Film Terminology

Question 1

Shot (Shots & Framing)

Answer 1

a single piece of film uninterrupted by cuts.

Question 2

Establishing Shot (Shots & Framing)

Answer 2

often a long shot or a series of shots that sets the scene. It is used to establish setting and to show transitions between locations.

Question 3

Long Shot [LS] (Shots & Framing)

Answer 3

a shot from some distance. If filming a person, the full body is shown. It may show the isolation or vulnerability of the character (also called a Full Shot).

Question 4

Medium Shot [MS] (Shots & Framing)

Answer 4

the most common shot. The camera seems to be a medium distance from the object being filmed. A medium shot shows the person from the waist up. The effect is to ground the story.

Question 5

Close Up [CU] (Shots & Framing)

Answer 5

the image being shot takes up at least 80 percent of the frame.

Question 6

Extreme Close Up (Shots & Framing)

Answer 6

the image being shot is a part of a whole, such as an eye or a hand.

Question 7

Two Shot (Shots & Framing)

Answer 7

a scene between two people shot exclusively from an angle that includes both characters more or less equally. It is used in love scenes where interaction between the two characters is important.

Question 8

Eye Level (Camera Angles)

Answer 8

a shot taken from a normal height; that is, the character’s eye level. Ninety to ninety five percent of the shots seen are eye level, because it is the most natural angle.

Question 9

High Angle (Camera Angles)

Answer 9

the camera is above the subject. This usually has the effect of making the subject look smaller than normal, giving him or her the appearance of being weak, powerless, and trapped.

Question 10

Pan (Camera Movement)

Answer 10

a stationary camera moves from side to side on a horizontal axis.

Question 11

Tilt (Camera Movement)

Answer 11

a stationary camera moves up or down along a vertical axis

Question 12

Zoom (Camera Movement)

Answer 12

a stationary camera where the lens moves to make an object seem to move closer to or further away from the camera. With this technique, moving into a character is often a personal or revealing movement, while moving away distances or separates the audience from the character.

Question 13

Dolly/Tracking (Camera Movement)

Answer 13

the camera is on a track that allows it to move with the action. The term also refers to any camera mounted on a car, truck, or helicopter.

Question 14

Boom/Crane (Camera Movement)

Answer 14

the camera is on a crane over the action. This is used to create overhead shots.

Question 15

High Key (Lighting)

Answer 15

the scene is flooded with light, creating a bright and open-looking scene.

Question 16

Low Key (Lighting)

Answer 16

the scene is flooded with shadows and darkness, creating suspense or suspicion.

Question 17

Bottom or Side Lighting (Lighting)

Answer 17

direct lighting from below or the side, which often makes the subject appear dangerous or evil.

Question 18

Front or Back Lighting (Lighting)

Answer 18

soft lighting on the actor’s face or from behind gives the appearance of innocence or goodness, or a halo effect.

Question 19

Cut (Editing Techniques)

Answer 19

most common editing technique. Two pieces of film are spliced together to “cut” to another image.

Question 20

Fade (Editing Techniques)

Answer 20

can be to or from black or white. A fade can begin in darkness and gradually assume full brightness (fade-in) or the image may gradually get darker (fade-out). A fade often implies that time has passed or may signify the end of a scene.

Question 21

Dissolve (Editing Techniques)

Answer 21

a kind of fade in which one image is slowly replaced by another. It can create a connection between images.

Question 22

Wipe (Editing Techniques)

Answer 22

a new image wipes off the previous image. A wipe is more fluid than a cut and quicker than a dissolve.

Question 23

Flashback (Editing Techniques)

Answer 23

cut or dissolve to action that happened in the past.

Question 24

Shot-Reverse-Shot (Editing Techniques)

Answer 24

a shot of one subject, then another, then back to the first. It is often used for conversation or reaction shots.

