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| essentially a variation of the CRANE shot, though restricted to exterior locations, usually taken from a helicopter. |
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| viewers' ability to distinguish between an artistic reality and external reality-their realization that the events of a fiction film are simulated. |
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| an american studio era term signifying a major production, usually with important stars and a generous budget. shown as the main feature on double bills. |
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| techniques of filmmaking that depend on the element of chance. images are not plannned out in advance but must be composed on the spot by the camera operator. usually used in documentary situations. |
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| a symbolic technique in which stylized characters and situations represent rather obvious ideas, such as justice, death, religion, society, and so on. |
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| a reference to an event, person, or work of art, usually well known. |
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| the camera's angle of view relative to the subject being photographed. a high angle shot is photographed from above, a low angle from below the subject. |
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| a form of filmmaking characterized by photographing inanimate objects or individual drawings frame by frame, with each frame differing minutely from its predecessor. when such images are projected at the standard speed of twenty-four frames per second, the result is that the objects or drawings appear to move, and hence seem "animated" |
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| anticipatory camera, anticipatory setup |
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| the placement of the camera in such a manner as to anticipate the movement of an action before it occurs. such setups often suggest predestination. |
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| an original model or type after which similar things are patterned. archetypes can be well-known story patterns, universal experiences, or personality types. myths, fairy tales, genres, and cultural heroes are generally archetypal, as are the basic cycles of life and nature. |
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| the individual responsible for designing and overseeing the construction of sets for a movie, and sometimes its interior decoration and overall visual style. |
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| the ratio between the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the screen |
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| a theory of film popularized by the critics of the french journal cahiers du cinema in the 1950s. the theory emphasizes the director as the major creator of film art, stamping the material with his or her own personal vision, style, and thematic obssessions. |
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| the use of only that light which actually exists on location, either natural or artificial. when available lighting is used in interior locations, generally a sensitive fast film stock must also be used |
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| from the french, meaning "in the front ranks." those minority artists whose works are characterized by an unconventional daring and by obscure, controverial, or highly personal ideas. |
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| when the lights for a shot derive from the rear of the set, thus throwing the foreground figures into semidarkness or silhouette |
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| during the studio era, standing exteriour sets of such common locales as a turn-of-the-century city block, a frontier town, a european village, and so on. |
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| a low-budget movie usually shown as the second feature during the big-studio era in america. b-films rarely included important stars and took the form of popular genres, such as thrillers, westerns, or horror films. the major studios used them as testing grounds for the raw talent under contract. |
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| a shot in which the camera photographs a scene from directly overhead. |
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| a soundproof camera housing that muffles the noise of the camera's motor so sound can be clearly recorded on the set. |
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| the movements of the actors within a given playing area |
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| an overhead telescoping pole that carries a microphone, permitting the synchronous recording of sound without restricting the movement of the actors. |
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| a male-oriented action genre, especially popular in the 1970s, dealing with the adventures of two or more men, usually excluding any significant female roles |
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| an artistic sensibility typified by comic mockery, especially of the straight world and conventional morality. campy movies are often ludicrously theatrical, stylistically gaudy, and gleefully subversive. |
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| transparent plastic sheets that are superimposed in layers by animators to give the illusion of depth and volume to their drawings |
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| a political term signifying a moderate ideology, midway between the extremes of the left and right wings. |
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| the artist or technician reponsible for the lighting of a shot and the quality of the photography |
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| cinema verite/direct cinema |
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| a method of documentary filming using aleatory methods that don't interfere with the way events take place in reality. such movies are made with a minimum of equipment, usually a hand-held camera and a portable sounds apparatus |
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| classical cinema, classical paradigm |
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| a vague but convenient term used to designate the style of mainstream fiction films produced in america, roughly from the midteens until the late 1960s. the classical paradigm is a movie stong in story, star, and production values, with a high level of technical achievement, and edited according to conventions of classical cutting. the visual style is functional and rarely distracts from the characters in action. movie in this from are structured narratively, with a clearly defined conflict, complications that intensify to a rising climax, and a resolution that emphasizes formal closure |
