CI 101 Vocab - Midterm 1
Eyeline Match
a continuity-editing trope that shows the audience what a character is looking at; the eyeline of a character in one shot matches what he or she sees in the next shot
Shots
a continuously exposed, unedited piece of film of any length - the basic signifying unit of film structure; the average shot length (ASL) and the number of shots vary with every film
Stock Footage
a film borrowed from a collection or a library that consists of standard, often-used shots, such as of World War II combat or street crowds in New York City
Continuity Script
a film or media script giving the complete action in detail, scene by scene, in the order in which it is to appear on-screen
Two-Reeler
a film running about thirty minutes; the standard length of silent comedies
Narrative Film
a film whose structure follows a story line of some sort; the mainstream of film history from the medium's birth through the present has been narrative
Time-Lapse Photography
a kind of extreme fast-motion shooting that compresses real time by photographing a subject at a rate of, for example, one frame every thirty seconds; used primarily as a scientific tool to photograph natural phenomena that occur too slowly for normal observation. The opposite would be to rapidly expose film to capture movement that occurs too quickly to be seen by the naked eye, a kind of extreme slow-motion shooting
Anamorphic Lens
a lens that squeezes a wide image to fit the dimensions of a standard 35mm film frame. In projection, an __________ ____ reverses the process and redistributes the wide image on the screen
Typage
a method of casting actors used by Eisenstein; instead of professionals with individual characteristics, Eisenstein sought "types" and representatives characters
Surrealism
a movement in painting, film, and literature that aims to depict the workings of the subconscious by combining incongruous imagery or presenting a situation in dreamlike, irrational terms. More generally, __________ may suggest any fantastic style of representation
Films d'Art
a movement that began around 1908 in French cinema that attempted to produce exact records of stage productions (minus, of course, the sound); it featured renowned dramatic personalities, such as Sarah Bernhardt
Parallel Action
a narrative strategy that crosscuts between two or more separate actions to create the illusion that they are occurring simultaneously
Swish Pans
a pan that moves from one scene to another so quickly that the intervening content is blurred
Scenario
a part or the whole of a screenplay
Neorealism
a post-World War II movement in filmmaking associated primarily with the films of Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, and Vittorio De Sica in Italy and characterized by leftest political sympathies, location shooting, and the use of nonprofessional actors
Accelerated Montage
a sequence made up of shots of increasingly shorter lengths that creates a psychological atmosphere of excitement and tension
Latham Loop
a set of sprockets that looped the film to keep it from breaking as a result of its own inertia in early projection systems
Medium Shot
a shot distanced midway between a close-up and a full shot (e.g., a human subject from the waist up)
Irises (Iris Shot)
a shot in which a circular, lens-masking device contracts (to isolate) or expands (to reveal) an area of the frame for symbolic or narrative visual effect
Tilting
a shot made by turning the camera up and down so that it rotates on an axis running horizontally through the camera head
Extreme Long Shot
a shot made from a considerable distance, sometimes as far away as a quarter of a mile. It provides a panoramic view of a location without camera movement
Reverse Angle Shot
a shot taken at a 180-degree angle from the preceding shot. In practice, it is rarely used; instead, filmmakers have adopted shot-reverse-shot editing in which the angle separating the two perspectives is usually between 120 and 160 degrees. Two-party dialogue sequences are usually constructed through shot-reverse-shot editing in a manner the French call "champ-contra-champ" ("[visual] field-against-field")
Long Shot
a shot that generally includes the whole figure of its subjects and a good deal of background
Full Shot
a shot that includes the subject's entire body and often a three-fourths view of the set. A type of medium long shot
Expressionism
an artistic (including cinematic) style that seeks to express the artist's or auteur's private vision, emotional state, or subjective responses to objective reality; Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (1920) is an early _____________ film
Formalist
an investment in form above content in any given medium; sometimes used perjoratively in a Marxist context
Contrapuntal
also called asynchronous sound; sound used in counterpoint, or contrast, to the image
Asynchronous
also called contrapuntal sound; sound that does not proceed directly from the film image
Microphotography
also called photomicography; photographing or filming done through a microscope
Medium Long Shot
also called plain américain. a shot distanced between a medium and a long shot, usually showing a subject's entire figure (full shot) or three-fourths of it from the knees up
Tracking Shots
also known as traveling shot; a single continuous shot made on the ground with a moving camera; aerial and crane shots are also continuous
Close-Up
in its precise meaning, a shot of a human subject's face or other object alone; more generally, any close shot
Crosscutting (or Intercutting)
juxtaposing shots from two or more sequences, actions or stories to suggest parallel action as did D.W. Griffith in Intolerance (1916)
Back Lots
large tracts of open land owned by the studios used to simulate various locations
Motivated Point of View
a continuity-editing trope achieved through shot-reverse-shot and the eyeline match; initially associated with the work of G.W. Pabst
Cinématographe
the camera-projector-printer invented by the Lumière brothers in 1895
Fade-out
the opposite of fade-in
Editor
the person who supervises the splicing or cutting together of the shots of a film into their final structure
Kinetophone
Edison's unsynchronized sound-film system; it was never successfully marketed
Phi Phenomenon
