The audience should be able to identify the genre of a film within its opening minutes. In our case, the opening to "Sins Of The Martyr" is characteristically that of an action thriller film, sharing many of the conventions that are conformed to in a variety of popular films of the same genre. Thrillers typically employ a number of enigmas, that immediately establish the film as a thriller, and ensure the audience is paying attention to every moment in order to see the lot unfold and the questions answered. Enigmas were a popular trope of director Alfred Hitchcock who once said "an audience would rather be confused than bored". This is something we took into a lot of consideration in the planning stages of our film, crafting a storyline for the opening that would be interesting and work as a prologue to events that could potentially follow.
There are various questions the audience will probably ask when watching the sequence - and each of these unanswered gaps in the plot line and the motivations of the characters were intentional. For instance, it is unclear why Yung is adamant at defying his colleagues but we establish and hint at the relationships between the characters, so the audience can assume and make up their own minds about them. The audience is also unaware of the nature of the mission that our protagonist, Agent Davidson, is on, but their cinematic experience of similar films that feature chase sequences and the like will provide enough of an idea as to why.
The case that is briefly featured in the sequence is an example of what has been coined as a 'MacGuffin' - an item that serves no other purpose than to drive the story forward. Again, Hitchcock famously used them, and in his words they were "the device, the gimmick...(that) must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they are of no importance whatsoever". The use of this item, to put it frankly, allowed us to seemingly have come up with an elaborate plot line that could potentially be explored despite having put no thought at all into the case's true nature. However, with the opening sequence it wasn't important for it to be of any particular relevance, but again the audience can decide what it means.
Despite these enigmas and MacGuffins, both typical conventions of the thriller genre, there is of course the vital ingredient - action, oh, and it must be fast paced. Modern day audiences are accustomed to exhilarating action sequences on screen, and a little mystery and intrigue just won't cut it, so it was our duty we had to provide. Most Bond films take several minutes for any action to kick in - it takes us little over a minute and a half before all hell breaks lose. Our opening features chases across Trafalgar Square as well as brief but brutal altercation across some steps, in addition to the aforementioned enigmas and twists, all in the name of ensuring the audience is kept interested and stimulated both visually and mentally, which overall, I think we have succeeded in doing.