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| a style of editing developed by D. W. Griffith, in which a sequence of shots is determined by a scene's dramatic and emotional emphasis rather than by physical action alone. the sequence of shots represents the breakdown of the event into its psychological as well as logical components |
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| a visual style that inclines toward self-conscious designs and carefully harmonized compositions. the frame is exploited to suggest a self-sufficient universe that encloses all the necessary visual information, usually in an aestheitcally appealing manner |
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| a detailed view of a person or object. a close-up of an actor usually includes only his or her head |
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| the kind of logic implied between edited shots, their principle of coherence. cutting to continuity emphasizes smooth transitions between shots, in which time and space are unobtrusively condensed. more complex classical cutting is the linking of shots according to an event's psychological as well as logical breakdown. in thematic montage, the continutiy is determined by the symbolic association of ideas between shots, rather than any literal connections in time and space |
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| an implied agreement between the viewer and artist to accept certain artificialities as real in a work of art. in movies, editing is accepted as "logical" even though a viewer's perception of reality is continuous and unfragmented |
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| coverage, covering shots, cover shots |
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| extra shots of a scene that can be used to bridge transitions in case the planned footage fails to edit as planned. usually long shots that preserve the overall continuity of a scene |
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| a shot taken from a special device called a crane. the crane carries the camera and the cinematographer and can move in virtually any direction |
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| a producer who supervises the making of a movie in such detail that he or she is virtually its artistic director. during the studio era in america, the most famous creative producers were David O. Selznick and Walt Disney |
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| the alternating of shots from two sequences, often in different locales, suggesting that they are taking place at the same time |
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| a type of editing in which the shots are arranged to preserve the fluidity of an action without showing all of it. an unobtrusive condensation of a continuous action |
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| scences that are filmed in daytime with special filters to suggest nighttime settings in the movie image |
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| a technique of photography that permits all distance planes to remain clearly focus, from close-up ranges to infinity |
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| an analytical methodology, derived from Hegel and Marx, that juxtposes pairs of opposites-a thesis and antithesis-to arrive at a synthesis of ideas |
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| the slow fading out of one shot and the gradual faing in of its successor, with a superimposition of images, usually at the midpoint |
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| those individuals who serve as go-betweens in the film industry, who arrange to book the product in theaters |
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| dolly shot, tracking shot, trucking shot |
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| a shot taken from a moving vehicle. originally, tracks were laid on the set to permit a smoother movement of the camera |
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| dominant contrast, dominant |
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| that area of the film image that compels the viewer's most immediate attention, usually because of a prominant visual contrast |
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| the superimposition of two literally unrelated images on film |
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| the addition of sound after the visuals have been photographed. dubbing can be either synchronous with an image or nonsynchronous. foreign language movies are often dubbed in english for release in this country |
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| the joining of one shot(strip of film) with another. the shots can picture events and objects in different places at different times. in europe, editing is called montage |
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| a film genre characterized by bold and sweeping themes, usually in heroic proportions. the protagonist is an ideal representative of a culture-national, religious, or regional. the tone of most epics is dignified, the treatment larger than life. the western is the most popular epic genre in the US |
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| usually an extreme long or long shot offered at the beginning of a scene, providing the viewer with the context of the subsequent closer shots. |
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| a style of filmmaking emphasizing extreme distortion, lyricism, and artistic self-expression at the expense of objectivity |
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| a minutely detailed view of an object or person. an extreme close-up of an actor generally includes only his or her eyes or mouth |
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| a panoramic view of an exteriou location, photographed from a great distance, often as far as a quarter-mile away |
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| the placement of the camera approximately five to six feet from the ground, corresponding to the height of an observer on the scene |
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| the fade-out is the snuffing of an image from normal brightness to a black screen. a fade-in is the opposite |
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| a film based on a literary original that captures the essence of the orignial , often by usuing cinematic equivalents for specific literary techniques |
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| shots of a subject photographed at a rate slower than twenty-four fps, which, when projected at the standard rate, convey motion that is jerky and slightly comical, seemingly out of control. |
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| film stock that's highly sensitive to light and generally produces a grainy image. often used by documentarists who wish to shoot only with available lighting. |
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| secondary lights that are used to augment the key light-the main source of illumination for a shot. fill lights soften the harshness of the key light, revealing details that would other wise be obscured in shadow. |
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