Glossary
Comprehensive glossary of filmmaking terms, concepts, and techniques.
Showing 125 terms
1
2180-Degree Rule
A continuity guideline requiring the camera to stay on one side of an imaginary line between two subjects.
1st AC
First assistant camera, the camera department crew member responsible for focus pulling, camera maintenance, lens management, and supervising the 2nd AC.
A
11Above the Line
The section of a film budget covering writer, director, producer, and principal cast fees.
Actor
A person who performs a role in a film by embodying a character through voice, body, and presence.
ADR
Automated Dialogue Replacement: re-recording dialogue in a studio in sync with picture after production.
Antagonist
The character or force that directly opposes the protagonist's goal, generating the story's central conflict.
Anti-Climax
A narrative moment that deflates built-up dramatic expectation by resolving conflict in a trivial way.
Apple Box
A standardized wooden box used on set to adjust height, support equipment, or serve as an impromptu seat.
Aspect Ratio
The proportional relationship between a film frame's width and height, expressed as width-to-height.
Assembly
The first stage of editing in which all usable footage is cut together in script order without refinement.
Audio
The sound component of a film, encompassing dialogue, music, sound effects, and ambient atmosphere.
Audio Bridge
A sound element that carries across a picture cut, connecting two scenes through continuous audio.
Auteur
A filmmaker, typically a director, whose personal vision and style so dominate their work that they are considered its primary creative author.
B
3Below the Line
The operational production costs in a film budget: crew, equipment, locations, sets, and post-production, managed by the line producer.
Blocking a Shot
The process of planning and rehearsing the precise movements of actors and camera within a scene before filming.
Body Double
A performer who substitutes for a principal actor in shots where the actor's face is not visible or their presence is impractical.
C
14Coverage
The full range of camera angles and shot sizes captured for a scene, giving the editor options.
Cut
The instantaneous transition between two shots in editing, and the act of assembling a film from those transitions.
Catharsis
The emotional purging or release an audience experiences through witnessing a story's dramatic events.
Chain of Title
The documented legal history of a film's ownership rights from original creator to current rights holder.
Character
A fictional person whose actions, decisions, and desires drive the story of a film.
Character Study
A narrative focused on the psychological interior of a character rather than external plot mechanics.
Clapperboard
The hinged board filmed at each take's start to identify the shot and sync audio.
Close-Up
A shot framed tightly on a subject's face or specific object, filling most of the frame.
Coming-of-Age Film
A film centered on a young protagonist's growth from childhood or adolescence into adulthood.
Concert Film
A film documenting a live musical performance, typically combining multi-camera concert footage with backstage material or interviews.
Continuity
The maintenance of consistent spatial, temporal, and physical details across shots in a scene.
Cross-Cutting
An editing technique that alternates between two or more simultaneous lines of action in different locations.
Crossing
A verbal warning called out on a film set when a crew member is about to walk in front of a camera that may be rolling or about to roll.
Cutaway Shot
A shot that departs from the main scene to show something outside its geography, providing context or bridging edits.
D
11Director's Cut
The version of a film edited according to the director's creative vision, following the editor's assembly.
Dailies
The unedited footage from each day of production, reviewed by the director and key crew to assess quality before the next shoot day.
Deep Focus
An optical and aesthetic approach in which a large depth of field keeps foreground, midground, and background simultaneously sharp.
Deep Focus Shot
A shot in which subjects at very different distances from the camera are all rendered in sharp focus simultaneously.
Denouement
The narrative resolution following the climax, in which consequences are settled and a new equilibrium is established.
Dialogue
The spoken words exchanged between characters in a film, written by the screenwriter and performed by actors.
Director
The creative authority responsible for translating a screenplay into a finished film.
Dissolve
A transition where one shot fades out while the next simultaneously fades in, briefly overlapping both images.
Double Exposure
A technique combining two images on a single frame, either in-camera or in post-production, to create layered or superimposed visuals.
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
4Epilogue
A closing scene after the main story ends, showing what happened to the characters later.
Establishing Shot
A wide shot at the start of a scene that orients the audience to a new location.
Extreme Close-Up
A shot framed on a single feature or small detail, isolating it entirely from its surrounding context.
Eyeline Match
A continuity editing convention in which a cut from a character looking off-screen leads to what that character sees.
F
13Fade
A gradual transition between an image and a solid colour, most commonly black, used to open or close a scene.
Fast-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 Theory
The academic and critical study of how cinema produces meaning, affects audiences, and relates to culture.
Flash-Forward
A scene that interrupts the present narrative to show events occurring later in the story's timeline.
Flashback
A scene that interrupts the present narrative to show events from an earlier time.
Focus Puller
The first assistant camera responsible for maintaining sharp focus on subjects throughout every take.
Foley Artist
A sound professional who performs and records custom sound effects in sync with picture.
Footage
The complete body of recorded video or film material captured during production for editing.
Foreshadowing
A narrative technique that plants hints early in a story that anticipate later events.
Fourth Wall
The invisible boundary between the fictional world and the audience that characters normally do not acknowledge.
Frame
A single complete image in a sequence of images that creates the illusion of motion when played back.
Frame Rate
The number of individual frames captured or displayed per second, determining motion smoothness and aesthetic quality.
H
2Hays Code
The self-regulatory censorship code governing Hollywood content from 1934 to 1968, prohibiting explicit sexuality and moral ambiguity.
Hitting a Mark
The actor's discipline of arriving at a precise floor position so camera, focus, and lighting remain correct.
L
6L-Cut
A split edit where the outgoing audio continues after the video cuts to the next scene.
Lap Dissolve
A dissolve of extended duration where two images overlap long enough to create a sustained superimposition.
Local 600
The International Cinematographers Guild, IATSE Local 600, representing camera department crew on US productions.
Long Shot
A shot that frames a subject's full body within their surrounding environment.
Looping
The process of re-recording dialogue in post-production in sync with the picture; an older term for ADR.
Low Angle Shot
A shot where the camera is positioned below the subject's eye line and tilted upward.
M
8MacGuffin
An object, goal, or piece of information that motivates the plot but whose specific nature is unimportant to the story's meaning.
Master Shot
A wide single take that covers the full geography and action of a scene from start to finish.
Match Cut
An edit that joins two shots by matching a visual element, shape, movement, or action across the cut.
Medium Shot
A shot framed from roughly the waist up, balancing the subject with their immediate environment.
Metaphor
A figure of speech or visual device that describes one thing in terms of another to illuminate a deeper meaning.
Mixing
The final stage of audio post-production where all sound elements are balanced and positioned into the finished soundtrack.
Montage
A sequence of short shots edited together to condense time, convey information, or create emotional effect through juxtaposition.
Mumblecore
A low-budget American indie film movement of the 2000s using improvised dialogue and non-professional actors.
N
5Naturalism
A filmmaking approach that represents the world as it objectively appears, avoiding stylisation and artifice.
Neo-Realism
An Italian film movement of the 1940s using real locations, non-professional actors, and working-class stories.
New Hollywood
The American film movement of the late 1960s and 1970s in which young directors gained creative control from studios.
New Wave
The French film movement of the late 1950s and 1960s that rejected studio convention for personal, low-budget, location-shot cinema.
Non-Diegetic Sound
Sound heard only by the audience, not by characters, with no source within the story world.
O
2Omniscient Point of View
A narrative perspective where the camera and audience access information beyond any single character's knowledge.
Over-the-Shoulder Shot
A shot framed from behind one character's shoulder, looking toward the character they address.
P
7P.O.V. Shot
A shot that represents what a specific character sees, placing the camera at their eyeline in the direction of their gaze.
Postmodern
A sensibility in film marked by self-reflexivity, irony, pastiche, and scepticism toward stable meaning.
Pre-Code
The period of Hollywood filmmaking from 1930 to 1934 before strict enforcement of the Production Code, when films were frank about sexuality, crime, and moral ambiguity.
Pre-Production
The planning and preparation phase of filmmaking that occurs after greenlight and before principal photography begins.
Pre-Screening
A screening of a film held before its public release for critics, industry professionals, test audiences, or awards voters.
Principal Photography
The main shooting phase when the primary cast and crew capture the footage that forms the finished film.
Protagonist
The central character whose goal drives the story forward and with whom the audience most closely aligns.
R
4Rack Focus
A deliberate shift of focus from one subject to another within a single shot, drawing the viewer's attention from one plane of depth to another.
Racking Focus
A technique that shifts the focus point from one subject to another during a single unbroken shot.
Reaction Shot
A shot that shows a character's emotional response to an event, action, or piece of dialogue.
Rough Cut
The first shaped edit of a film, following the assembly, in which scenes are trimmed and paced but not yet finalised.
S
18Scene
A dramatic unit set in one location and continuous in time, assembled from multiple shots.
Score
Original music composed specifically for a film, forming the non-diegetic musical layer of the soundtrack.
Screenlife
A filmmaking format where the entire narrative plays out through a computer, phone, or tablet screen interface.
Screenplay
The formatted written blueprint of a film containing scene headings, action, dialogue, and transitions.
Second Unit Photography
A supplementary crew that shoots footage independently of the main unit, covering action, scenics, and inserts.
Sequence
A series of scenes linked by a common narrative thread, forming a distinct dramatic unit.
Shot
A continuous camera recording from the moment the camera starts to when it stops.
Shot List
A pre-production document listing every planned shot for a scene or shooting day, with shot size, angle, and movement.
Slate
The identifying board held in front of the camera at the start of each take, recording scene, shot, and take information.
Sound
All audio elements in a film, including dialogue, music, effects, and ambience, forming the complete audio track.
Static Shot
A shot in which the camera remains completely still, with no pan, tilt, zoom, or physical movement.
Storyboard
A sequence of illustrated panels that visually plan a film's shots before production begins, showing framing, composition, and camera movement.
Subjective Cinema
A filmmaking approach that presents events through a character's internal perception rather than an objective external viewpoint.
Subplot
A secondary narrative thread running alongside the main plot with its own arc, complicating the protagonist's journey.
Subtext
The unspoken meaning beneath dialogue and action, communicated through behaviour, silence, and context.
Superimposition
The optical or digital combination of two images so both are simultaneously visible, one layered over the other.
Swish Pan
An extremely rapid horizontal camera rotation that creates a blurred smear, used as a transition or punctuation.
Symbolism
The use of objects, images, colors, or events to represent ideas beyond their literal presence in the story.
T
6Tail Slate
A clapperboard slated at the end of a take, held upside down to signal the sync mark is at the tail.
Take
A single recorded attempt at filming a shot, from the camera rolling to the director calling cut.
Three Shot
A shot framing three subjects within the same frame, establishing their spatial relationships simultaneously.
Time Lapse
A technique capturing frames at low intervals over a long period, compressing slow processes into fast playback.
Treatment
A prose document outlining a film's story, characters, and structure before the full screenplay is written.
Two Shot
A shot framing two subjects within the same frame at roughly equal prominence.
U
3Undercranking
Running the camera below the playback frame rate to produce accelerated motion on screen.
Union
A labour organisation representing film industry workers that negotiates collective agreements covering wages, conditions, and rights.
Unreliable Narrator
A narrator whose account of events is compromised by bias, deception, ignorance, or psychological instability.
W
2Whip Pan
An extremely rapid horizontal camera rotation creating a blurred smear across the frame.
Wipe
A transition in which a visible boundary line sweeps across the frame, replacing the outgoing image with the incoming one.