Exam 3 Flashcards
A film actor or actress of great popularity. tends to play only those roles that fit a preconceived public image, which constitutes his or her persona.
stars
Short for panorama, this is a revolving horizontal movement of the camera from left to right or vice versa.
Panning
The dividing line between the edges of the screen image and the enclosing darkness of the theater. Can also refer to a single photograph from the filmstrip.
Frame
A shot photographed by a tilted camera. When the image is projected on the screen, the subject seems to be tilted on a diagonal.
Tilting
A style of filmmaking characterized by austerity and restraint, in which cinematic elements are reduced to the barest minimum of information.
Minimalist
A symbolic technique in which stylized characters and situations represent rather obvious ideas, such as Justice, Death, and Society. A popular genre in the German cinema.
Allegory
A panoramic view of an exterior location, photographed from a great distance, often as far as a quarter-mile away.
Extreme long shot
The slow fading out of one shot and the gradual fading in of its successor, with a superimposition of images, usually at the midpoint.
Dissolve
The fade-out is the snuffing of an image from normal brightness to a black screen. A fade-in is the slow brightening of the image from a black screen to normal.
Fade
A group of young French filmmakers who came to prominence during the late 1950’s. The most widely known are Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Alain Resnais.
New Wave
A movie image which has an aspect ratio of approximately 5 by 3, though some widescreens possess horizontal distances that extend as wide as 2.5 times the vertical dimension of the screen.
Wide screen
A shot taken from a moving vehicle.
Dolly, tracking shot
A marketing strategy, common in the big studio era, in which theatre owners were required to rent studio movies before they were produced.
blind booking
An Italian film movement that produced its best works between 1945 and 1955. Strongly realistic in its technical biases, the movement emphasized documentary aspects of film art, stressing loose episodic plots, natural lighting, actual location settings, nonprofessional actors and a preoccupation with poverty and social problems.
Neoreallism
A low-budget movie usually shown as the second feature during the big studio era in America.
program films
A variation on a specific shot.
take
A shot of lengthy duration.
Lengthy take
A movie based on another medium which captures the essence of the original and uses cinematic equivalents for specific literary techniques.
Faithful adaptation
An editing technique that that suggests the interruption of the present by a shot or series of shots representing the past.
flashback
Any unobtrusive technique, object, or thematic idea that is systematically repeated throughout a film.
motif
An abrupt transition between shots, sometimes deliberate, which is disorienting in terms of the continuity of space and time.
Jump cuts
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 radical montage, the continuity is determined by the symbolic association of ideas between shots rather than any literal connections in time and space. Continuity can also refer to the time–space continuum of reality before it’s broken down into fragments (shots).
Continuity
An actor-star can play roles of greater range and variety.
Actor stars
The American film industry’s censorship arm. The Code was introduced in 1930 but not enforced until 1934. It was revised in the 1950’s and was scrapped in favor of the present rating system in 1968.
Production Codes
The latter phase of a genre’s evolution in which many of its values and conventions are challenged or subjected to skeptical scrutiny.
revolutionist
Shots of a subject photographed at a faster rate than twenty- four frames per second, which when projected at the standard rate produce a dreamy, dance-like slowness of action.
Slow motion
Trick photography and optical effects, usually employed in fantasy films, especially science fiction.
Special effects
The box office appeal of the physical mounting of a film, such as sets, costumes and special effects.
Production values
Those images that are recorded continuously from the time the camera starts until the time it stops.
Shot
The arrangement of visual weights and movements within a given space. Cinematic mise en scene encompasses both the staging of the action and the way that it is photographed.
Mise en scene
An editing technique that suggests the interruption of the present by a shot or series of shots representing the future.
flash forward
Referring to Classical Cinema, a vague but convenient term used to designate the mainstream of fiction films produced in America from the mid 1910’s to the late 1960’s.
classical
An avant-garde movement in the arts stressing Freudian and Marxists ideas, unconscious elements, irrationalism, and the symbolic association of ideas.
Surrealist
The process of combining two separate shots on one print, resulting in an image that looks as though it had been photographed normally.
Matte shot
(also process shot) A technique in which a background scene is projected onto a translucent screen behind the actors so it appears that the actors are on location in the final image.
Rear projections
Small scale models photographed to give the illusion that they are full-scale objects.
Minatures
A form of filmmaking characterized by photographing inanimate subjects or individual drawings frame by frame, with each frame differing minutely from its predecessor.
