Skyfall opening

Last night I put Skyfall on and this was for a couple of reasons; firstly I'm a massive James Bond fan; and secondly, because it's an action thriller and would share the standard conventions of other action thrillers and our own. While watching it and trying to not get to involved with the action I noticed three specific standard conventions that any audience would come to expect from an action thriller opening scene and these were;

(These were the only two clips of the opening scene that were good enough for me to post on my blog)

1. The opening scene has the audience asking questions to make them keep watching the film, as the film will answer the questions throughout yet have the audience asking more leading the way for a sequel.

Questions could be like this;

• What has happened?
• Who is this person?
• What are they doing?
• What's he after?
• Where are they?

This is something that we look to impose into our opening as we believe that it is essential for the opening to work the way we want it to.

2. The scene is neither to fast nor too slow as it starts with a blurred figure of James Bond walking towards the camera and this instantly grips the audiences attention with a slow walk, however when Bond gets into the car the scene speeds up and gets the audiences adrenaline going. This shows that the use of speed is a very important convention in action thrillers and has to be just right, because if it isn't it can bore or overwhelm the audience and they will lose interest and in a way this is like an application form or an interview. This is because they employer or interviewer will always remember the start and end of an interview they will never remember the middle. This means that it is so important when making a film to get the start and the end absolutely perfect.

3. The music used really sets the scene in the opening scene and throughout the film and it helps the audience understand what is going on in the scene. The producers of Skyfall did this really well and it is a convention that we duly intend to use in our film opening due to the fact the it helps to connect the audience to the film.

However music can sometimes be used to refer to previous films in a series and set iconic moments such as in Skyfall when the Aston Martin DB5 is revealed. This helps to appease people who have followed a film series for a long time or seen every single one of the films like James Bond or Harry Potter.