Film 101
Terms
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- Performance Style
- The techniques and principles an actor draws on the create a given role.
- Animated Film
- Still images are drawn or photographed on single frames and then joined in such a way as to suggest movement.
- Superimposition
- One image appears over another.
- Low Camera Angle
- The camera is placed close to the ground and looks up at actors and /or objects.
- Cinema of Attractions
- Movies that appeal through spectacle and imagery rather than narrative. Associated especially with the short films produced in the early days of cinema.
- German Silents
- Known for the influence they received from the other arts, and a focus on psychological thrillers and expressionism
- Buster Keaton
- Director and star of the General, one of the great silent film comic actor, nicknamed "The Great Stone Face"
- Set Design
- The process of creating an environment in which the action of a film occurs.
- Tilting
- The camera moves up and down on its axis, for example, to slowly survey a character from the feet on up.
- Lumiere Brothers
- French brothers who created early mobile camera, were the fathers of film in France and were developing the medium in France at the same time as Edison in America
- Street Film
- A genre popular in Germany during the 1920s in which the protagonist is drawn away from home by the lure of the city.
- Lighting
- The illumination of various elements within the image.
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Known for his epics
- Charlie Chaplin
- Protege of Mack Sennett, director of Modern Times and one of the great silent era comedic actors.
- Script
- The written blueprint that guides the production of a film.
- Tableaux
- An image held in suspension that invites contemplation as an expressive composition.
- Sequence
- Groups of scenes joined by dramatic unity.
- Low-key lighting
- The image is underlit, creating large areas of darkness and shadows.
- Louis Feuillade
- French director known for masterful series films.
- Experimental
- Poetic, nonnarrative works, often short, that exploit the formal potential of the medium. Frequently evoke the mood of dreams and the unconscious. Sometimes referred to as avant-gard films.
- Films d'art
- A genre of films that flourished during the 1910s in which famous plays were recorded exactly as performed by theatrical stars and intertitles were abridged substitions for the unheard dialogue the actors mouthed.
- Edwin Porter
- American director who began work in 1896, directory of the Great Train Robbery.
- Panning
- The camera moves laterally on its axis, usually to follow a moving character or survey a scene.
- Neue Sachlichkeit
- A term employed in describing some of the German street films of the 1920s, which were considered to embody a new spirit of realism and objectivity.
- Mise-en-scene
- Literally, "what is placed in the scene." Includes everything visible within the frame, including the actors and setting, as well as the way these elements are composed.
- F.W. Murnau
- German director, Nosferatu.
- Kammerspielfilm
- "Chamber play film", derived from Reinhardt theater. This style was marked by unity of time, place, and action, with virtually no intertitles. Best known film is The Last Laugh.
- High Angle
- The camera is placed above the actors and looks down on them.
- Closeup
- The camera observes an actor's face or other object at close range.
- Commedia dell'arte
- An ancient style of comic performance that relies on improvisation and broad stereotypes.
- Iris
- A popular method of beginning a scene during the silent era. A black screen containing only a small circle of the total image appears. Then it opens up to reveal the whole action and setting.
- L'Arroseur
- Lumiere film in which a prankster players a trick on a gardener watering a lawn.
- Dolly
- (Like a tracking shot, but camera moves on a dolly.)
- Alice Guy
- Female French director, made what may be the first fiction film, The Cabbage Fairy, emigrated to the United States in 1909 and founded the Solax film company
- D.W. Griffith
- Director of The Birth of a Nation, it is said that all advances in film that have come since him, were derived from him. One of the most influential directors in his or any time in film history.
- Fade
- One image gradually goes dark, the another gradually appears.
- Split Screen
- Multiple images appear simultaneously on different parts of the screen.
- Series Films
- A continuing set of characters engage in various adventures featured in several different films.
- Tracking shot
- The camera moves laterally along a track, usually to follow action or to survey a scene. (If on a truck, it is a trucking shot)
- Lenses
- A combination of transparent pieces, usually made of glass, mounted on a camera that receives and refracts light rays. The lens controls the way in which images are recorded in the camera and can usually be adjusted to achieve a range of effects.
- Max Reinhardt
- German stage figure who influenced historical/mythological films in 1920s Germany
- Thomas Ince
- Invented many of the standardized methods of film production that allowed film to become a major industry, such as giving specialized tasks to professionals, having a shooting script and et cetera.
- Early American Silent Films
- Primarily made up of melodramas and silent comedies, focus on naturalism and realism
- Dissolve
- One image is gradually superimposed over, and then replaces, the other.
- Peep-show
- A mode of film viewing popular in the early days whereby individual spectators looked into machines designed to display moving images
- Shot
- A single camera operation.
- Caligari
- German film which influenced Nosferatu and other German psychological horror films.
- Undercranking
- A technique popular in the early days of slapstick comedy in which the film was pushed through the camera more slowly than normal during the shooting of a particular scene in order to produce the effect of fast motion when the movie was later projected in theaters.
- Cut
- One shot is replaced by another. Used for ordering and pacing action.
- Moving Camera
- The camera changes position in a way that makes the image appear to shift or change perspective.
- Documentary
- Captures the real world with the intention of revealing it more fully.
- Key Light
- The brightest light on a set, usually appearing to come from a source within the scene.
- Scene
- Group of shots joined together to present action occurring in a single time and place.
- Narrative Fiction
- Tells a story not based on actual events.
- Melies
- Created A Trip to the Moon, created many staples of special effects and many film tricks.
- Editing
- The process by which two different shots are joined together.
- Medium Shot
- Shows people from the knees up. The standard framing from which the director departs for special purposes.
- Long Shot
- The camera is placed at a distance from the subject, showing actors' entire bodies and their placement in the surroundings. Usually begins a scene, establishing the action and the setting.
- Mack Sennett
- Founded Keystone Studios and essentially created the slapstick genre that was later perfected and enhanced by early comic film actors.
- Cross-cutting
- Cutting back and forth between two different locales. Often employed to create suspense during rescue or chase sequences.
- Subjective Camera
- The camera takes on a character's point of view or state of mind.
- Fritz Lang
- Director of M, Metropolis
- Masking
- Part of the image is blacked out to provide a distinctive frame for a particular shot.
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Focus on a bedroom-keyhole view of the past, which suggests that great historical events can be seen as extensions of sexual intrigue. Focused on historical fantasies.
- Serial Films
- Features continuing story lines continued over many individual episodes.