DEFINITIONS OF COMMON TERMS

Adapt: To translate an original story, novel, play or nonfiction work into a screenplay for the purpose of making a narrative film.

Art director: The member of a film production staff responsible for the conception and design of the decor and, also, frequently for selecting the natural locations used in a film. In this sense, he is an artist in his own right, and many film directors consistently employ the same art director for all their films.

Aspect ratio: The relationship between the width and height of a projected cinema image, expressed as a proportion or ratio. Thus, the aspect ratio of a square image is 1:1; that of a standard sound-film screen is 1:1.37 and that of the Cinemascope wide-screen process is 1:2.33. Contemporary filmmakers have frequently preferred to work in aspect ratios somewhere between standard and Cinemascope.

Auteur: A French word, meaning author. The auteur theory of film criticism, evolved primarily by the French film critics writing for Cahiers du Cinéma from the late 1940s onward, suggests that every film in a director's canon bears the characteristic imprint of his style or artistic vision, as these have been realized by the actors and technicians working under his control. In this sense, the theory goes, the film director is as much the true author of his own work as is a poet, a painter, a composer or any other artist.

Background: That perpendicular picture plane farthest away from the camera, or, behind the subject in the foreground.

Back lighting: When the principal source of illuminating the subject comes from behind so that its rays are directed at his back, back lighting is said to be employed.

Boom: A long, flexibly geared, lightweight metal arm, on the end of which is usually fixed a microphone with which sound technicians record synchronous sound during filming. Sometimes a lighting instrument is affixed to the end of a boom in order to achieve more flexible control of the lighting of a particular scene.

Camera: The subject for a book; basically, the instrument with which shots are made; a mechanism, usually employing an electric motor and a claw engagement device (with which to grip film perforations), to advance a continuous run of film past a photographic lens. Professional filmmakers usually (but not always) employ cameras equipped to record scenes with synchronized sound (dialogue, principally).

Camera angle: The position of the camera vis-à-vis the subject to be filmed. See also high angle, low angle, eye level.

Camera leading: Denotes a moving shot, in which the camera tracks backward while the subject moves forward, keeping a constant distance between himself and the lens.

Moving camera: A shot in which the camera is transported from place to place, following or leading subject action. This is to be distinguished from other kinds of camera movement, notably the pan or the tilt in which the camera does not move from place to place but only pivots on either the horizontal or vertical axis.

Subjective camera: A concept in which the camera's point of view is that of the subject.

Camera operator: A technician, a photographer, who operates the camera during the shot. He is to be distinguished from the cinematographer.

Cheat shot: One in which an illusion is created "cheating" the spectator; for example, an actor leaps off a "cliff," but he is actually leaping into a net placed off camera; the cheat consists in the fact that the spectator does not know about the net and therefore thinks that the leap is a real one.

Cinemascope: A wide-screen process distinguished by its very high aspect ratio of 1:2.33. This process is effective when the subject matter is appropriate -- that is, for Westerns, epics, and so on, wherever mass action and sweep or movement are central to the narrative.

Cinematographer: Synonyms are director of photography and cameraman; sometimes also given in credits as "photographed by." The principal technician in a film crew, he is in charge of all photography, responsible for lighting and for the technical setting up of all shots. Working under the cinematographer's immediate supervision is the camera operator.

Cinéma vérité: The antithesis of the staged narrative film, cinéma vérité denotes film documentaries shot with lightweight portable equipment as the subject's life unfolds. There is no restaging of scenes from "life" in order to enhance or dramatize the action beyond its natural state; there is no elaborate postproduction dubbing or other interference with the kind of cinema truth thus made available. Indeed, cinema truth is the meaning of the French phrase, adapted from the watchword of the Soviet pioneer Dziga Vertov.

Clip: A short section of film that has not been especially made for the work in which it appears. For eg: real newsreel clips. Clips are synonymous with stock footage when they are obtained from a film library.

Close-up: The term derives from the fact that with a normal lens fitted to the camera the subject must be close up to the lens in order to appear very large on the screen. When the subject, usually but not always the actor's face, fills the screen in such a way as to virtually exclude everything else, we have a close-up.

Extreme close-up: A shot that gets closer to the subject than the close-up and therefore shows us less of that subject. In this shot, we are usually so close that part of the actor's face is beyond the edges of the frame. Tight close-up is a synonym for extreme close-up.

