Glossary
Comprehensive glossary of filmmaking terms, concepts, and techniques.
Showing 23 terms
A
2Audio
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.
C
2Coda
A brief closing passage that follows the main story's resolution, providing a final emotional or thematic beat.
Concert Film
A film that documents a live musical performance, typically combining multi-camera concert footage with backstage material, interviews, or narrative context.
M
4Match Cut
An edit that joins two shots by matching a visual element, shape, movement, or action across the cut.
Mise-en-Scène
Everything visible within a film frame — actors, sets, lighting, costume, and camera position — as a unified expressive whole.
Montage
A sequence of short shots edited together to condense time, convey information, or create an emotional effect through juxtaposition.
Motif
A recurring element — image, sound, object, or idea — that accumulates meaning through repetition across a film.
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.
S
5Score
The original music composed specifically for a film, forming the non-diegetic musical layer of the soundtrack.
Sequence
A series of scenes linked by a common narrative thread, forming a distinct dramatic unit.
Soundtrack
The complete audio track of a film, or the commercial album of music from that film released separately.
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.
Static Shot
A shot in which the camera remains completely still, with no pan, tilt, zoom, or physical movement.