Film Glossary

Question 1

The style and ‘look’ adopted by a filmmaker.

Answer 1

Aesthetic

Question 2

Alignment

Answer 2

How the spectator is physically positioned with the character to identify with them.

Question 3

Identify three techniques to achieve alignment.

Answer 3

Close up
POV
Close microphone

Question 4

How the spectator is ideologically or emotionally positioned with the character to identify with them.

Answer 4

Allegiance

Question 5

Auteur

Answer 5

A filmmaker with a signature style across several films. Usually referencing a director but can also be an editor or cinematographer.

Question 6

When characters, representations or ideologies are set up against one another, creating conflict, positioning and the possibility of resolution.

Answer 6

Binary Opposition

Question 7

A wide screen format developed by 20th Century Fox and used in Hollywood up until the 1960s.

Answer 7

Cinemascope

Question 8

The person responsible for the look of a film, in charge of the camera techniques and translates the director’s vision. Advises on camera angles, lighting and special effects.

Answer 8

Cinematographer aka Director of Photography (DP)

Question 9

The predominant style of editing in a narrative - creating a logical coherence between shots and continuous narrative action. Typical features include shot/reverse shot, the 180 degree rule and match-on-match action.

Answer 9

Continuity editing

Question 10

Films & other art works which offer a subjective and often distorted reality for emotional effect.

Answer 10

Expressionist

Question 11

A specific example of expressionism, emerging from the aftermath of the Great War. Robert Wiene & FW Murnau were leading exponents.

Answer 11

German Expressionist film

Question 12

Social and political movements which advocate for equal rights for women.

Answer 12

Feminism

Question 13

A key movement of cinema in France in the 1950s and early 1960s. Jean-Luc Godard & Francois Truffaut were leading directors

Answer 13

French New Wave or nouvelle vague

Question 14

Ideological critical approach

Answer 14

Analysing a film from a particular ideological perspective to reveal dominant values in a film or to offer a critique of it, e.g. a feminist reading

Question 15

When a film makes reference to another media text. The filmmaker may be paying homage to another film.

Answer 15

Intertextuality or intertextual reference

Question 16

Juxtaposition

Answer 16

The positioning of two shots, characters or scenes in sequence to encourage the audience to compare and contrast them.

Question 17

The influential magazine that Andre Bazin, and Francois Truffaut wrote for.

Answer 17

Cahiers du Cinema

Question 18

Magical elements are added to a realistic depiction of the world and are presented as normal and realistic. This can be used to portray an alternate reality so we question the accepted one. Used effectively in Pan’s Labyrinth.

Answer 18

Magic realism

Question 19

A series of shots edited together to condense time or create a specific meaning, sometimes with a musical track.

Answer 19

Montage

Question 20

A period in American film history after the break-up of the studio system era, from the late 1960s to the late 1970s.

Answer 20

New Hollywood

Question 21

A genre of Chinese martial arts cinema in which characters are able to channel the life force in order to levitate and even fly.

Answer 21

Wuxia

Question 22

A broad late 20th-century artistic and critical movement that departs from the modernist ideas of objectivity, originality, and single truths. This type of cinema is characterised by fragmentation, playfulness, heavy stylisation, intertextuality, a blurring of high and low culture coupled with genre hybridity.

Answer 22

Postmodernism/postmodernist

Question 23

A film style which aims to create the effect of reality or verisimilitude, often using deep focus and long takes as realistic devices which mimic the eye. This style also tends to favour continuity over montage editing.

Answer 23

Realism

Question 24

How particular groups, people & places are depicted. In film we explore these via the use of film form, focusing on age, gender and ethnicity.

Answer 24

Representations

Question 25

A particular type of representation in which individuals and groups are reduced, via repetition, to a few recognisable characteristics which are then use to define everyone within the category.

Answer 25

Stereotype

Question 26

A style of filmmaking where the audience is made aware of the process of filmmaking and the film’s artificiality. It is closely associated with Brecht.

Answer 26

Self-reflexive

Question 27

This term refers to the act of watching a film. As a concept, it explores how films address and positions the individual through the construction of the film.

Answer 27

Spectatorship

Question 28

The ________ _________ is the business model in Hollywood from 1927 to 1948 where a small number of studios were dominant.

Answer 28

Studio System

Question 29

Name the ‘Big 5’

Answer 29

20th Century Fox, RKO, Paramount, Warner Brothers and MGM.

Question 30

Name the ‘Little 3’

Answer 30

Columbia, Universal and United Artists.

Question 31

The huge German Studio responsible for films such as Murnau’s Faust and Lang’s Metropolis was called…..

Answer 31

UFA - Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft!

Question 32

What is Vertical Integration?

Answer 32

When a company controls the different stages of a product’s process or construction. In Hollywood, this included ownership and control of film studios and cinemas.

Question 33

An international 20th century movement of artists, writers and philosophers who focused on the unconscious mind and dreams. Heavily influenced by Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, as well as mind-altering substances.

Answer 33

Surrealism.

Question 34

A left-wing ideology which views capitalism as an economic and political system which creates class struggle, where the ruling classes dominate and oppress the working classes.

Answer 34

Marxism