Title Sequence Analysis

This is the distribution company, "Paramount", and appears at the beginning of the film (00:01). They fund the movie and therefore insist to appear at the very start so it is the first thing that the audience see, to gain recognition. It is a convention for production and distribution company titles to appear at the start of a film.

These are the producers of the film, who are vital elements in making the film as successful as it can be. The producers appear after the distribution company (00:19), and sometimes can appear more than once in an opening sequence. 

This is the director, and his name appears just after the producers (00:22) and also again, towards the end of the film opening titles (02:17). This is because the director is always a vital part of the filming and production process, and so it is important they are credited. This is generally a convention, and some film opening titles even have the director credited three times!

The actors are credited one by one, and unless there are big names (like in the example above), they are generally after the film title. This specific film goes against the convention (00:45), as the actors are quite famous. From there, the names go in order of how much screen time each actor has, so the first name is almost always the protagonist.

The film title often appears towards the middle of the opening sequence (01:05), after the production/distribution companies and director (and sometimes actors). More often that not, the film title style and font varies from the rest of the titles to draw attention to it, but in this example it follows the same format as everything else.

If the 'big' actors appear before the film title, the co-stars appear after (01:25), which are actors that have very little screen time. This is not really part of a convention, as it only really appears, as aforementioned, if the bigger actors appear before the film title.

Following everything else, a few more people from the filming and production crew are credited, such as the director of photography (01:46), the production designer (01:35) and the associate producer (01:40), etc. This follows a convention, as they generally always appear towards the end of the opening titles. Anyone who isn't mentioned here, and everyone who is also, is featured at the end of film.