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| The act of telling the story of the film. |
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| Who or what tells the story and delivers narration that conveys the narrative. |
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| A character in the narrative who typically imparts information in the form of voice-over. |
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| When we hear a character's voice over the picture without actually seeing the character speak the words. |
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| First person narrator character interrupts the narrative to deliver narration directly to the audience, thus breaking the "fourth wall" that traditionally separates the viewer from the two-dimensional fiction on-screen. |
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| Voice imposed from outside of the narrative. Standing at a remove from the action to provide information not accessible to a narrator who is also a participant in the story. Like author, this person knows all and can thus provide objective context to any situation. |
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| It knows all and can tell us whatever it wants us to know. Unrestricted access to all aspects of narrative. Can provide any character's experiences and perceptions as well as information that no character knows. |
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| Limits the information it provides the audience to things known only to a single character. Encourages audience to identify with the character's singular perspective on perplexing and frightening events. Invites us in gradual unlocking of the narrative's secrets. |
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| Complex characters, possessing numerous subtle, repressed or even contradictory traits, which can change significantly over the course of the story. More life-like. |
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| Uncomplicated character exhibiting few distinct traits and do not change significantly as the story progresses. |
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| Seemingly unsympathetic protagonists chasing less than noble goals. |
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| Person, people, creature, or force responsible for obstructing our protagonist. |
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| Narrative typically builds toward a peak, a breaking point of sorts, as the conflict intensifies and the goal remains out of reach. The tension provokes and enhances our engagement with the ongoing narrative. |
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| When the protagonists faces this major obstacle. The protagonist must take a great risk, make a significant sacrifice, or overcome a personal flaw. Most impressive event in the movie. |
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| Once goal is gained or lost, falling action in which the narrative wraps up loose ends and moves toward a conclusion. |
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| The elements that make up the diegesis, total world of the story (events, characters, objects, settings, sounds). |
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| The things that we see and hear on the screen that come from outside the world of the story such as score music, title and credits, and voice-over comments from a third-person voice-over narrator. |
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| The amount of time that the implied story takes to occur. |
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| The elapsed time of those events within the story that the film explicitly presents, or elapsed time of plot. |
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| The movie's running time on-screen. |
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| Cuts and other editing devices punctuate the flow of the narrative and graphically indicate that the images occur in human-made time and not seamless real time. |
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| The number of times with which a story element recurs in a plot. |
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| The process by which the look of the settings, props, lighting, and actors is determined. |
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| The organization distribution, balance and general relationship of actors and objects within the space of each shot. |
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| Staging or putting on an action or scene. The overall look and feel of the movie. The sum of everything the audience sees, hears, and experiences while viewing it. |
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| Objects such as paintings, vases, flowers, silver tea sets, guns and fishing rods that help us understand the characters by showing us their preferences in such things. |
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| The color and textures of the interior decoration, furniture, draperies, and curtains. |
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| A windowless, soundproofed, professional shooting environment that is usually several stories high and can cover an acre or more of floor space. |
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| Use of deep gradations and subtle variations of lights and darks within an image. |
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| A small but significant role often played by a famous actor. |
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| The clothing worn by an actor in a movie, sometimes known as a wardrobe. Can contribute to the setting and suggest specific character traits such as social station, self image, state of mind, overall situation and so on. |
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| What we see on the screen. The border between what the film makers wants us to see and everything else. |
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| The movement of the frame around a motion-picture image changing its point of view, results from moving frame. |
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| Little window you look through when taking a picture indicating boundaries of the camera's point of view. |
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| Designed to depict a world where characters move freely within an open recognizable environment. |
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| Designed to imply that other forces (fate, social, educational, economic background, or repressive government) have robbed characters of their ability to move and act freely. |
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| The aspect of composition that takes into account everything that moves on the screen. |
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| The director and team that plans the position and movements of actors and cameras for each scene and rehearsals to familiarize the cast and camera operators with their plan. |
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| The process of capturing moving images on film or a digital storage device. |
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| The number of times a particular shot is taken. |
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| Group concerned with electricity and lighting, chief electrician. |
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| First assistant electrician. |
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| Record medium for the movie that produces images corresponding to the directors vision. They come in various sizes and speeds, video tape and direct-to-digital media. |
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| Wider than 1.33:1, standard ratio until early 1950s. Used strategically to lure people away from Tvs and back to theaters. |
