooting John G. in the head, having finally reached his goal. It is the only scene in the entire film that literally runs backwards and that is shown in slow-motion. In it, we see a bullet fly back up the barrel of a gun and Teddy come back to life “after” the sound of a shot.


II. Scene Analysis:


Shot 1: 00:00:43 - 00:01:58


 
Shot Type: This is a close-up shot; we can see the photo change from color to white only clearly.


Camera Movement: The camera doesn’t move through the shot.

Depth of field: The shot focuses on the photo.

Sound: The background music is very softness in the opening scene.

Lighting: a flashing light be used in this scene, so it can make a mystery scene.



Colours: Normal color, Actually, it is the end of the story, everything back to normal.


Shot 2: 00:01:58 - 00:02:08



Shot Type: This is a close-up shot; we can see both actions and expressions of the characters clearly.


Camera Movement: the camera focuses and moves follow the paper. In my mind, the last shot takes a long time to dipict the photo, so the viewers also focus on it. So at this shot, the Camera still focuses on the photo, to let the viewer concentrate

Depth of field: same as Shot 1.

Colours: same as Shot 1.

Camera Angle: I think this shot is taken from a low angle. So we can see the paper go back into the camera in this shot. And then we can find that literally runs backwards.