Composition: The arrangement of scenic elements, including actors, within the contours of the frame. Composition is a principal means of directorial control of the medium.

Continuity: Sometimes used in lieu of story. Continuity also denotes the unbroken smoothness of transition from shot to shot and sequence to sequence so that the spectator's attention is not jarred.

Contrast: The range of the tonal scale between the darkest and lightest values of the photographic image. The image is said to show high contrast if this range is small, with very few graded tones, and low contrast when it is wide, with a large number of graded tones. High contrast is usually employed to reflect heightened levels of dramatic action and vice versa.

Craning: A type of camera movement effected by mounting the camera on the arm of a flexible crane. In order to follow action up a flight of stairs or over the edge of a cliff, a cinematographer must employ a crane.

Cross-cut: A synonym is parallel editing. A method of intensifying suspense by cutting across, back and forth, between one set of related actions and another.

Depth of field: That property of a lens that holds subjects in focus through a depth (from foreground to background) of the field of view of the lens. The technique of deep focus photography depends on this property.

Documentary: A type of film that documents a state of affairs already in existence. Although the documentary can be and frequently is a form of non-fictive narrative, it is to be distinguished from fictive narrative by its purpose, which is to appeal not to the imaginative but to the discursive faculties.

Dolly: A transport for the camera in making moving shots; a vehicle for the moving camera. The word is often used as a verb -- for example, "The camera dollies in on her face." See also tracking, traveling shot, and trucking.

Double: An actor used in place of a star, usually to perform physically hazardous action.

Dub, dubbing. To dub a scene is to record the dialogue of that scene and substitute it for the original sound (usually recorded in a foreign language); dubbing is also necessary where the original recording was faulty in some way.

Editor: The technician responsible for assembling and editing shots and tracks into the finished work in its final form.

Establishing shot: This type of shot pictures the subject at a considerable distance in order to establish it in its environmental context and thus provide the spectator with a model of where the action takes place. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with long shot, but we take it to mean the long shot that begins the sequence, in order to distinguish it from one that does not establish a locale.

Exposure: The quantity of light permitted to fall on raw film stock for the purpose of laying down a latent image. Various degrees of exposure are used to control the surface texture, color, and density of the film and hence the quality of what is visible on the screen. Exposure is one means (lighting and type of stock are still other means) of controlling contrast.

Expressionism: A wide-ranging and influential aspect of modern art and literature. Cinematic expressionism, which is unrelated to the larger modernist movements, is represented chiefly by Wiene The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1924) and is characterized by the use of bizarre and distorted effects, chiefly in decor (settings, costumes, makeup, and so on) --but also in camera work--for the purposes of revealing and expressing, directly, interior states of mind and heart.

Exterior: Representation of an outdoor--as opposed to an indoor (interior) -- scene.

Extra: An actor hired by the day to work in crowd scenes or wherever else background populations are needed.

Eye level: When the camera lens is positioned at the height of the eye of a standing person, we may say that the camera angle is at eye level.

Fade in, fade out: As the camera is running we close down the aperture of the lens, thereby gradually reducing the quantity of light exposing the film stock. The visible effect of this procedure, the gradual reduction of light and detail until the image is dark, is called a fade out. A fade in is the exact reverse of the effect.

Fantasy: In the psychological sense, an internal image--on the conscious level--of superb vitality, ambition, possibility.

Feature film: A film of a certain length--in the United States at least 8,100 feet (of 35mm film) or 90 minutes--long enough to constitute the feature presentation on a film program.

Filter: A piece of optically ground glass whose function is usually to exclude certain bands of light from the visible spectrum and thus produce certain special effects, such as high contrast, low contrast, color saturation, soft focus, and so on.

Flashback: The return to a point earlier in fictional time than the present tense of the film action ongoing. Sometimes it refers to the brief repetition of a piece of prior action. In Wild Strawberries there are numerous flashbacks.

Focal length: The distance from the optical center of a lens to the plane of principal focus. It is an important property of a lens.

Focus: To adjust the lens so that the subject image is most perfectly resolved into a sharply defined picture; when this is done, the picture is said to be in focus.

Selective focus: Within the same shot, focus can be adjusted from a subject in the foreground to one in the background (or vice versa), thus affording the cinematographer the use of selective focus.

