The intentions of directors of memento and Insomnia

            
Memento                                Insomnia


Christopher Nolan the director of memento had clear intentions to capture the audiences attention in the opening scene of memento. You can see this because there are clear conventions of the thriller genre shown in the opening scene like blood, a handgun and suspenseful music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cifPv4QWTH0&feature=fvst   This is a good opening scene also because its played in reverse giving the audience a idea that the film may not be going in chronological order. Its very different to other opening sequences of thriller films because the opening scene is rarely played backwards.

The audiences attention is straight away captured because many question arise from the opening sequence like why is it being played backwards? Why does the man shoot the other man in the head? When and where is it taking place? and to fufil those questions the audience are likely to continue watching the film and enjoy it.


Christopher Nolan also directed Insomnia which has a different opening sequence but still with similar thriller type conventions.  The audiences attention is again captured but in a different way because in the opening there are two different things being filmed. In one there is a fabric being stained with blood and the other a plane flying through the glacier covered mountains as seen in the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m70eyk6xr3s. The similar conventions found in insomnia that are also found in memento are blood, suspenseful music and bothered characters.

But unlike memento insomnia sets the scene with a spectacular landscape of the exotic arctic setting which makes the film more exciting for the audience. From the opening scene the audience gets the idea that something bad has happened causing someones death hence the blood and the distressed music and characters.