Film Terms
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60 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Film treatment | A description of a film story written as if you were seeing the film; often used to "sell" a movie to a studio, or the step before the script is prepared. |
| Script or screen play | A shot-by-shot description of the film, often with dialogue, settings, action, sound, and camera directions. |
| Storyboard | Drawing of each shot in the script, including picture and sound directions. |
| Shot or take | Basic unit of film structure--one scene, shot on one piece of film, on one camera, in one take--can last from one second to ten minutes. |
| Long takes | Over a minute long (Orson Wells) |
| Short takes | Cut in interesting or provocative ways (Alfred Hitchcock, Sergi Eisenstein) |
| Sequence or scene | A number of shots put together to show a single event, usually in the same setting. |
| Extreme long shot | Could be an establishing shot (establishing a location in the minds of the audience) or a panoramic perspective showing a number of objects and people simultaneously. |
| Long shot | Shot that takes in a character's entire body. Also called a full shot. |
| Medium shot | Shot that takes in a character's upper body. |
| Close shot (closeup) | Shows the head and shoulders of a single character. |
| Low angle shot | Camera shoots scene from below. |
| High hat shot | An extreme low angle shot. |
| High angle shot | When the camera is above the objects being filmed. |
| Arial shot | An extreme high angle shot. |
| One shot | Designates that one character is in the shot. |
| Underexposed shot | Shot with too little light. |
| Overexposed shot | Shot with too much light. |
| Voice over | Off-screen narrative voice over a film image. |
| Sound effects | Special noises added to soundtrack to add realism. |
| Cut | Most basic linking of shots, going from one to the other directly. |
| Jump cut | When shots are linked without a sense of continuity and seem unnatural; suggests tension, scares, etc. |
| Matching action (continuity editing) | When shots are edited to suggest natural continuity. |
| Montage editing | Editing calls attention to the juxtaposition of shots. |
| Cross-cutting | The alternating of shots between two sequences, often in different locales, suggesting that they are taking place simultaneously. |
| Fade in or fade out | Shows time passing in moving from one shot to another. |
| Dissolve | When using fade in and fade out transition. |
| Superimposition | When one shot and another are shown one over another, seen together. |
| Wipe | Optical effect in which one shot wipes across the previous shot (seen in old serials and more recent homages to them like Star Wars. Note diagonal, and hesitant wipes in Mammoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). |
| Flip wipe | When one shot flips quickly around to reveal the next shot. |
| Freeze frame | Action stops and remains on screen (end of Rocky or any 1970s TV show (satirized on Police Squad)) |
| Iris | When a blackness encircles the shot from the edges of the screen progressively to the middle, wiping out the shot. (Used in silent films--sometimes quickly done, sometimes slowly). |
| Mis en scene | Both the staging of the action and the way it is photographed within the frame. Can likewise refer to all you see in the frame: props, costumes, etc. |
| Undercranked shot | Camera runs slower than normal to make action appear faster. |
| Overcranked shot | Camera runs faster to make action appear slower. |
| Rack focus | Focus changed from one object to another in one shot. |
| Point-of-view shot (subjective camera) | Any shot taken from the point of view of a character in the film. |
| Reaction shot | A cut to a shot of a character's reaction to the contents of the previous shot. |
| Pan shot | Camera swivels on fixed base--right or left. |
| Tilt shot or vertical pan | Camera tilts up or down on a fixed base. |
| Dolly shot | When camera is on a little truck (or moving car) that can move the camera forwards, backwards, or sideways, often allowing the camera to keep up with the action. |
| Tracking shot | Same as a dolly shot except the camera is on a track vehicle. |
| Crane shot or boom | Camera moves on a crane vertically or horizontally. |
| Zoom shot | The camera using a zoom lens appears to move towards or away from subject. Sometimes this is mistaken for a dolly shot. |
| Wide angle lens | Wide angle, exaggerated perspective, sped up motion to and from the camera. |
| Normal lens | Perspective and motion much as human eye sees them. |
| Telephoto lens | Flat perspective, slower motion toward camera, and narrow angle of view. |
| Zoom lens | Changeable focal length. |
| M.O.S. | Shots made without sound. |
| Wild sound | Sounds recorded separately from film. |
| Photography | Writing in light. |
| Keys | Denotes the style/look of the film (lighting). |
| High key lighting | Bright and even lighting; used in comedies and musicals. Bright, hopeful, and happy. |
| High contrast lighting | Harsh bursts or shafts of light or huge areas of darkness; used in tragedies and melodramas. Things are nightmarish. |
| Low key lighting | Diffused shadows and atmospheric pools of light; used in mysteries and thrillers. Things are mysterious. |
| Realistic lighting | Uses a lot of available, natural light. |
| Expressionistic lighting | Uses very dramatic, artificial lighting patters to express character psychology--usually in a studio. |
| Backlighting | Illuminates the background and gives 3-dimensional sense (can give a halo effect). |
| Key lighting | The brightest source of light, creating shadows and emphasis--what your eyes go to. |
| Fill lighting | Softer light from another direction to prevent the key light from creating too-dark shadows. |
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