Glossary
Comprehensive glossary of filmmaking terms, concepts, and techniques.
Showing 118 terms
A
9Actor
A person who performs a role in a film, embodying a character through voice, body, and presence.
Aerial Shot
A shot captured from an airborne platform -- drone, helicopter, or aircraft -- above the ground.
Anime
Japanese animated film and television, characterised by distinctive visual styles and spanning a vast range of genres and subject matter.
Antagonist
The character or force that directly opposes the protagonist's goal, generating the story's central conflict.
Anti-Hero
A central character who lacks conventional heroic virtues but holds the audience's identification and sympathy.
Arc Shot
A shot in which the camera moves in a curved path around a stationary or moving subject.
Art Director
The production designer's technical deputy, responsible for managing set construction, drawings, and art department operations.
Aspect Ratio
The proportional relationship between a film frame's width and height, expressed as width-to-height (e.g. 16:9, 2.39:1).
Auteur
A filmmaker, typically a director, whose personal vision and style so dominate their work that they are considered its primary creative author.
B
7Best Boy
The first assistant to the gaffer or key grip, responsible for crew, equipment, and department logistics.
Billing
The contractual placement and prominence of a performer's or filmmaker's name in a film's credits and marketing materials.
Biopic
A biographical film that dramatises the life of a real person, typically a public figure, historical figure, or celebrity.
Blacklisting
The practice of excluding individuals from employment in the film industry, historically applied to those suspected of Communist sympathies during the 1950s Red Scare.
Blockbuster
A high-budget film with mass-market appeal designed to generate very large box office returns, often as part of a franchise.
Bollywood
The Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, India — the world's most prolific film industry by volume of productions and tickets sold.
Boom Shot
A shot in which the camera moves vertically -- rising or descending -- on a crane or jib arm.
C
14Cash Cow
A film franchise or property that reliably generates large profits with relatively low risk, sustaining a studio's broader slate.
Catharsis
The emotional purging or release that an audience experiences through witnessing a story's dramatic events.
Character
A fictional person whose actions, decisions, and desires drive the story of a film.
Cinerama
A widescreen format developed in the early 1950s that used three synchronised cameras and three projectors to fill a deeply curved screen.
Claymation
A form of stop-motion animation in which characters and objects are modelled from clay or similar malleable materials and animated frame by frame.
Climax
The point of maximum dramatic tension in a story, where the central conflict reaches its decisive confrontation.
Close-Up
A shot framed tightly on a subject's face or a specific object, filling most of the frame.
Coda
A brief closing passage that follows the main story's resolution, providing a final emotional or thematic beat.
Coming-of-Age Film
A film that focuses on the emotional and psychological growth of a young protagonist transitioning from childhood or adolescence to adulthood.
Composition
The deliberate arrangement of visual elements within a film frame to guide attention, convey meaning, and create aesthetic impact.
Concert Film
A film that documents a live musical performance, typically combining multi-camera concert footage with backstage material, interviews, or narrative context.
Crane Shot
A shot captured by a camera mounted on a crane arm, enabling smooth vertical and horizontal movement.
Credits
The on-screen acknowledgment of everyone who contributed to making a film, displayed at the opening or close.
Crew
The collective technical and logistical workforce that builds and operates a film production.
D
10Dailies
The unedited footage from each day's shoot, reviewed by the director and key crew to assess the previous day's work.
Deep Focus
A cinematographic technique in which all planes of the image — near, mid, and far — are in sharp focus simultaneously.
Denouement
The narrative resolution following the climax, in which consequences are settled and a new equilibrium is established.
Diffusion
Material or technique that scatters a light source, increasing its effective size and softening its shadows.
Directing the Eye
The visual techniques a filmmaker uses to control where the audience looks within the frame at any given moment.
Director's Cut
The version of a film edited according to the director's creative vision, following the editor's rough cut.
Dogme 95
A 1995 Danish filmmaking manifesto demanding stripped-down production: handheld cameras, natural light, location sound, and no genre conventions.
Dolly Shot
A tracking shot achieved by moving the camera on a wheeled dolly along laid track.
