Lighting
Often used in horror films, reverses normal placement of illumination and shadows on an actor’s face, which distorts the way we see facial features.
Halloween Lighting
The most common shot. Typically frames subjects from waist up and is commonly used for interactions of 2-3 people.
Medium Shot
A type of narration that limis the audience’s information to what’s known and learned by a single character.
Restricted Narration
When a film is fantastical and speculative and does not feel natural to our recognized world it is known by this "-ism."
Anti-Realism
The dividing of the screen into a 3 x 3 grid in order to determine whether compositions are balanced.
A type of lighting that when cast on a character looks comparatively normal as it echoes our most natural light source (the Sun)
Top Lighting
The shot that would be used for the entirety of the Manhattan skyline.
Extreme Long Shot
Examples of these elements include the score, title cards, opening and ending credits, and 3rd person voice-over narration.
Non-diegetic elements
The extent to which the film has the appearance of being true or real regardless of what it's about, when or where it takes place, etc.
Verisimilitude
When a composition is unbalanced.
Compositional Stress
When light is aimed from the same angle as the camera, no shadows are cast on the actor’s face, which flattens features.
Frontal Lighting
A subject's face fills the frame.
Close-up.
Examples of these include on-screen dialogue, the music coming out of a radio on-screen, and the text of signs in the background.
Diegetic Elements
The first act establishes this to let the audience know the rules of the universe in which the film takes place.
Normal World
When a character walking across the screen uses our anticipation to balance the shot.
Lead Room
Produces an image with very little contrast between the darks and the lights (used in dramas, musicals, comedies, and adventure films).
Low key Lighting
Extreme Close-Up
When a film contains mostly slow motion, this term describes the relationship between the plot duration and screen duration.
Stretch Relationship
When an edit is made very subtle because the cut occurred as a person was turning around.
Cutting on Action
When things draw our eyes to three planes of a composition: foreground, middle ground, and background.
Diffused, beams of light are broken up or scattered on their way from the source to the subject, creating less defined details, low contrast for romantic or silly situations.
Soft Lighting
Often used as an establishing shot, it presents background and subject information in equal measure and is as much about setting and situation as any particular character.
Long Shot
The movie's on-screen running time.
Screen Duration
Films that value expressive form are known by this "-ism"
Formalism
The space around a subject in a composition.
Headroom