The Film Camera
The shot type that describes a shot of an eye that totally fills the frame.
Extreme Close Up
The 9 x 9 grid that determines whether or not a composition is balanced
Rule of Thirds
Creating and recording sound effects for everyday noises in sync with the picture like in Psycho when the sound of a melon being stabbed was used for the two stabbing deaths
Foley Sounds
This movement tried to break with the country’s fascist past by placing the highest value on the lives of ordinary, working people and criticizing such post war conditions as widespread unemployment, poverty, child labor, government corruption, and inadequate housing. Its characters struggle for a decent life in a postwar world. It sought simplicity in working methods, using on-location shooting and nonprofessional actors.
Italian Neorealism
Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Birds
Alfred Hitchcock
When the camera pivots horizontally on a stationary axis, “looking” side to side.
Pan
The “staging or putting on an action” and includes everything we see in the shot: objects, people, surroundings and how things are arranged, illuminated and moved around.
Misè-en-scene
Sounds that come from a source within the film’s world, heard by the characters and audience.
Diegetic Sound
Influenced by Modernist art of the period, its features include distorted and exaggerated settings, compositions of unnatural spaces, the use of oblique angles and nonparallel lines, moving and subjective camera, unnatural costumes, hairstyles, and makeup, and highly stylized acting.
German Expressionism
Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart
David Lynch
camera pivots vertically on a stationary axis, “looking” side to side
Tilt
An editing technique that cuts back and forth between two or more actions happening simultaneously in separate locations.
Parallel Editing
When the sound is BOTH diegetic and onscreen
Simultaneous Sound
Influenced by the philosophy of Sartre, his movement believed the camera should be used as personally as the novelist uses the pen, accomplished via lightweight, portable equipment that enhanced a filmmaker’s mobility and flexibility. They believed in prioritizing form above content. The films were self-reflexive films and focused attention on them as movies, diverting our attention away from the narrative. The journal Cahiers Du Cinéma represented the movement.
French New Wave
Malcolm X, He Got Game, BlacKKKlansman, Do the Right Thing, 25th Hour
Spike Lee
The most frequently used type of shot, frames subjects from somewhere around the waist and up, making them large enough in the frame to reduce background to the point of insignificance.
Medium Shot
Type of editing that uses juxtaposition to impart meaning in a way that we usually can’t help but notice by pairing contrasting or incongruent images in a manner that implies a thematic relationship.
Associative (or Intellectual) Editing
Films often employ this process of re-recording the dialogue in a studio to a looped sequence to ensure higher audio quality for dialogue.
Automatic Dialogue Replacement (ADR)
Born out of the collapse of the old studio system, this movement is known for new modes of expression, a new rating system, more on-location shooting, and a more authentic look to movies. Movies began to be made in complex deals regarding the studios and independent production companies. No single style defines it, but a range of styles resulted in personal, highly self-reflexive films; edgy, experimental, and low-budget movies.
The New American Cinema
Touch of Evil, Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, The Stranger, F for Fake
Orson Welles
Word that describes shots taken from a camera mounted on a wheeled platform, moving toward, away from, or "tracking" alongside the subject.
Dolly
The creation of and communication of meaning through juxtaposition in ways that we tend not to notice, like seeing the exterior of a house and then its interior.
Montage Editing
Sounds, which can be either diegetic or nondiegetic, that derive from a source that we do not see.
Offscreen Sound
Influenced by Marx and various figures of modernity, this new wave was very theoretical in approach, engineered for maximum psychological impact. Its central concept: one shot (a thesis) collides with another shot of opposing content (an antithesis) to produce a new idea (synthesis).
Soviet Montage
Magnolia, Boogie Nights, One Battle After Another, Phantom Thread, There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson