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Glossary |
(alphabetical and illustrated) Introduction | A1 | A2-B1 | B2 | B3-C1 | C2 | C3 | C4-D1 | D2-E1 | F1 | F2-I1 I2-L1 | L2-M1 | M2-O1 | O2-P1 | P2-S1 | S2 | S3 | S4 | S5-T1 | T2-Z |
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a term for a movie, usually a Roman or Biblical epic, characterized by the weapons (swords) and footwear (sandals) of the period |  Examples:
the many Victor Mature films, such as Samson and Delilah (1948),
The Robe (1953), and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954).
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a term for the class of fantasy movies characterized by the presence of wizards and warriors, magic and sword fighting |
 Example:
Conan the Barbarian (1982). |
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an object in a film that stands for an idea, or that has a second level of meaning to it, e.g., a window or train=freedom, a rose=beauty, a cross-roads=a decision point, etc.; the more a symbol is repeated, the greater its significance | Example: in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (1999) - the visual clue or symbol of cold air indicating the presence of ghost spirits |
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within a film when two or more distinct plotlines 'mirror' each other or develop variations on the film's theme or plot; aka mirroring | Examples: David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997), and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) |
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refers to sound whose source can be seen in the image's frame, or whose source can be understood from the context of the image | |
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a clever phrase or short sentence to memorably characterize a film, and tease and attract potential viewers, or sell the movie; also creates a catchy 'soundbite' often repeated or presented in a trailer or on a film's poster, sometimes along with the film's leitmotif |  Examples:
"This is the weekend they didn't play golf" (Deliverance
(1972)), "The Night He Came Home!" (Halloween
(1978)), "Where were you in '62?" (American
Graffiti (1973)), "Small town. Big crime. Dead cold" (Fargo
(1996)), "This is Maggie the Cat..." (Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)), "It's Terrific!" (Citizen
Kane (1941)) |
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a single continuously-recorded performance, shot or version of a scene with a particular camera setup; often, multiple takes are made of the same shot during filming, before the director approves the shot; in box-office terms, take also refers to the money a film's release has made | |
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a term applied to the actors, as a group, on a film set | |
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the common term used for films with sound (beginning in 1927), although rarely used currently. The advent of talkies marked the dawning of the era of sound films, as opposed to silent films |  Example:
the landmark film In Old Arizona (1929), was advertised as "100%
All-Talking", and "You Hear What You See" on its poster,
because it was the first sound western from a major studio (Fox Pictures);
Singin' in the Rain (1952) took a look back
at the dawning of the talkies |
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a medium shot of people conversing; used as a criticism - denoting an uninteresting image | |
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a slang term, meaning to "pick", "select", "name", or "appoint" | |
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an excessively-sentimental or emotional film, usually with suffering female protagonists, tragic circumstances, manipulative scenes, and dramatic musical scoring; aka melodramas or weepies; derogatively known as a 'woman's film' or 'chick flick'; contrast to feel-good film |  Examples:
Dark Victory (1939), Now,
Voyager (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945),
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948),
Love Story (1970) (pictured), Beaches (1988), and Steel
Magnolias (1989) |
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the trade name for the best known color film process; 3-strip color is often used as a synonymous term; also used generically as a term for rich, bright, vibrant, sometimes garish colors; Technicolor films were described as highly saturated (with pure and vivid colors); Technicolor (a 3-color dye transfer system) was introduced in the Disney short cartoon, Flowers and Trees (1932) |  This
new process in the 1930s involved a camera that used prisms to split the
light coming through the lens onto three strips of black-and-white film,
one each for the primary colors (red, green, blue; with complementary color
dyes: cyan, magenta, yellow) |
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modern day (or post-modern) expressionistic film noirs set in the future, with dark, decaying societies |  Examples:
Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and Blade
Runner (1982) (pictured), Outland (1981), Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1984), The Terminator (1984), Robocop
(1987), Total Recall (1990), Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days
(1995), Andrew Niccol's Gattaca (1997), Alex Proyas' Dark
City (1998), and David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999) |
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refers to a feature-length motion picture made for television; also known as telepic or telepix; see also made-for TV movie | |
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(lens) |