Soft focus: When the perfect degree of resolution of a picture in focus is slightly reduced to produce a degree of haziness in subject detail, the picture is said to be in soft focus.

Follow shot: Denotes the shot in which the camera follows behind, moving from place to place as its subject does. See also tracking, traveling shot, trucking , and moving camera .
Footage: Length of film measured in feet.

Foreground: That perpendicular picture plane closest to the camera lens. See also background .

Frame: (1) A single transparent photograph of the series that is printed consecutively along the length of cinematographic film. (2) At any one moment the contours and area of the screen image.

Dynamic frame: Sometimes used to denote the effects of masking portions of the image and then either enlarging or diminishing the size and dimensions of the screen by more masking or by filling in with more picture the masked portions.

Freeze frame: A synonym is frozen frame: A single frame from a shot re-photographed for a certain length and then spliced into the sequence will produce the effect of stopped or frozen action. The effect is identical with that produced when a still photograph is filmed. It is a device with many aesthetic possibilities. See especially the work of Truffaut (Jules and Jim).

Reframe: Used to denote slight adjustments in panning and tilting in order to recompose an original staging composition.

Grain: The experience of a pebbly texture. These are really particles of silver salts held in suspension in a photographic emulsion; that they are visible may be due to a number of factors. The deliberate production of a grainy surface texture is an element of aesthetic control.

High angle: A camera position vis-à-vis the subject in which the camera is angled downward from the horizontal; the camera height may be just a foot or two higher than the subject height, as is usually the case in a close-up, or it may be hundreds of feet higher, as is the case of establishing a long shot of, say, a whole town.

Insert: A tight (or extreme) close-up, usually of an inanimate object, or sometimes a part of the body--a hand or a foot--inserted into a sequence for normal dramatic purposes. When, in Wild Strawberries, Isak looks at the watch his mother is offering to him, we cut to an insert of it.

Interior: Used to describe a scene taking place indoors.

Iris effect: The progressive widening and growth of a tiny circular spot in the center of a black screen until the whole picture is revealed to cover the screen is called an iris in. The iris out is the reverse: a very large circle begins to appear around the outer edges of the frame, and, closing down to a tiny circular spot, blacks out the screen entirely. The effect has an emphatic function: it calls the viewer's attention to whatever image it either reveals or blacks out. An uncommonly uesd effect in films nowadays, it was frequently used during the period of silent films.

Jump cut. When a segment of film is removed so that a character moving toward a destination need not--now that the section is removed--traverse the distance toward his destination, we may say that the resulting transition is a jump cut. It has jumped across space to save time.

Lens: A transparent glass refracting medium, bounded by two surfaces, one curved and the other either flat or curved, its purpose is to concentrate or disperse light according to certain optical laws. The student of cinema should bear in mind two special properties of lenses.
Those of relatively long focal length (that is, telephoto lenses), in addition to bringing distant action closer, have (1) a relatively shallow depth of field and (2) produce a foreshortened perspective: background and foreground seem closer together than when seen by the naked eye. On the other hand, wide-angle lenses have relatively short focal lengths and are used to record action over a wider field than is permitted by long focal length lenses. They tend to (1) have a very great depth of field and (2) elongate perspective so that foreground and background seem closer together than when seen by the naked eye.

Location: A real environment used for filming, as opposed to studio settings especially made for such purposes. Documentary films, needless to say, are always made on location. Fiction films or parts of them are sometimes made on location as well.

Low angle: A camera position vis-à-vis the subject in which the camera is angled upward from the horizontal. The height of the camera lens is lower than the subject and is looking up at it. This is a frequently used camera angle; it sometimes produces distortion: the subject seems to tower above the spectator.

Main title: The card containing the title of the film; sometimes used to designate titles and credits at the start of the film.

Montage: Also called dynamic editing. The art of building up a sequence out of short strips or shots in such a way as to analyze space and time, synthesizing the separate shots into something more than their mere sum. A crucial element in the rhetoric of film.

Fast motion: A synonym for accelerated motion. The illusion of motion taking place at a greater speed than normal. The opposite of slow motion.

Reverse motion: When a shot is printed in reverse order the effect is to reverse the motion within the frame. This technique is frequently used for comic or bizarre effect.

Slow motion: The illusion of motion taking place at a slower rate than normal. The opposite of fast or accelerated motion.