Question 25

Cross Cutting (Editing Techniques)

Answer 25

Cross Cutting: technique is also called parallel editing. It can create tension or suspense and can form a connection between scenes.

Question 26

Eye-Line Match (Editing Techniques)

Answer 26

cut to an object, then to a person. This technique shows what a person seems to be looking at and can reveal a character’s thoughts.

Question 27

Diegetic (Sound)

Answer 27

sound that could logically be heard by the characters in the film.

Question 28

Non-Diegetic (Sound)

Answer 28

sound that cannot be heard by the characters but is designed for audience reaction only. An example might be ominous music for foreshadowing.

Question 29

Storyboards

Answer 29

These are a series of drawings — or photographs — that a director creates before the movie is filmed to help the director to visualize what will appear later on screen. Often, lighting, dialogue, framing, and other elements of the shot will be noted as well. These individual drawings or photographs are then arranged in sequence to create a final storyboard. Later in this unit you will be asked to create your own storyboard.

Question 30

Notes About Shots

Answer 30

The following information is designed to assist the teacher and provide background information for the teacher before he or she presents the terminology lesson with students. We have seen how the point-of-view shot works to put the spectator literally in the very place of the character and thus to secure psychological identification with that character. This is only one of the devices by which the cinema seeks to manipulate and control how the spectator feels and what he or she is thinking. Other types of shot articulations (what cinematic moves are called in critical discussion) do the same thing. For example, in the shot-reverse-shot sequence, the spectator occupies alternately the position of now one character in the dialogue, now the other character, thus switching identifications every few seconds without really knowing it. Another type of shot that has the effect of manipulating the viewer is without doubt the close-up. In the early years of the cinema, there were no close-ups, only long shots, so that the spectator was always held at a good distance from the characters; this distance worked against the identification processes that modern cinema seeks to encourage. When you see a close-up, for instance, you have the sense of being in very intimate connection with the character, close indeed to him or her emotionally and thus able to register and even feel directly what he or she is going through. That sense of closeness is, of course, illusory, since in actuality you are situated in a seat some distance away from the face on the screen, not only in space but also in time. (Just think of the fact that the actor has done this performance not at the present time, before your eyes, as it may seem, but in a different place many weeks, months, or even years before the date at which you view the film. The actor or actress is thus not even “present” to you; only a shade or delegate is.) But the close-up more than anything else in cinema can elicit reactions from you by making you feel that you are up there on the screen, a part of the proceedings, and not there in your seat. A zoom, which is a movement of a long focal lens — not of the camera itself — either in toward an object or out away from that object is a cinematic articulation that you probably have seen many times. It is the refocusing of your eye that you instinctively do when you instantly turn your attention from one thing to another; it registers exactly this kind of sudden turning of attention, as if your very eyes have noticed something and focused in on it, or indeed pulled back from it, and in this way, the zoom imitates the patterns of your mind and your vision. Similarly, the pan gets you to turn your neck, so to speak, without moving your head; via the dolly, you walk forward, backward, or to the side without leaving your seat, etc. These are the ways by which the camera enlists your attention and your response, and because they seem so “natural” — just the ways in which you are used to seeing in everyday life — you hardly notice that you have been captivated. A film audience does not want to be conscious of the fact of projection, does not want not to see the screen but rather the magical unfolding of the images, does not want to have to think about the machinery or projection, for that too interferes with its total absorption in and captivation by the film’s fiction. All of these components of the cinema that are effectively obliterated during a screening — the camera, the projector, the screen and even, as we have seen, the spectator him or herself — taken together are referred to as the cinematic apparatus. Cinema counts on making this apparatus unapparent. For if it were apparent, the main illusion on which cinema is based, that of looking in on a private world that unwinds magically, would be spoiled. Thus, the cinema’s means of production are concealed so that the spectator is not aware of the material machinery that constructs the filmic illusion; he or she has the false sense that the story is being told by nobody from nowhere, or even produced by the spectator.