A movement in French film-making in the late 1950s and 1960s that used the hand held camera. A kind of documentary film style where actions “passes by” the viewer.  (Example: Jean Luc-Godard’s Breathless)

This is the use of lighting to capture the subject in a specific, symbolic way.  Follows the conventions of painting, like Caravaggio.  In “The Godfather,” Willis uses pictorial lighting in order to just capture the don’s silhouette (from behind) and cast dim light on the speaker’s face across the desk.  

(Example: The Godfather)

Naturalistic Lighting 

Lighting in film that looks like light seen in nature or light that occurs naturally.  In Witness, the scene where the three men walk towards the house in the early foggy hours of the morning represents naturalistic lighting.  

(Example: Peter Weir, Witness, 1985, DP John Seale)

Key light is moved to the left or right of the camera in order to cause a large shadow that is visible to the viewer.  Very film noir (gritty urban movies or shooting through venetian blinds).

(Example: Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce)

Shadows on the actor caused by fall off of the low key light.  

(Example: Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce) 

The actor is between the audience and the light source, causing them to be completely in shadow so their identity is ambiguous.

(Example: Newsroom scene in Citizen Kane) 

Focusing the light, reduces wrinkles and gives the viewer a sense of glint in the eye.  (A technique taken from Vermeer’s “Girl with a  Pearl Earring.”)

   (Example: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Blue, 1993, DP Slawomir Idziak)

A kind of black gauze or steel netting that you put in front of the light source to soften it.  A blue gauze over windows make the sunlight less harsh.  You may want to block or even out the intensity of the sun, so you use a butterfly scrim, which is basically an umbrella between the sun and the actors.

(Example: The Big Combo)

(dark shadows, single light sources, low angle lighting) to highlight the “essential” visual elements and obscure a lot of others in darkness, creates suspense (because you have to fill in what you don’t see) and matches the ambiguous moral world of the urban “hard-boiled” landscape of the story. (Example: Mildred Pierce)

Director of photography for The Conformist.  Uses film noir in color—used all of the noir techniques but for a color film to establish a “period” feel referencing film itself for late 1940s.  

(Example: The Conformist)

 An American cinematographer.  Had difficulty trying to get enough light on a night-time scene so he shot it at the last of daylight and then darkened it down to make it look like night (i.e., a way to do day-for-night shooting without using filters).  (Example: The Professionals)

An American cinematographer.  To show heat of day or “blown-out” (burnout) windows or to have extremely bright lighting through windows which completely washes out detail on the exterior (looks like pure white light) and creates a really dark but shadowless interior, so you can’t see details of faces but you can see the objects in the space and three-dimensions very well  (Example: Cool Hand Luke)

Director and director of photographer for Cat People.  Budget was too low for a cat costume so Tourneur used light and shadow to create horror and suspense instead.  We don’t really see the cat but the power of suggestion is strong enough.  We see shadows on walls, especially in the pool scene that create suspense and tension.  Lots of light shining through things as well as the use of water and how it distorts light. (Example: Cat People) 

The final stage in a film's production after principal photography that involves editing, dubbing, sound mixing, special effects, etc.

(Example: Editing of Star Wars)

The last edited version of the film that will be released.  

(Example: final cut of Psycho)

In editing, making sure that all the lighting and positioning is unified.  

(Example: lack of continuity can be seen in Star Wars when Darth Vader's vest is backwards.) 

• French: simply editing scenes together
• American: a scene that denotes the passage of time
• Russian: According to Sergei Eisenstein in Film Form, a montage means a collision of shots that creates a synthesis or something new. (Example: Man with a Movie Camera) 

A quick shot that records a character's or group's response to another character or some on-screen action or event; often accompanied with a POV shot; reaction shots are usually cutaways. 

(Example: the quick cut to the mother in Battleship Potemkin to show her reaction to her son being trampled)

Explains Eisenstein’s theories on editing as means to invoke emotional responses from the viewer.

5 types of montage

-Metric
-Rhythmic
-Tonal
-Overtonal
-Intellectual

(Example: Battleship Potemkin)

(Russian for "film truth") Capturing everyday events with people that are unaware they are being filmed.  Creating interesting and unexpected juxtapositions with editing and film footage.  

(Example: Man with a Movie Camera)

An optical printing effect in which a single frame image is identically repeated, reprinted or replicated over several frames; when projected, a freeze frame gives the illusion of a still photograph in which the action has ceased.  

(Example: Man with a Movie Camera)

The screen gets smaller and smaller in a circle, like the iris of an eye, used in silent movies and it became a cliché.  

(Example: The Kid with Charlie Chaplin)    

Telling stories simultaneously, but not splitting the screen.  

(Example: the baptism scene at the end of The Godfather)

Director and editors for The Godfather.  The use of cross-cutting and parallel action to describe the simultaneous events of the baptism and the murder of all the other mob bosses in town.  Lots of quick cuts from the church and then to the murders, which brings symbolic meaning to the film as well.  

(Example: The Godfather)

A conversation between 2 actors, one actor talks, then a cut to the other, and then a cut back.  (Example: Bonnie and Clyde where Bonnie talks to Clyde for the first time from her window)

We see the actor’s line of sight and then the next shot is a cut to what the actor is actually looking at.  If one character is looking off in one direction, the other character needs to be looking back in the opposite direction, as if they are actually having a conversation and looking at each other. 

