Memento

Editing is a big part of a movie and its production. It can help in taking parts out of a movie that someone doesn’t want or if it doesn’t work in the film. It can help to piece together a movie in its entirety. It can also help to tell the story in a different way that what was filmed. A big way to change a fill is to film it and edit it out of order so it makes the viewer piece it together for themselves. A movie that does that well is a movie called memento. This movie uses so many editing technics to give you an interesting story that keep you interested in what happens next.

First we will talk about how the movie in a whole is edited and that it is chronologically edited. This whole movie is edited to make it seem out of order but in fact it’s the right way. The main character in this movie whose name is Leonard has a mental condition that makes it so he has no short term memory. This means he can’t make any new memories. This fact is why this movie is edited the way it is. The whole movie is filmed so that some scene is in chronologic order while some are put together backwards, making it seem like the whole thing is jumbled up. It makes it so you have to piece together the story like the main character has to piece together what has happened and what’s going on. It also uses picture from past evens to help tell the story but also confuse you till you find out what happens at the end. It also helps to keep you invested to find another piece of the puzzle and to keep watching.

They also use Leonard’s condition to add to the story because some characters use his condition to their advantage and the movie used this to its advantage as well. The character could be having an argument with Leonard and just walks out and waits for him to forget then walks in and acts like something else happens to take advantage of him. Many characters use this fact but in different ways. It could be for murders or drug deals or even just for getting extra money but renting him extra room. The point is that everyone uses him, even the filmmakers.

Next let’s talk about the different cuts they use in the film. There are many cuts it this film and so many to talk about. Let’s start with some jump cuts. Jump cuts are when you take a scene and cut it from different points in time to make the scene go faster. We see this when our main character is stripping the person he just beat up. It cuts the parts up so we aren’t seeing the full process of him stripping his clothes off but just the scenes we need to see. This is done so it can move the scene along and not waste time on pointless things. They also use montages this is used to speed the movie along to cut travel times or Leonard piecing the puzzle together. Next let’s go with smash cuts. Smash cuts are when there is a dramatic change in the pace of the seen. We see this when it cuts from a calm scene to a chase involving guns. This could be done to change the mood because it could be getting dull. There’s also cross cutting that keeps the timeline centered like when Teddie, who is Leonard’s supposed friend, is pulling up while Leonard is getting a tattoo. Also flash cuts that can give you subtle clues cut cutting in and out of a scene using another scene like one of the big plot twists hat you can actually miss the first or second time you watch it.

My whole point with this is that editing is a big part of movies and it can make a movie great. It’s used in every movie to tell the story a different way than how it would be if not edited. In this case it flipped the movie around to help keep your eyes and mind on the movie and to find out what happens next or what has already happened and without it the movie would not be as interesting and I hope to see other movies that use editing to improve the story of movies in the future.