Sound in Opening sequences

The sound in an opening sequence has to grab your attention, weather the music is interesting and the genre appeals to the listener, or it is loud and grabs your attention, or the dialogue is meaningful and a part of the actual story of the movie.

Panic Room 
There are ambient sounds of the city, like cars, people, the wind ect... to set the scene .

Then there are strings and the panning matches the sounds and it becomes quite dark because the notes are quite low in pitch and it sounds fairly minor.

The sound of the cymbal signifies change, this could be significant further on in the movie.

The music then speeds up and there is a sort of ticking sound in the background which could indicate how time is moving the background.

Finally there is a sound bridge right at the end of the title sequence going into the main dialogue at the end of the movie.
Reservoir Dogs

It starts with an overdubbed monologue.

Then it goes into a well known song with a funky bass line, the sound, sounds fairly happy and in a major key. it also sounds lively and has a nice vibe to match the facial expressions of the characters as they are smiling and laughing.

The music could be seen to be fairly 'cool' this could be what they are trying to represent in the character to the audience of how cool they are and they are wearing black sunglasses. 

We can clearly see that the scene has been slowed down to match with the music.
some of the lyrics in the song could co-ordinate with the actions in the scene like there is a lyric 'take a drag' as they are smoking.

Again at the end of the sequence there is a sound-bridge going into the first bit of the movie.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

In this sequence the music is very important because it is used to emphasises the visuals and the effect of them, because they are dark images.

There are drums at the beginning then the Synths arrive and it all sounds dark, but lively at the same time as the pace of the visuals is quite fast and the cutting pace is fast to.

The music has some sort of scream in it this also goes with the visuals because you would be expecting someone to be screaming because some of the visual we can see trapped hands and this is quite gory.

Max Payne

Scene number and description	Effect and technique
1 20th century fox motif which is non diegetic	Introducing what company made the film
2 eerie sounds quite quiet and a voice over no visuals	This introduce the characters thoughts to the audience as there are no visuals this makes the audience concentrate on the thoughts of the character
3 sound of the character bursting out of the water, diegetic and on screen	Gives an enigma to the audience as they wonder why the character is there and where he is
4 water bubbling, the character trying to breathe	This makes the audience feel shocked as the character could be drowning and this could raise the tension. As the sounds of the character trying to breathe are harsh this could also sway the mood of the audience to make it more serious
5 splashing and coughing from the character, diegetic and on screen	This makes the audience wonder where he is trying to swim to or if he is trying to get away from something
6 the character is coughing and panting diegetic and on screen	This put the audience on the edge of there seat wondering what will happen next as the scene is serious and anything could happen as they have no background information
7 sound of a person sinking in the water, diegetic and on screen	This scene shows another enigma to the audience as they can see a person sinking under water but there is little sound to go with it on the voice over of the character
8 baby crying non diegetic with a sound bridge	The sound bridge could signify that the baby runs through several parts of his life
9 baby crying and a bass sound that is getting	This could show the audience that he is getting closer to something important also the visuals of a door which has a golden light being released from the room could signify something extremely important to the character or the light coming into the dark and happier place in the room
10 voice over of the characters thoughts and feelings
11 door creaking  which is diegetic	This could be opening up part of his life that is most important to him and the creaking may suggest that it has been opened in a long time
12 wind chimes	this could signify a mystery and that everything is not what it seems
13 wind chimes
14 wind chimes and a clock ticking, thunder and lightning	This could suggest that the character is running out of time to do something or it could be a count down to something else and the lightning could represent the mood of the opening in general or how the character is feeling, this scene is also parallel  to the visuals as it is quite dark with little lighting
15 silence	The scene is parallel to the silence as the screen is black and there is nothing there as silence usually represents emptiness
16 sirens and the ambient sounds of the city diegetic	This reassures the audience that everything is back to a more familiar place also the sound ties in well with the visuals