refers to a camera lens with a very long focal length and narrow angle of view - the effect is to compress or condense depth in space, thereby bringing distant objects closer to the viewer (without moving the camera), but it also flattens the depth of the image; it has the opposite of the effect of a wide-angle lens |
 Example:
Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967) and the
extreme telephoto shot of Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) running towards the
church - and appearing to run in place;  or the scene of Indy Jones (Harrison Ford) running from natives in the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) |
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an industry slang or trendy buzzword term, meaning a film that is expected to serve as a primary support for a studio, i.e., to be a top-grossing blockbuster (usually during the summer season), to compensate for a studio's other flops; usually the film is the start of, or an installment in, a franchise | Example: Armageddon (1998) and other $100 million-plus films, such as Spider-Man (2002) or Shrek (2001) |
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(film) |
the place for screening, presenting, or viewing a film or motion picture; aka cinema | |
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a slang term referring to a feature-length motion picture | |
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(film) |
the central characteristic, idea, concern or motif in a film | |
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the opening or closing music of a motion picture, often containing the film's 'signature' or leitmotif tune/phrase that is associated with a character or situation within the film | Examples: 'Laura's theme' in Laura (1944), John Williams' shark music in Jaws (1975). |
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refers to a medium shot that contains three people; compare to two-shot | |
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refers to any commercial venture connected to a film | Examples: the simultaneous release of a novel and the film based upon it, or of model characters, such as the Harry Potter novels |
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(or oblique angle) |
a camera tilted up or down on a diagonal along a vertical axis; a vertical camera movement from a fixed position often used to suggest an imbalance, or strangeness, or to emphasize size, power or menace; also known as tilt pan, tilt up or tilt down (or reveal), or vertical pan, although not technically the same as "pan up" or "pan down", similar to a moving close-up; a dutch angle is filmed at an extreme diagonal tilt | |
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a method of filming where frames are shot much slower than their normal rate, allowing action to take place between frames, and giving the appearance of the action taking place much faster in the finished product; often done for nature filming (the blooming of a flower, the movement of clouds, etc.), allowing the viewer to witness the event compressed from real time (hours or days) into a few seconds; (one frame shot every 30 seconds over 24 hours of real time would equal two minutes of film time); opposite of slow-motion |  Example:
Koyaanisqatsi (1982) |
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the use of color to physically tint film stock to achieve a desired mood, usually done selectively by hand; often used by silent black-and-white films before the widespread use of color film. See gel and sepia. |  Example:
The Great Train Robbery (1903) was selectively
hand-tinted. D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916)
(pictured) tinted each of its four episodes (and its "cradle rocking"
interludes) in a different color: the "Modern" Story was tinted
amber, the "Judean" Story was tinted blue, the "French"
Story was tinted in sepia, and the "Babylonian" Story was tinted
grey-green. Gold tinting was also used to "color" the gold, brass
beds, gold teeth, gilt frames, and the canary cage in Greed
(1924). The 1984 re-release of Fritz Lang's Metropolis
(1927) also tinted various scenes |
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the lead part in a movie or other production for an actor or actress, that is named after the title of the film |  Example:
Harrison Ford in the title role in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(1989), or Angelina Jolie in the title role of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
(2001) |
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the words that appear on the
film screen and convey information; categories of titles include: credit
titles, main titles, end titles, insert titles,
and subtitles; a creeper title, also known as a roll-up
title, refers to a film title that appears to move solwly across the
screen - vertically or horizontally; in silent film, "titles"
(called title cards or intertitles) included the written commentary
and full screens of textual dialogue spliced within the action; title
design refers to the artistic manner in which the title of a film is
displayed on screen; the working title is the name by which a film
is known while it is being made (e.g., during the filming of Psycho
(1960), it was known as Production 9401); see also credits |
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abbreviation for tickets |
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the mood or atmosphere of a film scene, often revealed by the director in the way a film is directed, e.g., serious, humorous, satiric, amusing, etc. | |
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abbreviation for cartoon | |
