Film Art Vocab Words

Form

The overall system of relationships among the parts of a film

Style

The repeated and salient uses of film techniques of characteristic of a single film or a group of films

Whip Pan

An extremely fast movement of the camera from side to side, which briefly causes the image to bkur into a set of indistinct horizontal streaks.

Long Take

A shot that continues for an unusally lengthy time before the transition to the next shot

Preproduction

The phase of filmmaking that prepares for production on the basis of a screenplay, design, and financing.

Storyboard

A tool used in planning film production, consisting of comic-strip-like drawings of individual shots or phases of shots with descriptions written below each drawing.

Postproduction

The phase of film production that assembles the images and sounds into the finished film

Digital Intermediate

A strip of film is developed and scanned, frame by frame, to create a digital copy of sequence or a whole movie.

Referential Meaning

allusion to particular items of knowledge outside the film that the viewer is expected to recognize

Explicit Meaning

Significance presented overtly, usually in language and often near the film’s beginning or end.

Implicit Meaning

Significance left tacit, for the viewer to discover upon analysis or reflection

Symptomatic meaning

Significance that the film divulges, often against its will, by virtue of its historical or social context.

Interpretation

The viewer’s activity of analyzing the implicit and symptomatic meaning suggested in a film

Ideology

A relatively coherent system of values, beliefs, or ideas shared by some social group and often taken for granted as natural or inherently true.

Unity

The degree to which a film’s parts relate systematically to one another and provide motivations for all the elements included.

Narrative Form

A type of filmic organization in which the parts relate to one another through a series of casually related events taking place in time and space

Story

A chain of events linked by cause and effect occurring in time and space. All the events we see and hear, plus all those that we infer or assume to have occured, arranged in their presumed casual relations, chronological order, duration, frequency, and spatial locations.

Plot

The film’s actual presentation of events in the story

Duration

The aspect of temporal manipulation that involves the time span presented in the plot and assumed to operate in the story.

Narration

The process through which the plot convey or withholds story information. Can be more or less restricted to character knowledge and more or less deep in presenting characters’ perceptions and thoughts.

Point of View (POV) shot

A shot taken with the camera placed approximately where the character’s eyes would be, showing what the character would see.

Mise-en-scene

All of the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed: The settings and props, lighting, costumes and makeup, and figure behavior.

Frontal Lighting

Illumination directed into the scene from a position near the camera.

Back Lighting

Illumination cast onto the figures in the scene from the side opposite the camera, usually creating a thin outline of highlighting on those figures.

Underlighting

Illumination from a point below the figures in the scene

Top Lighting

Lighting coming from above a person or an object, usually in order to outline the upper areas of the figure to seperate it more clearly from the background.

Key Light

The Brightest illumination coming into the scene.

Fill Light

Illumination from a source less bright than the key light, used to soften deep shadows in a scene.

Three Point Lighting

A common arrangement using three directions of light on a scene: Backlighting, Key Light, and a Fill light

High-Key Lighting

Illumination that creates comparatively little contrast between the light and dark areas of the shot. Shadows are fairly transparent and brightened by a fill light

Low-Key Lighting

Illumination that creates strong contrast between light and dark areas of the shot, with deep shadows and little fill light

Monochromatic color design

Color design that emphasizes a narrow set of shades of a single color

Aerial Perspective

A cue for suggesting depth in the image by presenting objects in the distance less distinctly than those in the foreground.

Size Diminution

A cue for suggesting represented depth in the image by showing objects that are farther away as smaller than foreground objects.

Shallow Space

Staging the action in relatively few planes of depth

Deep Space

An arrangement of mise-en-scene so that there is a considerable distance between the plane closest to the camera and the one farthest away. Any or all of these planes may be in focus.

Cinematography

A general term for all the manipulations of the film strip by the camera in the shooting phase and by the laboratory in the developing phase.

Contrast

The difference between the brightest and the darkest areas within the frame

Exposure

The adjustment of the camera mechanism in order to control how much light strikes each frame of film passing through the aperture.

Filter

A piece of glass or gelatin placed in front of the camera or printer lens to alter the quality or quantity of light striking the film in the aperture

Rate

The number of frames exposed per second.

Ramping

Changing the speed of photographed motionn within a single shot, as when the action in a fight scene suddenly goes from regular speed to slow motion and back

Lens

A shaped piece of transparent material (usually glass) with either or both sides curved to gather and focus light rays

Focal Length

The distance from the center of the lens to the point at which the light rays meet in sharp focus. Determines the perspective relations of the space represented on the flat screen.

