Directed Study - Glossary

 Glossary:


Camerawork Key Words:

Shots

• Establishing Shot - The first shot of a new scene - used to show the audience where the action is taking place.
• Master Shot - A film recording of an entire dramatized scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view. 
• Close-up - A certain feature or part of the subject takes up the whole frame.
• Mid-shot - Shows some part of the subject in more detail while still giving an impression of the whole subject.
• Long Shot -  typically shows the entire subject - and helps place the subject in relation to it's surroundings.
• Wide Shot - The subject takes up the full frame, or at least as much as comfortably possible. 
• Two-shot - A shot of two people - normally framed like a Mid-shot.
• Aerial Shot - A birds eye view.
• Point Of View Shot - Shows a view of someone's perspective.
• Over The Shoulder Shot - Looking from behind a person (over their shoulder) at the subject.

Angle

• High Angle - When the camera looks down on the subject from a high angle - above.
• Low Angle - When the camera looks up at an object from a lower angle than itself.
• Canted Angle - In which the camera angle is deliberately tilted for effect.

Movement

• Pan -  the sweeping movement of a camera across a scene.
• Tilt - Where the camera is tilted - while moving
• Track - When the camera is parallel to the action - it is moving alongside the action.
• Dolly - Where the camera is shot on a cart that moves with tracks - this is called the dolly.
• Crane - Where the camera is filming from a crane or jib.
• Steadicam - A camera stabilizer mount.
• Hand-held - Where the camera is filmed with someone holding it.
• Zoom - Increase rapidly the magnification of the image of a distant object by means of a zoom lens - To zoom in on something.
• Reverse Zoom - Decrease rapidly the magnification of the image of a distant object by means of a zoom lens - To zoom out of something.

Composition

• Framing - using natural surroundings to add more meaning to your subject. 
• Rule of Thirds - means that the frame can be divided into three horizontal sections and three vertical sections and therefore, where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect makes an ideal location for the more important parts of the film.
• Depth of Field - means the sharp area surrounding the point of focus.
• Deep Focus - means having everything in the shot in focus at the same time.
• Shallow Focus - means that only one part of the shot is in focus at the same time.
• Focus Pull - is where you change focus during a shot - Usually this means adjusting the focus from one subject to another. 

Editing Key Words

General Terms

• Continuity Editing - Where shots are edited so that the whole thing flows and has consistency.
• Montage Editing - The complete opposite of Continuity Editing.
• Long Take - an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace
• Short Take - A shot in the film that is substantially shorter than the rest - or the opposite of a Long Take.
• Slow Motion - In which the subjects in the shot are slowed down for dramatic effect.
• Ellipsis - deliberately omitting intervals or sections of the narrative story or action - e.g 'Seven Years Later...'
• Expansion of Time - making the duration of the video sequence longer than real-time - E.g sports slow motion replay.
• Post-Production Visual Effects - Visual effects that are added in after the filming is done.
• Cutting
• Shot/Reverse Shot - where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character.
• Eyeline Match - What the character on-screen is seeing.
• Graphic Match - is a cut in film editing between either two different objects, two different spaces, or two different compositions in which objects in the two shots graphically match.
• Action Match - cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first shot's action. A common example is a man walking up to a door and reaching for the knob.
• Jump Cut -  an abrupt transition from one scene to another.
• Crosscutting - alternate (one sequence) with another.
• Parallel Editing -  is the technique of alternating two or more scenes that often happen simultaneously but in different locations - also called crosscutting.
• Cutaway -  the interruption of a continuously filmed action by inserting a view of something else.
• Insert (Cut in) -  A cut-in shot is a close-up shot of something visible in the main scene. A cutaway shot is a shot AWAY from the main scene.

Transitions

• Cut - in which scenes or shots are combined.
• Cross-Dissolve - a dissolve is a gradual transition from one image to another. 
• Fade In - when a picture gradually appears on screen form nothing.
• Fade Out - when a picture gradually turns back to nothing.
• Wipe - A wipe is a type of film transition where one shot replaces another by travelling from one side of the frame to another or with a special shape.
• Superimposition - Two distinct images appearing simultaneously with one on top of  the other.

Sound Key Words

• Diegetic - Sounds and music made within the story itself that the characters can hear.
• Non-Diegetic Sound - Sounds and music that the characters don't hear - e.g Mission Impossible's theme.
• Sound Mixing - taking all sounds e.g sound effects, music etc and putting them all together.
• Synchronous/Asynchronous Sound - Synchronous sounds are those sounds which are synchronized or matched with what is viewed - Asynchronous sound effects are not matched with a visible source of the sound on screen.
• Sound Effects - a sound other than speech or music made artificially.
• Sound Motif - a detail repeated for larger symbolic meaning 
• Sound Bridge - stresses the connection between scenes since their mood (suggested by the music) is still the same.
• Dialogue - The character's lines and speech.
• Voiceover - Someone voicing over a scene - e.g the narrator
• Mode of Address/Direct Address -  defined as the ways in which relations between addresser and addressee are constructed in a text. A direct address is the name of the person (normally) who is being directly spoken to. It is always a proper noun.
• Sound Perspective -  A sound's position in space as perceived by the viewer given by volume, timbre, and pitch.
• Soundtrack: score - original music written specifically to accompany a film.
• Incidental Music - music used in a film or play as a background to create or enhance a particular atmosphere.
• Themes and Stings - give a particular theme or setting to (a leisure venue, event, etc.). A sting is a short musical phrase, primarily used in broadcasting and films as a form of punctuation.
• Ambient Sound -  background sounds which are present in a scene or location - e.g rain.