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to star; or to be billed above the title of a film; the topliner is the star of a particular film |  Example:
Bette Davis, top-billed or starring in the melodrama Marked Woman (1937),
with lesser billed and lesser-known actor Humphrey Bogart. |
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refers to the head of a company or organization | |
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literally "forceful turn" (French); usually refers to a lead actor's performance that was incredibly skillful, brilliant, notable, masterful, reflecting a very high standard, and perfectly displaying the actor's ability; compare to 'stealing a scene' - the equivalent for a supporting actor role |  Examples:
Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday (1940)
as Hildy Johnson, and Jack Nicholson in One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) as Randle P. McMurphy (pictured). |
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(or truck) |
a smooth shot in which the camera moves alongside ('tracking within') the subject, usually mounted on a dolly, in a side-to-side motion (relative to the scene or the action); also known as following shot; sometimes used interchangeably with dolly shot, pull back (pull-out, push-out, widen-out or push-back) shot, track back (moving away) or track in (or push-in) (moving forward), or zoom shot; see also Steadicam |
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refers to a personal touch or embellishment of an actor, director, writer or producer within a film; aka signature, calling card. | Example: Hitchcock's 'cameos' in all of his films, or Stanley Kubrick's use of the in-joke CRM-114 (in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969), the serial number on one of the pods was "CRM114"; in his A Clockwork Orange (1971), the central character Alex was injected with "serum 114" - CRM=serum; in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), the mortuary was located on Level/Wing C, Room 114) |
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refers to the professional magazines and publications that report the daily or weekly entertainment news of the entertainment industry. |  Examples:
Variety, and
the
Hollywood Reporter
(pictured here), and Boxoffice
Magazine. |
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a short publicity film, preview, or advertisement composed of short excerpts and scenes from a forthcoming film or coming attraction, usually two-three minutes in length; often presented at the showing of another film. Historically, these advertisements were placed at the end of a newsreel or supporting feature and so "trailed" them, hence the name; also commonly known as preview(s); also, another name for the tail - a length of blank leader (strip of film) at the end of a reel; a teaser is basically a very short trailer (of 15-30 seconds in length) that only provides a few hints about the film (a Web address, a few bars of music, a quick sequence of images, specially-shot footage, etc.). |
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(or transitional technique or device) |
one of several ways of moving from one shot or scene to the next, including such transitional effects or shots as a cut, fade, dissolve, and wipe; a transition focus between two scenes means the current scene goes out of focus and the next scene comes into focus |  Example:
in 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968), the bone-cut-to-satellite transition - one of the most famous
match cuts in cinematic history |
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refers to second-run, low-budget films that are deliberately over-the-top, infantile, amateurish, sometimes excessively gory or raunchy which are intended to shock, disgust, and repel mainstream audiences, and appeal to non-traditional audiences. Sometimes described as a sub-category of exploitation and cult films, or called a 'turkey' film. Compare with sexploitation, B-films, and Z-films. |  Examples:
Films distributed and produced by Troma Studios, the splatter films of Herschell
Gordon Lewis, Paul Morrissey's Trash (1970), John Waters' Pink
Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974), William Sach's The
Incredible Melting Man (1977), Meir Zarchi's Day of the Woman
(aka I Spit on Your Grave (1978)). |
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a film made for the purpose of showing scenes from foreign, exotic places | Example: Around the World in 80 Days (1956) |
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a detailed literary summary or presentation of a film's story, with action and characters described in prose form, often used to market and/or sell a film project or script; a completed treatment is a late stage in the development of a screenplay after several story conferences have incorporated changes into the script; contrast to a synopsis (a brief summation of a film); | |
Examples:
from Eyes Wide Shut (1999) (pictured here); some other famous examples
of tracking shots are examples of Steadicam 'tracking', including Danny's
point of view (POV) shots in Stanley Kubrick's 
also
the famous track-back shot from upstairs to the outside of an apartment
in Frenzy (1972) (pictured); the 8 minute shot in Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend (1967) viewing surrealistic and nightmarishly apocalyptic images of the roads littered with traffic jams, car wrecks and accidents, bloody casualties, and burning cars; the opening shot in Boogie Nights (1997) that tracked into the 70s disco; also the 3-minute entrance of Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco into the Copacabana club in Scorsese's 