Moving shot: When the camera is transported from place to place keeping pace with moving action.

Negative: Raw stock, when it is exposed and developed, produces a negative image from which positives are produced. Occasionally, negatives are projected in order to produce special effects.

Pace: A measure of the rhythm of movement, usually applied to editing. When relatively short (or progressively shorter) strips of film are spliced together, the effect is a fast pace. The opposite procedure produces a slow pace. A synonym for tempo.

Pan, panning: When the camera is moved about the vertical axis, we have a pan or a panning shot.

360° pan: A panning shot in which the camera revolves a complete circle about its vertical axis.

Point-of-view shot: A synonym for subjective shot . The second in a sequence of two shots, as follows: (1) close-up of character; (2) wider shot of what he sees.

Print: A positive piece of film. A copy of a whole film. Many prints are made for release and distribution to exhibitors.

Production: a synonym for a film while it is in the phase of principal photography or shooting.

Pre-production: That phase of making a film in which the script is being prepared, actors engaged, shooting schedules determined, decor being designed, and all else done preparatory to entering production or the phase of principal photography.

Post-production: That phase of film making after principal photography has been concluded; during postproduction, the film is edited, sound effects and music tracks are assembled, and the completed film is brought to its release stage.

Projection: The act of running the film through a projector so that it appears on the screen. Modern sound films are run at a projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps), the same speed at which they are shot. Because silent films were shot at 16 fps, they give the illusion, when projected at 24 fps of fast or accelerated motion.

Reaction shot: Usually a silent close-up of a character recording his reaction to some narrative turn of events.

Rear screen projection: Projection of a film clip onto a screen from behind the screen or, in certain cases, from overhead. The purpose is usually to provide a moving background against which actors working in a studio setup can be photographed. The technique is frequently used when a moving vehicle is to be depicted and synchronous dialogue is recorded.

Reduction print: A print of a narrower gauge than the original from which it has been struck; an example would be a 16mm print from an original 35mm master. Students nearly always see reduction prints in 16mm. The reduction almost always results in some loss of surface quality in the picture and clarity in the sound.

Reel: A standard size spool, or the amount of film that can be wound onto it; in 35mm film this amount is 1,000 feet, or slightly more than 11 minutes of projection time. The 16mm equivalent is 400 feet.

Rushes: The prints of takes that are made on completion of a day's shooting; these are immediately projected for the director and staff so that a close check can be made on the progress of the work. A synonym for dailies.

Scene: A designate a series of actions or shots in the narrative that tend to form a single unit for reasons having to do with locale or narrative movement. Also, a piece of continuous action; a convenient designation for parts of a screenplay.

Screenplay: Synonyms are scenario and shooting script. The form in which a film story is cast so that a director can realize it on film.

Sequence: The major division of a film; refers to the sequential order of shots, but it also refers to scenes which together form a single phase of narrative action or continuity,

Short: A film whose length is less than 3,000 feet of 35mm film (roughly less than half an hour). Films longer than this, although not feature length, are not shorts, either; but they are seldom made except for television.

Shot: The unit out of which scenes and sequences are made; the strip of film made from a single uninterrupted running of the camera, regardless of movement by the camera or the subjects.

Long shot: A type of shot in which the subject is pictured at a considerable distance; human figures must be fully visible, from head to toe, for the shot to qualify as a long shot.
Medium shot: Action is pictured in this shot considerably closer than in a long shot. Human figures are seen at least from the knees up in a medium shot.
Three shot: One in which three people are pictured, usually in a medium shot or closeup.

Two shot: One in which two people are pictured, usually in a medium shot or close-up.

Clapboard: A synonym for clapsticks. A slate board, set in a wooden frame, with a piece of hinged wood at the top; the hinged portions are set with painted lines that join at an acute angle when close together. The two pieces of wood are clapped together at the start of a scene in which synchronous sound is recorded in order to permit synchronization of sound and picture tracks. The scene number is recorded on the slate itself. The whole is necessary to keep orderly control over the cinematic materials.

Sound: Refers usually to the natural sounds indigenous to a particular scene--for example, footsteps, breathing, crowd and traffic noises, the wind, and so on. To be distinguished from dialogue and music, which are also recorded and finally mixed together onto a single sound track.

