A successful opening sequence needs to give out some information but will need to hold most of the information away from the audience a good example of this is in the film Sucker Punch (Snyder 2011 US) as at the start of the opening sequence we see the woman sitting down upset which obscures the information why is she sitting down we then see a dead body which clarify some information but doesn't tell us why she is dead both of these examples are good indicators that the opening sequence of sucker punch is on the right lines to be very successful but will need to do all the other conventions to be a very successful sequence.
Another film that obscures information very well in its opening sequence is Brick (Nolan 2005 US). We see the man sitting looking at the dead body this is obscures information because we don't see how she died and who did it but it lets us know that she is dead. This is a very good opening sequence for obscuring information as we see a lot of information but there are a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up over the course of the film.
Titles:
All movies will have a title sequence this lets you know who starred in the film, the director etc. These are very important as you will need to know who directed the film but also to settle the audience down. If the director choose to jump straight into the action the audiences minds may not be focused and settled and may not be concentrating fully on the movie and may miss some valuable information and not enjoy the movie. Sixth Sense (Shaymalan 1999 US) has a very good title sequence.
Make you ask questions:
A good opening sequence will make you ask questions about what you are seeing and what you want to happen next. The reason that it will make you do this is it will want to keep you thinking about what is going to happen next as the director will want you to keep focused on the film at all times. A good opening sequence for this is brick.
Introduce some characters:
This is very important to the opening sequence as if we didn't see any characters we wouldn't know what to expect from them through out the movie as you will usually see what some of the characters will be like but you do not want to see all of them. This is very similar to obscuring information as you will only want show the audiencve a snippet of the movie to give them a taste of what the characters will be like. A good example of this would be in the movie the dark knight rises.
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