First described scientifically by the Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer in 1912, this is the phenomenon that causes us to see the individual blades of a rotating fan as a unitary circular form or the different hues of a spinning color wheel as a homogenous color. Together with persistence of vision, _________________ allows us to see a succession of static images as a single unbroken movement and permits the illusion of continuous motion on which cinematography is based
Schüfftan Process
Invented by the UFA cinematographer Eugen Shüfftan (later Eugene Shuftan), a process-photography technique that combines mirror and model shots to create a composite image; first used on a large scale by Fritz Lang to create the futuristic vistas of Metropolis (1926)
Audion
Lee de Forest's vacuum tube, which first permitted amplification of audio signals for large audiences
Panchromatic Stock
a black-and-white film stock that is sensitive to all the colors of the spectrum (from red to blue), but is less capable of achieving great depth of field than the orthochromatic stock it replaced in 1927. The introduction of widescreen processes in the 1950s greatly enhanced ____________ depth of field
Orthochromatic Stock
a black-and-white film stock that reacts particularly to the blue and green areas of the color spectrum, rather than to the red; widely replaced by panchromatic stock after 1926, but still used today for special applications
Genre
a category used to classify a film (or any other artistic production) in terms of certain general patterns of form and content, such as Western, horror, or gangster film
Naturalism
a concept in literature and film that assumes the lives of the characters that are biologically, sociologically, or psychologically determined
Mattes
a shot that is partially opaque in the frame area so that it can be printed together with another frame, masking unwanted content and allowing for the addition of another scene on a reverse matte; in a traveling _____ shot, the contours of the opaque areas can be varied from frame to frame
Flashback
a shot, scene, or sequence, or sometimes, a major part of a film interested into the narrative present to recapitulate the narrative past
Fade-in
a technique for beginning a scene whereby an image gradually appears on a blackened screen, then finally brightening into full visibility
Subjective Camera
a technique that causes the viewer to observe events in the film from the perspective of a character, either empirically or psychologically
Deep-Focus
a technique that exploits depth of field to render subjects both near and far from the camera lens with equal clarity, and permits the composition of the image in depth. Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is one of the earliest and most famous films to use ____-_____ shots as a basic structural element
Stop-Motion Photography
a technique used for trick photography and special effects in which one frame is exposed at a time so that the subject can be adjusted between frames; reputedly discovered by Georges Méliès.
Widescreen
a term reserved to describe any flat (i.e., nonprocessed) film format with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 (European standard) or 1.85:1 (American standard). Also may refer broadly to any format that yields a screen image wider than the Academy ratio of 1.33:1, whether processed or not. Most widescreen processes are anamorphic, but some employ wide-gauge film (Panavision 70, Todd-AO) or multiple camera processes (Cinerama).
Special Effects
a term that describes a range of synthetic processes used to enhance or manipulate the filmic image. They include optical effects (e.g., front projection, model shots, rear projection, etc.); mechanical or physical effects (e.g., explosions, fires, fog, flying and falling objects or people, etc.); makeup effects (e.g., animatronics, the use of blood bags and prosthetics, etc); and digital effects
Emulsions
a thin, light-sensitive coating of chemicals covering the base of the film stock
"Lap" Dissolve
a transitional or expressive device that superimposes a fade-out over a fade-in, so that one image seems to overlap with another
Slapstick
a type of comedy that relies on acrobatic physical gags and exaggerated pantomime rather than on verbal humor, it was, obviously, the dominant comic form during the silent era
Realism
a type of filmmaking in which fidelity to the nature of the subject itself is more important than the directors attitude toward it. As opposed to Expressionism, there is usually a minimal montage and special effects
Sequence
a unit of film structure made up of one or more scenes or shots that combine to form a larger unit
Scene
a vague term that describes a unit of narration; in film, it may consist of a series of shots or a single sequence that was shot in one location
Tableau
a vivid representation of a group of people, as on a stage or in a painting; it is derived from the French word meaning "table"
Sound Effects
all sounds that are neither dialogue nor music
Animation
all techniques that make inanimate objects move on-screen, such as drawing directly on the film, individually photographic animation cells, and photographing the objects one frame at a time while adjusting their position between frames
Panning Shots
any pivotal movement of the camera around an imaginary vertical axis running through it; the term derives from "panorama"
Screen
as a noun, the specially treated surface on which a film is projected; as a verb, the act of projecting or watching a film
Documentary
coined by John Grierson in the 1920s to describe formally structured nonfiction films, such as those of Robert Flaherty; the term has come to mean any film that is not entirely fictional
Shot-Reverse-Shot
cutting back and forth between eyelines as two characters look offscreen at each other, creating an illusion of spatial contiguity; it would become the most pervasive shot in the classical Hollywood cinema of the 1930s and the 1940s
Continuity Editing
editing shots together imperceptibly so that the action of a sequence appears to be continuous
Kinetoscope
invented before the projector, this was Edison's peep-show device in which short, primitive moving pictures could be seen
Kino-Glaz
literally "cinema-eye" conceived by Dziga Vertov in the 1920s, it is an early cinéma vérité approach to film aesthetics and best typified by his film The Man With A Movie Camera (1929)
