Glossary
Comprehensive glossary of filmmaking terms, concepts, and techniques.
Showing 92 terms
A
10Above the Line
The creative talent costs in a film budget — writer, director, producer, and principal cast — negotiated before production begins.
Actor
A person who performs a role in a film, embodying a character through voice, body, and presence.
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.
Apple Box
A standardised wooden box used on set to adjust actor height, support equipment, or serve as an impromptu seat or platform.
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).
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
2Below the Line
The operational production costs in a film budget — crew, equipment, locations, sets, and post-production — managed by the line producer.
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
11Cast
The collective group of actors performing roles in a film.
Character
A fictional person whose actions, decisions, and desires drive the story of a film.
Clapperboard
The hinged-arm board filmed at the start of each take to identify the shot and provide an audio synchronisation point.
Close-Up
A shot framed tightly on a subject's face or a specific object, filling most of the frame.
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.
Concert Film
A film that documents a live musical performance, typically combining multi-camera concert footage with backstage material, interviews, or narrative context.
Continuity
The maintenance of consistent spatial, temporal, and physical details across all shots within a scene.
Coverage
The full range of shots filmed for a scene from multiple angles and sizes, giving the editor options in post-production.
Cross-Cutting
An editing technique that alternates between two or more simultaneous lines of action in different locations.
Cut
The instantaneous transition between two shots, and the act of editing a film by assembling those transitions.
Cutaway Shot
A shot of something outside the main scene's geography, used to provide context or bridge edits.
D
9Dailies
The unedited footage from each day's shoot, reviewed by the director and key crew to assess the previous day's work.
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 in the screenplay and performed by actors.
Diegetic Sound
Sound that exists within the world of the story and can theoretically be heard by the characters on screen.
Director
The creative authority responsible for translating a screenplay into a finished film.
Director's Cut
The version of a film edited according to the director's creative vision, following the editor's rough cut.
Dissolve
A transition in which one shot fades out while the next shot simultaneously fades in, briefly overlapping both images.
Double Exposure
A technique in which two separate images are recorded on the same film frame or combined digitally, creating a translucent overlay of both images.
E
3Establishing Shot
A wide shot that orients the audience to a new location at the start of a scene.
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
10Fade
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 works — how it produces meaning, affects audiences, and relates to broader culture.
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.
Frame
A single still image in the continuous sequence that makes up a motion picture.
L
4L-Cut
An edit in which the audio from the incoming scene begins before the video cuts to that scene.
Lap Dissolve
A dissolve of longer duration in which two images overlap for an extended period, creating a sustained superimposition.
Local 600
The International Cinematographers Guild, the IATSE local union representing directors of photography, camera operators, focus pullers, and other camera department crew in the United States.
Long Shot
A shot that frames a subject's full body within their surrounding environment.
M
6Master 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.
Montage
A sequence of short shots edited together to condense time, convey information, or create an emotional effect through juxtaposition.
Mumblecore
A low-budget American independent film movement of the 2000s characterised by naturalistic dialogue, non-professional actors, and relationship-focused narratives.
N
2New Wave
The French film movement of the late 1950s and 1960s that rejected conventional filmmaking in favour of personal, experimental, location-shot cinema.
Non-Diegetic Sound
Sound that exists outside the story world and is audible only to the audience, not to the characters on screen.
O
2Omniscient Point of View
A narrative perspective in which the camera and storyteller have access to all characters, locations, and information beyond what any single character knows.
Over-the-Shoulder Shot
A shot framed from behind one character's shoulder, looking toward the character they are addressing.
P
5P.O.V. Shot
A shot that represents exactly what a specific character sees, placing the audience in their visual perspective.
Pre-Production
The planning and preparation phase of filmmaking that precedes principal photography.
Pre-Screening
A screening of a film held before its public release for specific audiences including critics, industry professionals, or test audiences.
Principal Photography
The main shooting phase of a film in which 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
3Racking 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
13Scene
A dramatic unit set in one location and continuous in time, assembled from multiple shots.
Score
The original music composed specifically for a film, forming the non-diegetic musical layer of the soundtrack.
Screen Test
A filmed audition in which an actor performs a scene on camera to assess their suitability for a specific role.
Second Unit Photography
A supplementary film 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 uninterrupted sequence of frames captured in a single camera run.
Slate
The identifying board held in front of the camera at the start of each take, recording scene, shot, and take information.
Static Shot
A shot in which the camera remains completely still, with no pan, tilt, zoom, or physical movement.
Storyboard
A sequence of drawings or images that visually plan a film's shots before production begins.
Subplot
A secondary narrative thread that runs alongside the main plot, adding depth and complicating the protagonist's journey.
Subtext
The layer of meaning beneath the explicit surface of dialogue and action, communicated indirectly through what is not said.
Superimposition
The optical or digital combination of two images so that both are simultaneously visible, one placed over the other.
Swish Pan
An extremely rapid horizontal camera rotation that blurs the image completely, used as a transition between shots or scenes.
T
5Tail Slate
A clapperboard slated at the end of a take rather than the beginning, held upside down to signal to the editor that the sync mark occurs at the tail of the shot.
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.
Treatment
A prose document that outlines a screenplay's story, characters, and structure before the script is written.
Two Shot
A shot framing two subjects within the same frame at roughly equal prominence.
U
2Undercranking
Running the camera at a lower frame rate than the playback rate to produce accelerated motion in the final image.
Union
A labour organisation representing film industry workers that negotiates collective agreements covering wages, working conditions, and creative rights.
W
2Whip Pan
An extremely rapid horizontal camera rotation used as a kinetic transition or punctuation within a scene.
Wipe
A transition in which a visible boundary line sweeps across the frame, replacing the outgoing image with the incoming one.