Here is a collection of fifty film related terms that I have come across in my research for practise studies.
*In alphabetical order*
Abstract Film: These films are non-representational, and rely on conveying unique composition, lights, and motion to interest an audience. They do not cover concrete subjects or include actors or narrative.
Anti-Narrative: A specific type of avant-garde film where narrative is not only ignored but completely opposed, and a point is made not to have a coherent story or equilibrium.
Artist: Someone who adds creatively to a film. You can argue that everyone involved with the filmmaking process is in some way an artist.
Auteur: This is the French term for author. This one person leads and directs the film. They have complete creative control and visualise what the film looks like in their heads before planting in on a screen.
Avant-Garde: The idea of aesthetic and technical experimentation in cinema. Catalyst for the revolution of new cinema. ‘Man with a Movie Camera.’ Captures everyday habits and routines in a cinematic way.
Backstory: A history or background created for a character in film.
Binary Opposites: A pair of related terms or nouns that are completely opposing in meaning. For example, black vs white, left vs right, right vs wrong, sun vs rain.
Blocking: Working out the movements and choreography of a characters actions during a scene.
Camera Obscura: One of the first forms of camera, where light, or ‘moving images of the real world,’ were captured through the aperture of a dark room, projecting the real time moving picture onto the opposite wall.
Casting: The process of selecting actors to play the roles in a film. Sometimes roles are written for a specific actor, but usually not. Arguably the mos timportant part of directing.
Characterisation: The construction of a fictional character. Characterisation aspects include body language, voice, facial expressions, and movement.
Choreography: A sequence of movement in a dance or fight, or any other artistic movement within a scene.
Cinema Pur: A french movement of avant-garde that wanted to return the medium of film to its elemental origins of vision and movement. The idea is not to borrow from literature or stage plays.
Cinematography: The art of camerawork in film. Establishes intimacy between the film and the audience. Steady cams used to follow gaze of actors and smoothen movement.
Continuity: Cutting on action to make a film look realistic. Contrary to juxtaposition where you put two contrasting images together.
Deconstruction: A form of textual experimentation where body language and facial expressions are focused on in order to create sub-text within an encounter.
Dialogue: Conversation or speech between characters in a scene.
Diegetic Sound: Sounds in a scene that come from an object or person within the scene. For example, a kettle boiling or footsteps.
Editing: The art of digitally producing a film. Largely used to be a derogatory job for woman. Now, loads of quality editors are women. Establishes the overall mood through pacing.
Ethics: Moral boundaries and principles that decide how someone can behave. In film, directors and producers will have to think long and hard about what ethics they show in their film, and wether or not it will be good to advertise these morals to the public.
Exposition: An explanation of the important details of a story that help it make sense to an audience.
Genre: A style or theme of cinema. Each genre is a repeated set of elements that are included in a film. A separate world is created with its own set of rules. Genres are always changing and can be meticulously hard to define.
Goal: The object of a character’s ambitions. What they want.
Iconography: The use of signs and images to convey a subject or theme. For example, the iconography of a spy film includes guns, women, foreign bad guys, and gadgets. These icons are built up over years of filmmaking, and rely on the audience getting used to them.
Kino-Eye: Developed post-revolution in Russia. This means capturing what is inaccessible to the human eye. Includes techniques like slow motion and fast action that were way ahead of his time. The kino-eye aimed to activate a new form of perception.
Kuleshov Effect: A montage phenomenon suggesting that an audience will take more meaning from two shots that interact with each rather than a single shot. For example, a shot of a man staring into frame, and then a shot of an apple, will make it look like the man wants to eat the apple.
Literary Design: The story ideas and script outline the story setting, dialogue, storyline, and background for the characters. These key ideas usually stem from the script.
Matters-En-Scene: This is the opposite of of an auteur, meaning a director who doesn’t have the ability to put their personality into the story and visual look of the production. Mostly in bio-pics, documentaries, and films on historical events. In the sexist times of early cinema, most women were seen as these types of people as the industry didn’t like giving them creative control.
Mise-En-Scene: Everything the audience sees in the screen. The composition.
Modernist Film: Modernist film is derived from the term modernism, which is the cultural movement that rejected past conventions and focuses on technological progress. All about past all about dressing the scene around you and taking a photo at the perfect moment. This freezes time essentially. Taking a photo at the perfect time creates delicious compositions.
Montage: Cutting related images together to create the seeming passing of time.
Multiple Exposure: Is the technique of superimposing two different images together to create a single abstract image.
Narrative: An account of a sequence of connected events. A character’s story.
Non-Diegetic Sounds: Sounds in a film scene that don’t originate from an object or person within the scene. For example, a film score, or if a character is thinking of memories and the audience can hear the memories taking place.
Non-Narrative: Films that do not follow a specific storyline. Avant-garde groups all attempt to create non-narrative films.
Obstacle: A problem that gets in the way of the protagonist reaching their goal.
One-Shot Film: A film consisting of only one film shot. In the earliest days of cinema, films only started out as one shot, usually lasting only 45 seconds each.
Performance: The act of portraying a character in a film.
Plot: Plot handpicks the details to tell the story, and is of a neutral perspective.
POV: Stands for “Point of View.” A single character or persons perspective on a matter.
Protagonist: The main character in a film. Who the story is based around.
Screenplay: The script of a film, explaining each scenes acting instructions and scene blocking.
Semiotics: The study of signs within a media text that the audience can interpret from. For example, a red light means stop.
Slow Motion: Film that is played back with the frame rates increased to seem slower than in real life.
Social Comment: Rhetorical questions that a film will ask the audience through a situation in a film. For example, whilst watching a Mexican stand off scene, the audience might ask themselves what they would do in the situation.
Sound Design: The art of introducing sound effects into a film to create an atmosphere. Foley is the noises made within the scene, such as birds singing and traffic. Noise is the term for unwanted sound. All sounds in a film have to be intentional.
Story: Story is from the perspective of the main character, and includes all the details.
Surrealist Film: Historical avant-garde movement in the 1920’s and 30’s where filmmakers focused on experimenting with visualising ‘dream states.’
Temporality: The question of how long films should be, and the experimentation of frame rates to create different experiences for an audience when viewing the same image.
Visual Design: What you can’t see is as important as what you can see. Lighting establishes a mood. All colours have connotations. Set design adds the realism. Blocking shapes the scene. Hair and makeup subtly contribute to the storyline. Performance is what makes the dialogue and blocking realistic, and great casting will help with this.