Non-synchronous sound: The principal non-synchronous sound is dialogue. Some purists of film criticism and theory, notably V. I. Pudovkin, have always insisted that non-synchronous sound is the only sound appropriate to artful film works.

Synchronous sound: Dialogue recorded and synchronized exactly to the lip movements of the actors who produce it.

Special effects: Any unusual effect introduced into the texture of a film, whether by means of laboratory opticals or special work on objects to be photographed during the normal course of principal photography.

Staging: The manner in which the movement of actors and objects is designed into the scene or sequence; a matter of in-frame movement and positioning.

Static: Stationary; a term applied to a shot in which the camera has been locked into position; without movement.

Still: A photograph of some moment in the action or behind-the-scenes production of a film. Where the still pictures some moment in the action, the action has been especially staged for the still camerman; a still is generally not taken from the actual cinematographic picture track for technical reasons.

Stop-action photography (stop-motion photography): The technique of photographing objects one frame at a time (the motion of the camera is stopped after a single frame), at regular but lengthy intervals, permitting great changes in the object being photographed. An often seen example is that of a plant or a flower; seen in stop motion photography, the growth seems phenomenal because it is instantaneous.

Studio: A place where interior settings are built for the purposes of film making. The property of a film production company.

Subjective camera: A pattern of usage of camera angle and point of view such that a spectator experiences the visual images as primarily the subjective view of a particular character.

Subtitle: The translation of foreign dialogue inserted across the bottom of the frame. The alternative to subtitles is dubbing.

Surrealism: A 20th century movement in several arts, which finds a heightened sense of reality in the objects of subconscious mental activity as these are directly represented.

Swish pan: A panning shot (real or apparent) at very high speed; a form of transition between shots.

Take: A single trial run of a shot made during production. Because several trials are usually made before one or more satisfactory recordings are made, each trial is given the designation of take and a number--for example, take ten.

Tempo: A synonym for pace.

Tilt: A movement of the camera around its horizontal axis. The camera is tilted up or down; sometimes the expression pan or panning shot is used to designate all movements of the camera (pans and tilts) that do not involve transporting it from place to place.

Time: Students of cinema should think long and hard about this seemingly obvious concept. First, there is objective time, a measure of so-called objective reality. Its chronological progression in a linear and irrecoverable direction affords an index to the order (or disorder) of events. Then there is psychological time, which is altogether different, for it is an index to wishes and personal freedom. Both kinds of time are treated in narrative films, in a judicious mixture ordinarily; sometimes, however, films pursue the elusive psychological time to the exclusion of the objective world.
Screen time is simply the time it takes the length of any film to run its course.
Narrative time is different from screen time, in that the latter usually condenses the former. There are, however, exceptions even to this rule.
In any case, objective time makes history and psychological time makes character.

Title Cards: Cards containing printed material. These are then photographed in order to provide information to an audience that cannot be otherwise conveyed. A device of the silent screen.

Track, tracking: A verb describing the moving camera . It derives from the fact that the wheeled vehicle for conveying the camera was frequently fitted into and moved along special tracks. Synonyms are trucking, traveling, and moving, dollying.

Transition: Any method of going from shot to shot. The generic name for this movement.

Cut: The simplest transition: simply the joining of two strips of film. The value of this type of transition can range from the smooth and imperceptible to the sharpest of impact--depending on the particular pieces of film to be joined.

Cutaway: A shot to which the major sequential shots of a scene are joined, usually as a means of relief from the concentration of cinematic material in that scene.

Match cut: A shot that matches in size or composition the preceding shot in the sequence. A good example would be a series of cuts featuring two people facing each other in conversation. Each cut in such a sequence would be a match cut. The value of the match cut is close association or linkage.

Dissolve: The overlap of the end of one shot and the beginning of another in such a way that the first shot is fading out and the second is fading in. The effect is of the first shot dissolving into the second. The value of the dissolve is a softening; very often it connotes a lapse of time, and at other times simply a softening of mood.

Wipe: In this form of transition, a line or margin moves across the screen, eliminating one shot and revealing the other as it trails behind the line.

Voice over: A voice heard over the picture which is not the synchronous speech of a participant in the scene. It may, however, be the non-synchronous voice of such a participant.

Zoom: The action of a variable focal length lens. Almost always the sudden change of focal length, the movement into a close-up or out to a long shot from a close-up, has the value of dramatic impact.