(Example: Casablanca)

Director for Casablanca.  Use of eyeline match in the film as Rick (Humphrey Bogart) looks up, and the next shot is what he is looking at (the French man at the door).  (Example: Casablanca)

The editor is supposed to look for and cut out mistakes in continuity, but occasionally, mistakes slip through.  (Example: In Star Wars when the bushes disappear around Luke from one shot to the other, or when shoulder armor suddenly appears on Luke after a cut.)

A transitional device in the middle of a continuous shot where the action continues after some of the action has happened, unseen by the viewer.  It can be disorienting to the viewer since a gap of the action is left out. 

(Example: Bonnie and Clyde)

Director and editors for Breathless.  The use of Jump Cuts creates suspense, especially in the scene where the man shoots the police officer; a huge portion of the action is left out.  This was a new technique in the 1960s.  Inspired the jump cuts in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).  (Example: Breathless)  

Director and editor for Pulp Fiction.  all the stories are told out of order, which messes with the viewer’s perception of the passage of time, but it allows the audience to draw connections between all of the stories.  The adrenaline scene uses lots of quick cuts to represent adrenaline and then it slows down to draw the countdown out and then it returns to its urgent quickness after Uma Thurman gets the needle in her chest.  Idea of real vs. relative time.  

(Example: Pulp Fiction)

To expose a frame of film twice so that elements of both are visual in the final product.  (Example: George Melies' Indian Rubber Head where his head sits on a table and gets larger and larger as air is blown into it.)

In Indian Rubber Head (1902) an opaque glass filter is used to block a portion of the frame and then the scene is filmed.  The film will go through the camera a second time, this time with the opposite portion of the frame blocked out by the glass.  This allows for the effect of having the large head on the table.  Also seen in The Great Train Robbery (1903).  

Camera that had several innovations that aided in special effects.  There were now pins and gears to hold the film in place as it ran through the camera.  It also had a frame counter that made double exposures easier so you knew exactly how many frames you needed to rewind. 

(Example: Disney’s Alice Comedies)

The first to use stop-motion animation on films like The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933).  Used sculptures that he moved slightly and filmed one frame at a time.  (Example: King Kong)

Willis O’Brien’s film that combines stop-motion animation and live action.  Also uses miniature rear projection to combine the live action (actors reacting to dinosaurs) with his dinosaur/plant models in his glass box.  It was a resounding success.  (Example: There is none. Go fuck yourself.) 

The pre-filmed live action shots of the actors reacting to the dinosaurs were projected on a piece of glass in the glass box that contained all the 3D models, as if the actors were really interacting with the dinosaurs. 

(Example: The Lost World)

Used many of the same techniques as “The Lost World” (1925)- rear projection, optical printing, models, and the glass box.  Many impressive innovations including the gorilla hand and the aerial fight at the end.  A huge success that took nearly 2 years to make, and it caused the acceleration of other studios creating special effects departments. 

Filming the actor with a blue or green screen behind him/her and then composite the image over the pre-filmed backdrop.  Blue was used because it was easy to cut out of the composited image. 

(Example: The Theif of Baghdad)

Special Effects whiz that was inspired by Willis O’Brien, and even assisted Willis O’Brien in Mighty Joe Young (1949).  His skills really prevailed during the age of color.  He developed the Dynamation Process which combines a 3D model with an actual pre-filmed location.  

Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen worked together to create another ape film that used calf hide and foam latex to give the model more realistic movement and hair.  

Developed by Ray Harryhausen.  Films the background footage (a real location) and then uses rear projection in the glass box with the model, the place where the actor will stand is matted out.  The final result is an actor in a real-life location with a moving 3D model.  

(Example: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms)

A technical marvel because of the fight with the model skeletons.  Use of the split-screen rear projection or dynamation again to put models in a real space with the actors.  This scene had to be carefully planned because of the level of interaction between the actors and the models.  

Instrumental in the development of new camera technology and the move to digital.  The use of motion control capture meaning that a computer was able to move the camera in the exact same motion an unlimited number of times which allowed for beautifully choreographed aerial fight scenes.

(Example: Star Wars)

A computer is able to move the camera in the exact same motion an unlimited number of times which allows for beautifully choreographed aerial fight scenes. (Example: Star Wars) 

Uses “Bullet-Time” or “Flo-Mo.”  Also the use of “image interpolation” which allows CGI to fill in the gaps left by the still photography footage. 

A physical effect designed by Weta Workshop.  Makes two actors that are roughly the same size appear vastly different.  Used in Lord of the Rings 2001-2003.  The scene where Frodo and Gandalf sit at the table and the camera pans around them (camera has never been able to move and accomplish this effect before).  Involves 2 cameras that move according to precise mathematical formulas in order to capture Frodo as smaller than Gandalf.  

Used in Lord of the Rings.  Allows a large crowd to be animated in a way that looks as if each individual figure has been animated individually.  In the battle scene in Two Towers each block of 250 orks was given a set of movements so that they could respond to their attackers.  Figures could also respond to virtual sound waves allowing them to navigate and respond to the virtual world.  

Regarded as the first modern horror film with real people doing horrible things, and a shocking plot twist explained by psychoanalysis.  The use of subjective POV, and controlled image.  Shows changes in the studio system (Hays Code).   

A film that focuses on the deep meditative ideas of space travel.  Full of visually impressive imagery of space.  Use of 1960s inventions like hidden zippers and Velcro.  All illusionistic zero gravity, not shot in a weightless drop.  Use of slit scan process.  Camera is an observer in this case, not subjective.