| Film Terminology |
While you don't want to over-do it, it can be helpful for you to be able to use some film terminology in your discussion. Not to mention the fact that many of these terms are used on this website in the discussion of the two films. The list below, adapted from the glossary of the book Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film by Stephen Prince, can give you a basic foundation in terminology you may need to understand this site and to sound knowlegable about film in any papers you may write about it.
Cinematography Terms
Cinematography – light and color design, camera angles and positions
Long shot – shows all of the character and their position in the environment. It stresses environment/setting.
Medium shot – shows the character from a closer position than the long shot, perhaps the midsection up. Can include several people.
Close-up – shows little of the character, usually just their head. It brings the attention to the person over the environment.
Establishing shot – usually a long shot, is used to establish the place where the scene is set.
Low angle shot –A low angle shot places the camera low, looking up at the subject. Can be used, for example, to emphasize a character feeling small or powerless. It can make the subject being filmed seem more imposing.
Medium angle shot - (probably most common) places the camera at eye level.
High angle shot - has the camera placed high looking down on the scene or subject. Can be used to give the audience a bird’s eye view.
Boom/Crane Shot - moving camera shot in which the camera moves up or down through space, able to do so because it is attached to a boom or crane
Subjective shot – a point-of-view shot that shows you what the character is seeing.
Mise-en-scene – all of the elements placed before the camera, including cinematography, lighting, sound, and performance
Hard light – lighting that is focused on what is being filmed and creates high contrast
Soft light – light that is diffused (softened) and creates less contrast
High-key lighting – lots of lighting is used in the scene to lessen contrast
Low-key lighting – only selected areas of a scene are lit, creating contrast between subjects and background
Editing Terms
Cut - a change from one shot to another with no transition (no fade, dissolve, wipe, etc)
Jump cut - a quick cut from one shot to the next with no transition and usually with some portion of the action left out.
Dissolve - the end of one shot fades into the beginning of the next, so that at one time, the second is superimposed upon the first
Wipe - not used very much any more (though George Lucas likes to use them in Star Wars films), but this is a transition from one scene to the next in which you get the effect of an invisible line being dragged across the screen, replacing the shot from the end of the first scene with the shot from the beginning of the next scene.
Fade - a fade from an image to a blank screen, usually black.
Cross-cutting - an editing technique in which the film cuts back and forth between two or more lines of action so that the audience understands that they are happening simultaneously
Montage - a collection of several brief shots edited together
Associational montage - an editing technique that shows two or more images back to back to suggest parallels (ex: Charlie Chaplin shows workers and then sheep in the beginning of the movie Modern Times)
Sound Terms
Ambient sound - background sounds that fit the environment or location, such as birds and rustling leaves in a forest or people talking and dishes clanking in a restaurant