Animation shots
The slow fading-out of one shot and the gradual fading-in of its successor, with a superimposition of images, usually at midpoint.
Dissolve
An abrupt transition between shots, sometimes deliberate, which is disorienting in terms of the continuity of space and time.
Jump cut
A symbolic technique in which stylized characters and situations represent rather obvious ideas such as Justice, Death, and Society.
Allegory
(Fast stock) Film stock that is highly sensitive to light and generally produces a grainy image.
Fast film
A detailed view of a person or object, usually without much context provided.
Close up
A shot taken from a special device called a crane, which resembles a huge mechanical arm.
Crane
Left-wing artists that were forbidden employment in the American studios because of their political beliefs in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Blacklisted
An analytical methodology, derived from Hegel and Marx, that juxtaposes pairs of opposites—a thesis and anti-thesis——in order to arrive at a synthesis of ideas.
dialetical
The agreement or correspondence between image and sound, which are recorded simultaneously, or seem so in the finished print.
Synchronous sound
A masking device that blacks out portions of the screen, permitting only a part of the image to be seen. Usually the iris is circular or oval in shape and can be expanded or contracted.
Iris
A shot composed of a single frame that is reprinted a number of times on the filmstrip which, when projected, gives the illusion of a still photograph.
Freeze Frame
An editing device, usually a line that travels across the screen, “pushing off” one image and revealing another.
Wipe
Shots of a subject photographed at a faster rate than 24 frames per second, which when projected at the standard rate produces a dreamy dancelike slowness of action.
Slow Motion
The joining of one shot (strip of film) with another.
Editing
A lens of variable focal length that permits the cinematographer to change from wide angle to telephoto shots (and vice versa) in one continuous movement, thus suggesting the camera’s plunging into or withdrawing from a scene.
zoom Lens
A shot of lengthy duration.
Lengthy take
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.
Establishing shot
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.
Establishing shot
From the French, “work.” The complete works of an artist, viewed as a whole.
Oeuvre
A recognizable type of movie, characterized by certain pre-established conventions. Some common American genres are westerns, musicals, thrillers, and comedies.
Genre
From the French, “in the front ranks.” Those minority artists whose works are characterized by an unconventional daring and by obscure, controversial, or highly personal ideas.
Avant-Garde
The use of a well-known culture symbol or complex of symbols in an artistic representation.
Iconography
A French term—literally, “black cinema—referring to a kind of urban American genre that sprang up after World War II.
Film noir
A method of documentary filmmaking using chance elements that don’t interfere with the way events are taking place in reality.
Cinema Verite
A vague but convenient term used to designate the mainstream of fiction films produced in American, roughly from the mid 1910’s to the late 1960’s. The classical paradigm is a movie strong in story, star, and production values, with a high level of technical achievement and edited according to the conventions of classical cutting.
Classical cinema
From the Latin “mask.” An actor’s public image, based on is or her previous roles and often incorporating elements from his or her actual personality as well.
Persona
A male-oriented action genre, especially popular in the 1970’s, dealing with the adventures of two or more men, usually excluding any significant female roles.
Buddy Film
Techniques of filmmaking which depend on the element of chance. Images are not planned out in advance but must be composed on the spot by a director who often acts as his or her own camera operator.
Aleatory
A low budget movie usually shown as the second feature in the big studio era.
B Film
The camera’s angle of view relative to the subjects being photographed.
Angles
The alternating shots from two sequences, often in different locals, suggesting that they are taking place at the same time.
Intercuts
A reference to an event, person, or work of art, usually well known.
Allusions
The fade-out is the snuffing of an image from normal brightness to a black screen.
Fade
A now extinct genre, used as a prelude to the main feature.
Serials
Trick photography and optical effects, usually employed in fantasy films, especially science fiction.
Special effects
A form of filmmaking characterized by photographing inanimate subjects or individual drawings frame by frame, with each frame differing minutely from its predecessor.
Animation
A group of young French filmmakers who came to prominence during the late 1950’s. The most widely known are Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Alain Resnais.
New wave
An original model or type after which similar things are patterned. well-known story patterns, universal experiences, or personality types. Myths, fairy tales, genres, and cultural heroes
Archetypal
A film genre characterized by bold and sweeping themes, usually in heroic proportions.
A film genre characterized by bold and sweeping themes, usually in heroic proportions.
