Film 1st marking period

CREATION

CREATION

1st of the phases of production

PREPRODUCTION

2nd of the phases of production

PRODUCTION

3rd of the phases of production

POST PRODUCTION

4th of the phases of production

FILM FORM

the overall patterning of a film, the ways its parts work together to create specific effects.

CONVENTION

An artistic practice or process or device that is widely used and commonly accepted and understood within a given culture

REPRESENTATION

A sign or symbol that communicates meaning with a combination of content and form

REFERENTIAL MEANING

An 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 ending, also called the film’s THEME

IMPLICIT MEANING

Significance left tacit, for the viewer to discover upon analysis or reflection, also called the film’s SUBTEXT.

SYMPTOMATIC MEANING

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

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.

FUNCTION

The role or effect of any element within the film’s form.

MOTIVATION

The justification given in the film for the presence of an element. 

MOTIF

An element in a film that is repeated in a significant way

PARALLELS

Cues that compare two or more distinct elements by highlighting some similarity.

DEVELOPMENT

The pattern of change within a film’s form for similar and/or different elements.

VARIATIONS

The return of an element with notable changes.

PROGRESSION

The movement of film elements from beginning to middle to end

SEGMENTATION

The process of dividing a film into parts for analysis.

UNITY

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

SHOT

The basic building block of a film.  It is essentially a piece of film run through a camera, exposed, and developed; an uninterrupted run of the camera; or an uninterrupted image on film.

SCENE

A collection of shots consisting of several elements.

TAKE

A single recording of a shot.

MISE-EN-SCENE

All of the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed: settings, props, lighting, costumes, makeup, and characters (meaning the actors, their gestures, and their facial expressions).  It also includes the camera’s actions and angles and the cinematography.

NARRATIVE FORM

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

NARRATIVE

(in general) is a chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in a linear order. 

UNRESTRICTED NARRATION

The viewer knows more, sees more, hears more, than any of the characters in the film 

RESTRICTIVE NARRATION

The viewer doesn’t know, see, hear, or learn anything more than the characters in the film.

NARRATION

is the moment-by-moment process of storytelling decisions about the viewpoint that affects the film’s narrative.

NARRATOR

Some specific agent who purports to be telling us the story.

CHARACTER NARRATOR

A character from the story who is speaking over the scenes about the story but who appears in the film.

NON-CHARACTER NARRATOR

An anonymous voice that talks about the action but does not actually appear in the film.

STORY

The chain of events of the film in chronological order, including not only those events we see and hear, but those we infer as well.

PLOT

is a narrative (and traditionally) a literary term defined as the events that make up a story as they relate to one another in a pattern or sequence, as they relate to each other through cause and effect, and how the viewer experiences the story.

DIEGESIS

  All the story elements presented by the narrative, no matter whether they are actually seen or heard on screen or not.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

The philosophical concept of causality.

TIME

The measurement or system by which events can be ordered from the past through the present and into the future. 

FLASHBACKS

can be used to add narrative/backstory to the present scene, going from present to past and back to present.

FLASHFORWARDS

can be used to add narrative by going from the present to the future and back to the present.

DURATION

or how long the events take place is another narrative tool pertaining to time. 

FREQUENCY

of the scenes can affect narrative, putting extra emphasis on important events

SPACE

The locale, area, or setting of a film.

OBJECTIVE NARRATION

Where a plot might confine us wholly to information about what characters say and do.

SUBJECTIVE NARRATION

Using sight or sound to create subjectivity.

POINT OF VIEW SHOT

Shots taken from the character’s optical standpoint.

SOUND PERSPECTIVE

Sounds as heard by the character

MENTAL SUBJECTIVITY

Goes deeper into a character’s senses and into his or her mind (what they’re thinking).

INTRODUCTION

The viewer gets to know the characters and is introduced to the conflict.

OPENING

The beginning of a film, or more, the basis for what is to come and initiates the viewer into the narrative.

CONFRONTATION

The story builds up to where a change occurs following twists and turns.

DEVELOPMENT

Change is essential to narrative, there must be an obstacle for the protagonist to overcome or a change in his or her situation.

CLIMAX

The culmination of events that reaches a high point.

RESOLUTION

The story concludes and the characters either succeed or fail.

FILM STYLE

The film’s use of cinematic techniques.

MELODRAMA

A dramatic form that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization.

CHARACTER

A representation of a person or personality type, especially emphasizing distinctive traits, such as language, mannerisms, physical makeup, etc.

ACTING

The performance of an actor portraying a character in a film.

PERFORMANCE

A musical, comedic, or dramatic portrayal done for entertainment purposes in front of an audience, including the actor’s appearance, gestures, facial expressions, and speech or other sounds.

DIALOGUE

The conversation between two characters in a novel, play, or film

NON-VERBALS

The physical reaction of a character without speaking, including facial expressions, gestures, and body movements.

ACTOR

·         Any person who performs in a play, movie, dramatization, etc.

FILM STAR

·         – A performer with a national or international reputation who appears in major roles and has great box-office appeal.

CAMEO

·         – A small role in a movie, play, dramatization, etc., that is performed by a well-known actor.

CHARACTER ACTOR

May or may not be a star (by today’s terms) who specializes in playing similar, recognizable character types.

REPRESENTATIVENESS

·         An actor’s ability to personify a specific type of person.

TYPE

A shared, recognizable, easily-grasped image of how people are in society, with collective approval or disapproval built into it. 

STEREOTYPE

– An oversimplified and sometimes demeaning type. 

SETTING

The locale or period in which the action of a novel, play, film, or story takes place.

CONVENTION

An artistic practice or process or device that is commonly accepted and understood within a given culture.

LOUDNESS

o   The amplitude of vibrations in the air, or volume.

PITCH

o   The perceived highness or lowness of sound vibrations.

TIMBRE

o   The harmonic components of sound, giving it a certain color or tonal quality.

SOUNDTRACK

o   The narrow band on one or both sides of a motion-picture film on which the sound (music and dialogue) is recorded; the audio portion of a film.

FOLEY

o   it is the process of or relating to the creation of sounds produced manually for a motion-picture or film’s audio track.

SOUND MIXING

o   The combining of sounds for a film into a specific pattern, or stream, that both links time and layers them at any given moment.

SOUND PERSPECTIVE

o   The sense of a sound’s position in space, yielded by volume, timbre, pitch, and binaural information.

RHYTHM

The pattern of regular or irregular pulses created in music and sounds by the occurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats.

FIDELITY

The degree of accuracy with which sound or images are recorded or reproduced, the extent to which the sound is faithful to the source as we conceive it.

DIEGETIC SOUND

Sounds that have a source in the story’s world; dialogue spoken by characters, sounds made by objects or props, and music represented as coming from instruments in the story space.

NONDIEGETIC SOUND

Sounds that are coming from a source outside of the story’s world; music added to enhance the action, narration, a disembodied voice that gives us information but doesn’t belong to any character, and the film’s musical soundtrack.

SYNCHRONOUS SOUND

Sound that is in time with the image

ASYNCHRONOUS SOUND

Sound that is not in time with the image.

SIMULTANEOUS SOUND

   Diegetic sound that is represented as occurring at the same time in the story as the image it accompanies (the dialogue of two characters speaking lines up with their lip movements).

NONSIMULTANEOUS SOUND

Diegetic sound that comes from a source in time either earlier or later than the images it accompanies (as in a sonic flashback where the narration overlaps a previous scene or time period).

SOUND BRIDGE

A common sound-editing device that creates smooth transitions from one scene to another.

VOICE OVER

  When a character or narrator speaks directly to the audience without appearing onscreen.