Tinting

Lighter colors pick up colors

Toning

Darker colors to pick up colors

Hand-Coloring

Certain parts of the shot are colored with the appropriate color

Short-focal-length (wide-angle) lens

Usually 35mm or less lens that covers a much larger angle of view than a normal human eye or standard lens (around 50mm)

Middle-focal-lengt (normal) lens

Around 50mm lens that reproduces a field of view and perspective that looks natural to human vision

Long-focal-length (telephoto) lens

An around 70mm to 85mm lens that magnifies distant objects and makes them appear closer than they are in real life.

Zoom lens

A lens with a focal length that can be changed during a shot

Depth of Field

The measurements of the closest and farthest planes in front of the camera lens between which everything will be in sharp focus.

Deep Focus

A use of the camera lens and lighting that keeps objects in both close and distant planes in sharp focus

Racking Focus

Shifting the area of sharp focus from one plane to another during a shot

Special Effects

A general term for various photographic manipulations that create fictitious spatial relations in the shot, such as superimposition, matte work, and rear projection.

Superimposition

The exposure of more than on image on the same film strip or in the same shot.

Rear Projection

A technique for combining a foreground action with a background action filmed earlier. The foreground is filmed in a studio, against a screen; the background imagery is projected from behind the screen.

Front Projection

A composite process whereby footage meant to appear as the background of a shot is projected from the front onto a screen; figures in the foreground are filmed in front of a screen as well.

Matte work

Different areas of the image (usually actors and setting) are photographed separately and combined in laboratory work.

Framing

The use of the edges of the film frame to select and to compose what will be visible onscreen.

Academy Ratio

Currently a ratio of 1:85:1

Aspect Ratio

The relationship of the frame’s width to its height

Masking

Stretches of black fabric that frame the theatre screen.

Anamorphic Process

A special lens that squeezes the image horizontally, either during the filming or printing process

Mask

An opaque screen placed in the camera or printer that blocks part of the frame off and changes the shape of the photographed image, leaving part of the frame a solid color.

Distance

The framing of the image that places us relatively close or far away from the subject

Extreme Long Shot

The figure is lost or tiny in a shot

Long Shot

Figures are more prominent but the background still dominates in a shot

Medium long shot

Human figures are framed from about the knees up

Medium shot

Human body is framed from the waist up

Medium close-up

Frames the body from the chest up

Close up

A shot just showing just the head, hands, feet, or small objects

Extreme Close up

A shot that singles out a protion of the face or isolates and magnifies an object.

Pan

Movement swivels the camera on a horizontal axis

Tilt

Movement rotates the camera on a vertical axis

Tracking/Dolly Shot

The camera as a whole changes position, traveling in any direction along the ground.

Dolly

A heavy cart in which camera movements put the camera on

Handheld Camera

The use of the camera operator’s body as a camera support, either holding it by hand or suing a harness.

Long Take

A continuous camera shot that doesn’t require that much editing, with no cuts. Parallels real time.

Cut

Joining two strips of film with a splice. An instantaneous change from one framing to another

Dissolve

The transition between two shots during which the first image gradually disappears while the second gradually appears.

Fade Out

Gradually darkens the end of a shot to black

Fade In

Lightens a shot from black; opposite of Fade-out

Wipe

Shot B replaces shot A by means of a boundary line moving across the screen

Graphic Match

Two successive shots joined to create a strong similarity of compositional elements

Constructive Editing

Editing that suggests a scene’s space by providing only portions of it, without an establishing shot.

Establishing Shot

A shot usually involving a distant framing, that shows the spatial relations among the important figures, objects, and setting in a scene.

Kuleshov Effect

Cutting together portions of a space in a way that prompts the spectator to assume a spatial whole that isn’t shown onscreen.

Flashfoward

Editing moves from the present to a future event and then returns to the present.

Elliptical Editing

Shot transitions that omit parts of an event, causing an ellipsis in plot duration

Overlapping Editing

Prolongs the action, stretching it out past its story duration by repeating scenes already shown

Continuity Editing

A system of cutting to maintain continuous and clear narrative. Relies on matching screen direction, position, and temporal relations from shot to shot.

Axis of Action

The center line or 180 line

The 180 Degree System

The continuity approach to editing dictates that the camera should stay on one side of the action to ensure consistent left-right spatial relations between elements from shot to shot.

Screen Direction

The right-left relationship in a scene, set up in an establishing shot and determined by the positions of characters and objects in the frame, by the directions of movement, and by the characters’ eyelines

Shot/reverse-shot

Two or more shots edited together that alternate characters, typically in a conversation situation. In continuity editing, characters in one framing usually look left; in the other framing, right.

Eyeline Match

Shot A presents someone looking at something offscreen and shot B shows us what is being looked at.

Reestablishing Shot

Reestablishes the overall space that was previously shown in the establishing shot

Match-on Action

Carrying a single movement across a cut

Cheat Cut

In the continuity editing system, a cut that presents continuous time from shot to shot but that mismatches the positions of figures or objects