Dutch Angle
A shot where the camera is tilted on its roll axis, creating a diagonal horizon and sense of unease.
Dynamic Frame
A frame whose composition changes within a single continuous shot through camera movement, subject movement, or both.
E
3Executive Producer
A senior production credit given to a person who provides financing, oversees business affairs, or holds significant creative and strategic authority over a film.
Expressionism
A visual style that distorts reality through exaggerated design, lighting, and camera angles to externalise psychological or emotional states.
Extras
Non-speaking background performers who populate a film's environment to create a sense of a lived-in world.
F
11Fast-Cutting
An editing style in which shots are very short in duration, creating rapid visual rhythm and a sense of energy or urgency.
Film Grain
The visible texture in photochemical film images caused by silver halide crystals in the emulsion.
Film Noir
A style of crime and thriller cinema characterised by chiaroscuro lighting, moral ambiguity, femme fatales, and cynical worldviews.
Film Theory
The academic and critical study of how cinema works — how it produces meaning, affects audiences, and relates to broader culture.
Fish-Eye Lens
An extreme wide angle lens with a very short focal length that produces strong barrel distortion and a curved, spherical field of view.
Flash-Forward
A scene or sequence that interrupts the present narrative to show events that occur later in the story's timeline.
Flashback
A scene or sequence that interrupts the present narrative to dramatise events from the past.
Focus Puller
The first assistant camera operator responsible for maintaining precise focus on the subject throughout every shot, operating the focus ring of the lens during filming.
Foley Artist
A sound professional who creates and records custom sound effects in sync with the picture during post-production.
Footage
The complete body of recorded video or film material captured during production, available for editing.
Foreground
The area of the frame closest to the camera, in front of the main subject, used to create depth, frame the scene, or add visual context.
G
3General Release
A wide simultaneous release of a film across thousands of cinemas, designed to maximise opening weekend audience and box office revenue.
Greenlight
The formal approval decision by a studio or financier that commits funding and authorises a film to proceed to production.
Grip
A crew member responsible for camera support equipment, rigging, and light-control tools on set.
L
4Leitmotif
A recurring musical theme or narrative element persistently associated with a specific character, idea, or relationship.
Limited Release
A distribution strategy that opens a film on a small number of screens, building word of mouth and awards attention before expanding to wider release.
Location
Any real-world place outside a studio used as a filming environment for a production.
Low Angle Shot
A shot where the camera looks up at the subject from below, making them appear larger, dominant, or threatening.
M
4Mise-en-Scène
Everything visible within a film frame — actors, sets, lighting, costume, and camera position — as a unified expressive whole.
Mixing
The final stage of audio post-production in which all sound elements are balanced and positioned to create the finished soundtrack.
Mockumentary
A fiction film or series shot in documentary style to satirise its subject or the documentary form itself.
Montage
A sequence of short shots edited together to condense time, convey information, or create an emotional effect through juxtaposition.
N
2Nickelodeon
An early form of cinema venue in the United States, common between 1905 and 1915, where short films were shown for a five-cent admission fee.
Non-Diegetic Sound
Sound that exists outside the story world and is audible only to the audience, not to the characters on screen.
P
5PA (Production Assistant)
An entry-level production crew member who supports department operations and logistics across all areas of a film set.
Pre-Code
The period of Hollywood filmmaking from 1930 to 1934 before strict enforcement of the Production Code, when films were notably frank about sexuality, crime, and moral ambiguity.
Pre-Screening
A screening of a film held before its public release for specific audiences including critics, industry professionals, or test audiences.
Production Design
The visual world of a film — sets, locations, props, and environments — conceived and overseen by the production designer.
Protagonist
The central character whose goal drives the story forward and with whom the audience most closely aligns.
R
4Rear Screen Projection
A practical in-camera compositing technique where pre-filmed background footage is projected onto a translucent screen behind live actors.
Rembrandt Lighting
A portrait lighting pattern producing a small triangle of light on the shadow side of the face beneath the eye.
Revival House
A cinema that specialises in screening older films, repertory programmes, and classic titles rather than current first-run releases.