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| Employed extensively during the Hollywood studio era. Used to cast a glamorous light on the studio's most valuable assets during these years- their stars- remains standard by which movies are lit today. |
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| Main and source light, is the primary source of illumination and is therefore customarily set first. Positioned to ones side of the camera, it creates hard shadows. |
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| Positioned at the opposite side of the camera from the key light, adjusts the depth of the shadows created by the brighter key light. Can also come from a reflector. |
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| Balance between key and fill lights |
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| Third source in three-point lighting usually positioned behind and able the subject to create high lights along edges of the subject as a means of separating it from the background and increasing its appearance of three-demensionality. |
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| The amount and quality of human and physical resources devoted to the image. |
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| Also known as variable focal-length lens, permits the cinematographer to shrink or increase the focal length in a continuous motion and thus stimulates the effect of movement of the camera toward or away from the subject. Does not move through space but simply magnifies the image. |
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| The relationship between the frame's two dimensions. The ratio of the width of the image to its height. |
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| Generally contains the full body of one or more characters (almost filling the frame, but with some of the surrounding area above, below, and to the sides of the frame also visible.) |
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| Somewhere between the long-shot and the close-up, usually shows a character from the waist up. Most frequently used type of shot because it replicates our human experience of proximity without intimacy. |
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| The camera pays very close attention to the subject, whether it is an object or a person, but it is most often used in close-up of actors faces. |
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| A powerful variation on the close-up, is produced when the camera records a very small detail of the subject. |
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| A sound proof enclosure somewhat larger than a camera, in which the camera may be mounted to prevent its sounds from reaching the microphone. |
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| A total visual composition that places significant information or subjects on all three planes of the frame and thus creates an illusion of depth. |
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| A convention that can be adapted as needed, it takes the form of a grid pattern that, when superimposed on the image divides it into horizontal thirds representing the foreground, middle ground, and background planes and into vertical thirds that break up those planes into further elements. Assists designer and cinematographer in visualizing the overall potential of the height, width, and depth of any cinematic space. |
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| The size and placement of a particular object or a part of a scene in relation to the rest. A relationship determined by the type of shot used and the position of the camera. |
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| A shot in which the image is magnified by movement of the camera's lens only, without the camera itself moving. This magnification is the essential difference between the zoom in and the dolly in. |
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| Tracking shot or traveling shot, is one taken by camera fixed to a wheeled support, generally known as dolly. Permits noiseless moving shots. |
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| A type of dolly shot that moves smoothly with the action (alongside, above, beneath, behind, or ahead of it) when the camera is mounted on a wheeled vehicle that runs on a set of tracks. |
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| Made from a camera mounted on elevating arm that is, in turn, mounted on a vehicle capable of moving under its own power. |
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| Decelerates action by photographing it at a rate greater than the normal 24 fps (frames per second) so that it takes place in cinematic time less rapidly than the real action that took place before the camera. Emphasizing the power of memory. |
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| A polelike mechanical device for holding the microphone in the air; out of camera range that can be moved in almost any direction. |
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| The method. A naturalistic acting style, loosely adpated from the ideas of the Russian director Konstantin Stanislavsky by American directors Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, that encourages actors to speak, move, and gesture not in a traditional stage manner; but in the same way they would in their own lives. An ideal technique for representing convincing human behavior; Method acting is used more frequently on stage than on screen. |
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| A system of acting, developed by Russian theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky in the late nineteenth century, that encourages students to strive for realism, both social and psychological, and to bring their past experiences and emotions to their roles. This systems influenced the development of Method acting in the U.S. |
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| The process of choosing and hiring actors for a movie and there are various ways to do it. |
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| Trial filmings. A film undertaken by an actor to audition for a particular role. |
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| Actors who look reasonably like them in height, weight, coloring and so on who substitute for them during the tedious process of preparing setups or taking light readings. |
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| Hold small speaking parts. |
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| Usually appear in nonspeaking or crowd roles and receive no screen credit. |
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| Even smaller roles reserved for highly recognizable actors or personalities. |
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| Distancing effect, psychological distance between audience and stage for which, according to German playwright Bertolt Brecht, every aspect of a theatrical production should strive by limiting the audience's identification with characters and events. |
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| Actors extemporization that is, 1.delivering lines based only loosely on the written script or without the preparation that comes with studying a script before rehearsing it. 2.Playing through a moment, that is making up lines to keep scenes going when actors forget their written lines, stumble on lines, or have some other mishap. |
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| An approach to acting that emphasizes the interaction of actors, not the individual actor. A group of actors work together continuously in a single shot. Typically experienced in the theater, is used less in the movies because it requires the provision of rehearsal time that is usually denied to screen actors. |
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