Film study - quiz #6

Homage

A direct or indirect reference within a movie to another movie, filmmaker, or cinematic style. A respectful and affectionate tribute.

Symbols

A figurative device in which an object, event, or cinematic technique has significant e beyond its literal meaning. Symbolism is always determined by the dramatic context.

Faithful adaption

A film based on literary original that captures the essence of the original, often by using cinematic equivalents for specific literary techniques.

Women's pictures

A film genre that focuses on the problems of women, such as career versus family conflicts. Often, such films feature a popular female star as protagonist.

Zoom lenses

A lens of variable focus length that permits the cinematographer to change for, wide-angle to telephoto shots (and vice versa) in one continuous movement, often plunging the viewer in of out of a scene rapidly.

Telephoto

A lens that acts as a telescope, magnifying the size of objects at a great distance. A side effect is its tendency to flatten perspective.

Wide-angle lens or short lens

A lens that permits the camera to photograph a wider area than a normal lens. A side effect is its tendency to exaggerate perspective. Also used for deep-focus photography.

Loose Adaptation

A movie based in another medium in which only a superficial resemblance exists between the two versions.

Literal adaptation

A movie based on a stage play, in which the dialogue and actions are preserved more or less intact.

Voice-over

A non-synchronous spoken commentary in a movie, often used to convey a character's thoughts or memories.

Extreme long shot

A panoramic view of an exterior location, photographed from a great distance, often as far as a quarter mile away.

Genre

A recognizable type of movie.

Allusions

A reference to an event, or work of art, usually well known

Lengthy takes

A shot of lengthy duration

Long shot

A shot that includes an area within the image that roughly corresponds to the audience's view of the area within the proscenium arch in the live theater.

Multiple exposures

A special effect that permits the superimposition if many images simultaneously.

Formalistic

A style of filmmaking in which aesthetic forms take precedence over the subject matter as content.

Realistic

A style of filmmaking that attempts to duplicate the look of objective reality as it's commonly perceived, with emphasis on authentic locations and details, long shots, lengthy takes, and a minimum of distorting techniques.

Allegory

A symbolic technique in which stylized characters and situations represent obvious ideas, such as justice, death, religion, society etc.

Scripts

A written description of a movie's dialogue and action, which occasionally includes camera directions.

Omniscient point of view

An all-knowing narrator who provides the spectator with all the necessary information.

Flashbacks

An editing technique that suggests the interruption of the present by a shot or series of shots representing the past.

Convention

An implied agreement between the viewer and artist to accept certain artificialities as real in a work of art.

Metaphors

An implied comparison between two otherwise unlike elements, meaningful in a figurative rather than literal sense.

Archetypal

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.

First-person

Any shot that is taken from the vantage point of a character in the film, showing what the character sees.

Motifs

Any unobtrusive technique, object, or thematic idea that's systematically repeated throughout a film.

Property

Anything with a profit-making potential in movies, though generally used to deceive a story of some kind: a screenplay, novel, short story etc.

Fast film stocks

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.

Rites of passages

Narratives that focus on key phrases of a person's life, when an individual passes from one stage of development to another, such as adolescence to adulthood, innocence to experience, middle age to old age etc.

Synchronization

The agreement it correspondence between image and sound, which are recorded simultaneously or seen so in the finished print. Synchronous sounds appear to derive from an obvious source in the visuals.

Mise en scene

The arrangement of visual weights and movements with a given space.

Frames

The diving line between the edges of the screen image and the enclosing darkness of the theater. Can also refer to photographs from the filmstrip.

Dissolve or multiple exposure

The slow fading out of one shot and the gradual fading in of its successor, with a superimposition of images, usually at the midpoint.

Shots

Those images that are recorded continuously from the time the cameras starts to the time it stops, that is, an unedited strip of film.