Roadshow
A prestigious exhibition strategy in which a major film is shown in select venues at premium prices, with reserved seating and an intermission, before general release.
S
16Satire
A mode of storytelling that uses irony, exaggeration, and ridicule to expose and criticise human folly, vice, or social and political institutions.
Screenlife
A filmmaking format in which the entire narrative is depicted through the screen of a computer, phone, or other digital device.
Screenplay
The written blueprint of a film, containing scene descriptions, dialogue, and action in standard format.
Sequence
A series of scenes linked by a common narrative thread, forming a distinct dramatic unit.
Setting
The time and place in which a film's story takes place, shaping character, tone, and visual world.
Shot List
A pre-production document listing every planned shot for a scene or shooting day, with shot size, angle, and movement.
Shutter Speed
The duration of time the camera's shutter stays open for each frame, controlling exposure and motion blur.
Slow Motion
A visual effect produced by capturing footage at a higher frame rate than playback, stretching action across more screen time.
Soundstage
A large, acoustically treated studio building designed for filming, providing a controlled environment for set construction and shooting.
Spaghetti Western
A cycle of Italian-produced western films made in the 1960s and 1970s, often shot in Spain, characterised by stylised violence and Ennio Morricone's distinctive scores.
Spec Script
A screenplay written on speculation, without a commission or guaranteed payment, to demonstrate a writer's ability.
Static Shot
A shot in which the camera remains completely still, with no pan, tilt, zoom, or physical movement.
Subjective Cinema
A filmmaking approach that restricts the camera and narrative to a single character's perspective, perception, and inner experience.
Subplot
A secondary narrative thread that runs alongside the main plot, adding depth and complicating the protagonist's journey.
Symbolism
The use of objects, images, colours, or events to represent ideas or meanings beyond their literal presence in the story.
Symmetry
A compositional approach in which visual elements are arranged in balanced mirror-image correspondence around a central axis.
T
11T-Stop
A calibrated measurement of a lens's actual light transmission, accounting for internal glass losses, used in cinema to ensure accurate exposure matching across different lenses.
Technicolor
A proprietary colour film process used in Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1950s, renowned for its rich, saturated colour reproduction.
Theme
The central idea or argument that a story explores and embodies through its characters, events, and resolution.
Three Shot
A shot framing three subjects within the same frame, establishing their spatial relationships simultaneously.
Tilt
A controlled vertical rotation of the camera on its horizontal axis, used to follow vertical movement or reveal height.
Tilt Shot
A shot in which the camera rotates on its horizontal axis, moving the lens angle up or down.
Time Lapse
A filmmaking technique that captures frames at a very low rate over a long period, accelerating slow real-world processes in playback.
Tracking Shot
A shot in which the camera moves horizontally to follow a subject as they move through space.
Treatment
A prose document that outlines a screenplay's story, characters, and structure before the script is written.
Turnaround
The process by which a studio releases the rights to a project it has developed but chosen not to produce, allowing the project to be set up elsewhere.
Two Shot
A shot framing two subjects within the same frame at roughly equal prominence.
V
2Video Village
The area on a film set where monitors display the camera feed, allowing the director, producer, script supervisor, and other key personnel to watch the performance without standing at the camera.
Visual Effects
Post-production techniques used to create or alter imagery that cannot be practically captured on set during principal photography.
W
4Wardrobe
The costume department responsible for designing, sourcing, and maintaining all clothing and accessories worn on screen.
Western Dolly
A large, heavy-duty camera dolly used in film production, capable of carrying significant weight and supporting a camera crane or jib arm in addition to the camera and operators.
What's Your 20?
Radio shorthand used on film sets to ask a crew member's current location, derived from the police and CB radio ten-code '10-20' meaning 'location'.
Wipe
A transition in which a visible boundary line sweeps across the frame, replacing the outgoing image with the incoming one.
Z
2Z-Movie
An extremely low-budget film that falls below even the modest production standards of the B-movie, often characterised by poor technical quality and minimal professional competence.
Zoptic Special Effects
A camera and lens system developed by Zoran Perisic that creates the illusion of flying or floating by combining a zoom lens with a motorised dolly moving in the opposite direction.