Structures of Film Openings

There are 3 main structures to title sequences; A Narrative opening (with titles running throughout), a discrete title sequence and titles over a blank screen (followed by. An added forth type of opening is stylized editing.

TITLES OVER A BLANK SCREEN (followed by the narrative opening)

This is just titles on a a screen and then the film starts. 

STYLIZED EDITING

This type of editing is amazingly stylized and includes heavy effects, which means, there's a lot of editing

The other two types of film opening structures I used examples to show how it would look.

NARRATIVE OPENING - PANIC ROOM

In this type of opening the characters are introduced and the setting as you see footage of this and the titles appear over the footage. The film usually opens in the first minute. The example I used for this type of opening is Panic Room which is a psychological thriller and it follows the conventions of this type of opening. The tiles appear over some infamous structures and places in New York, this establishes the setting.

DISCRETE TITLE SEQUENCE - SE7EN

Discrete title sequences are separately edited sequences that stand apart from the film opening. They are stylised and heavily edited, and they support nearly all of the opening credits and film title. In this title sequence, there isn't any insight into what the film is about, but you see the titles and you get a feeling of the film from it.