The Kingsmen Opening Scene - Action

 

Kingsmen opening scene

 From the very first shot, the time and location are established through text, and with this comes the first key convention for an action film -  gunshots and a sense of danger - which immediately engages the audience. The other conventions used throughout this opening sequence is the dietetic sound at the start, through radio - creating a sense of unsafety and the costumes used, they're very stereotypically used to represent bravery and this reinforces the narrative of an action film. The sound and the terror around shocks the audience while most of the characters are able to remain calm, action films are usually very tense and this is seen from the way it zooms into the building where the danger is and during the specific moment from the picture down below when the tense music is being played, and the man is counting down in a foreign language, this creates an atmosphere of uncertainty as we don't know whats going on and then the bomb goes off - this is startling for us as the audience but for the characters they don't seem too surprised, the only dialogue spoken after is a mere curse and then they get back to planning their next move, this shows us that this has clearly happened before and gives us an idea for what the rest of the narrative will be about, almost giving a small backstory to why what happens next, will happen. However, the rest of the film doesn't continue to this narrative, and while still remaining an action film, has elements of more lighthearted moments and this is the only scene in the film shot in this time period and in the middle east.

There aren't too many characters introduced on a deep level, the little boy who we learn is named Egsy we can see will have a big role, and the man who was both present in the first location and in the second, we assume will also play a big part. The camera work used to introduce character is effective as Egsy is only a  background character at the beginning but it zooms out on him, causing us to pay more attention to him than the dialogue going on, when Egsy is handed the badge we know that this will get the rest of the story going - this further engages the audience as to what significance the item holds. The target audience for this film, from the opening scene we assume would be a more mature audience who usually like to watch fast-paced, action, thriller, and war films, however, as the film goes on we can see it may not just be this type of film and could be targetted towards a younger audience as it's not as scary and violent as it might seem in the first few minutes. 

The Mise -  en - Scene has impacted the scene by making it more dramatic, the set seems old and broken down by the bombs and violence and the character composition of one of the characters in the center tied up to a chair also shows us how serious this situation is. In contrast when the next location is established it's a very different environment - where it feels a lot safer and we can see this through the brighter colors and how all of the characters look more at ease from their facial expressions and costume.

In conclusion, I think that this opening sequence is very effective as portraying the film as action and using the key conventions, however, it may be slightly misleading in the way that it doesn't continue to this narrative the whole way through.