Film Studies Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards for film studies review.

Mise-en-scene

A French term meaning 'Putting on stage,' combining elements such as lighting, composition, art direction, costuming, makeup, and texture. It encompasses almost everything that happens in front of a camera in a particular scene.

Shot

The basic building block or unit of film narrative; a single, constant take made by a motion picture camera uninterrupted by editing, or cuts.

Establishing Shot

Usually a long shot at the beginning of a scene (or sequence) that is intended to show things from a distance.

Long Shot

A camera view of an object or character from a considerable distance so that it appears relatively small in the frame.

Medium Shot

A conventional camera shot filmed from a medium distance; usually refers to a human figure from the waist (or knees) up.

Close Up

A shot taken from a close distance in which the scale of the object is magnified, appears relatively large and fills the entire frame to focus attention and emphasize its importance.

High Angle

A shot in which the subject or scene is filmed from above and the camera points down on the action, often to make the subject(s) small, weak and vulnerable.

Low Angle

A shot in which the subject is filmed directly from below and the camera tilts up at the action or character, to make the subject appear larger than life.

Pan

Refers to the horizontal scan, movement, rotation or turning of the camera in one direction (to the right or left) around a fixed axis while filming.

Zoom

A single shot taken with a lens that has a variable focal length, thereby permitting the cinematographer to change the distance between the camera and the object being filmed, rapidly.

Tracking

A smooth shot in which the camera moves alongside ('tracking within') the subject, in a side-to-side or forward/backward motion; also known as a “dolly” shot.

Boom

A continuous single shot made from a moving boom, and incorporating any number of camera levels and angles, mostly moving from a high angle to a low or eye-level angle.

High Key Lighting

Everything evenly and brightly lit, with a minimum of shadows.

Low Key Lighting

With less illumination, more shadows, and many grayish, dark areas.

Cut

An abrupt or sudden change or jump in camera angle, location, placement, or time, from one shot to another.

Montage

The editing technique of assembling separate pieces of thematically related film and putting them together into a sequence.

Hollywood Montage

A technique of film editing that combines a series of short shots or clips into one sequence, often set to music.

Soviet Montage

An approach to film editing developed during the 1920s that focused, not on making cuts invisible, but on creating meaningful associations within the combinations of shots.

Fade

A transitional device consisting of a gradual change in the intensity of an image or sound, such as from a normally-lit scene to darkness (fade out, fade-to- black) or vice versa, from complete black to full exposure (fade in).

Shot-reverse-shot

The alternating pattern between two characters' points of view.

Cross Cutting

The editing technique of alternating, interweaving, or interspersing one narrative action (scene, sequence, or event) with another - usually in different locations or places, thus combining the two.

Jump Cut

A cut in film editing in which a single continuous sequential shot of a subject is broken into two parts, with a piece of footage being removed in order to render the effect of jumping forward in time.

Dissolve

A classic editing technique used to transition between shots, typically shots that bridge two scenes together, involving the gradual transition from the first image to the next.

Diegetic

Refers to the narrative elements of a film (such as spoken dialogue, other sounds, action) that appear in, are shown, or naturally originate within the content of the film frame.

Non-diegetic

Elements, such as sounds (e.g., background music, the musical score, a voice-over, or other sounds w/o an origin within the film frame itself).