Cinéma Vérité
literally, "cinema truth," and the French translation of Dziga Vertov's kino-pravada originally used in postwar France to describe a particular kind of cinema that utilizes lightweight equipment, small crews, and direct interviews; the term is now used more casually to refer to any documentary technique
Mise-en-Scène
literally, "putting in the scene" A term that describes the action, lighting, decor, and other elements within the shot itself, as opposed to the effects created by cutting. Realists generally prefer the process of ___-__-_____ to the more manipulative techniques of montage
Cinematography
motion-picture photography
Cutting
moving from one image or shot to another by editing
Mogul
originally, "powerful conqueror." Today, it refers to the heads of Hollywood studios in their heyday
Intertitles
printed titles that appear within the main body of a film to convey dialogue and other narrative information; ___________ were common in, but not essential to, the silent cinema
Synchronous
sound whose source is made clear by the image track
Film Stock
the basic material of film, made of cellulose triacetate and coated with photographic emulsions
Postsynchronization (or Dubbing)
synchronization of sound and image after the film has been shot - an important step forward in the liberation of the early sound-film camera from its class-paneled booth
Socialist Realism
the aesthetic doctorine promulgated in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and continuing with varying emphases through the 1980s that insisted all art be rendered intelligible to the masses and subserve the purposes of the state. It had little to do with either socialism or realism
Exposure
the amount of light allowed to strike the surface of a film. Film can be underexposed to create dark, murky images or overexposed to create lighter ones
Chiaroscuro
the artistic technique of arranging light and dark elements in pictorial composition
Cinematographer
the director of photography (DP) or lighting camera (British), who is responsible for the camera technique and the lighting of a film in production
Sprocket
the evenly spaced holes on the edge of the film strip that allows the strip to be moved forward mechanically. Also, the wheels that engage these holes in the camera and the projector
Newsreel
the filmed news reports shown along with the main feature in American theaters in the 1930s through the 1950s; later eclipsed by television news
Continuity
the final editing structure of a completed film; also refers to arranging events by editing as if they had occurred continuously when in fact they were shot out of sequence
Rough Cut
the first completed version of a film produced by the editor. General publishing and the finer points of timing and continuity are accomplished later
Nickelodeons
the first permanent movie theaters, converted from storefronts; the term derives from nickel (the price of admission) and odeon (Greek for "theater").
Kinetograph
the first viable motion-picture camera invented in 1889 by W.K.L. Dickson for the Thomas Edison Laboratories
Lens Aperture
the irislike diaphragm at the optical center of the lens, a point midway between the front and rear elements. Varying the diameter of this opening, measured in f-stops, determines the amount of light the lens will transmit to the emulsion surface of the film
Tungsten Incandescent
the main source of "soft" or low-intensity illumination on the movie set. It was the principal source of film lighting during the early sound period, owing to its relative silence. Like household lighting, it is produced within a bulb when a tungsten filament is made incandescent by electric current. In contemporary incandescent film lighting, ordinary glass bulbs have been replaced by quartz halogen globes
Shutter
the mechanism that opens and closes to admit and obstruct light from individual film frame as it is moved into position for exposure int he camera and projection in the projector
Score
the musical sound track for a film. The word is also used as a verb
Persistence of Vision
the physiological foundation of cinema: an image remains on the retina of the eye for a short period of time after it disappears from the actual field of vision. Thus, when a successive image replaces it immediately, as on a moving strip of film, the illusion of continuous motion is produced
Setup
the position of the camera, lights, sound equipment, actors and so on, for any given shot. The number of different setups that a film requires can be an important economic factor
Block Booking
the practice whereby distributors forced exhibitors to rent a production company's films in large groups, or blocks, tied to several desirable titles in advance of production; Initiated by Adolph Zukor in 1916, ____ ________ became fundamental to the studio-system monopoly, but it was ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948 as part of the Paramount decrees. Elements of block booking persist in the practice of blind bidding for films in the preproduction stage, a source of constant complaint among contemporary exhibitors
Frame
the smallest compositional unit of film structure, it is the individual photographic image, both in projection and on the film strip.o The term also designates the boundaries of the image as an anchor for composition
Arc Lighting
the source of high-energy illumination on the movie set and in the projector; the principal source of film lighting during the 1920s and for three-strip Technicolor. It is produced by an electric current that arcs across he gap between two pieces of carbon (the direct-current carbon arc) or, more recently, my a mercury arc between tungsten electrodes sealed in a glass bulb (the alternating-current arc or the Hydrargyum Medium Arc-Length Iodide [HMI] globe).
Broadcast
the transmission of an electromagnetic signal over a widely dispersed area
Synchronization
the use of mechanical or electronic timing devices to keep sound and image in precise relationship to each other
Stereophonic Sound
the use of two or more high-fidelity speakers and sound tracks to approximate the actual dimensionality of hearing with both ears
Depth of Field
the varying range of distances from the camera at which an object remains in sharp focus
