Cinema explained
Glossary
42 terms from the language of filmmaking and film theory, explained in plain words.
0-9
- 180-degree rule
- Keeping the camera on one side of an imaginary line between two characters so their screen directions stay consistent.
A
- ADR
- Automated dialogue replacement: re-recording an actor's lines in a studio after the shoot.
- Anamorphic lens
- A lens that squeezes a wide image horizontally onto film or a sensor, to be unsqueezed later into widescreen.
- Aspect ratio
- The ratio of an image's width to its height, such as 1.37:1, 1.85:1 or 2.39:1.
- Auteur
- A director regarded as the author of their films, with a personal style recognisable across their work.
B
C
- Chroma key
- Replacing a uniformly coloured background, usually green or blue, with other imagery.
- Color grading
- Adjusting colour, contrast and tone in post-production to give a film its final look.
- Compositing
- Combining visual elements from separate sources into a single image.
- Coverage
- The set of shots filmed for a scene from different angles and sizes, so the editor has choices in the cut.
- Cross-cutting
- Alternating between two or more actions happening at the same time in different places.
D
- Depth of field
- The range of distance in a shot that appears acceptably sharp.
- Diegetic sound
- Sound that exists inside the story's world, like a radio playing in the room.
- Dolly zoom
- Moving the camera toward or away from a subject while zooming the opposite way, so the background appears to stretch or compress.
- Dutch angle
- A shot with the camera tilted so the horizon runs at a slant.
F
- Foley
- Everyday sound effects such as footsteps and cloth movement, recreated in a studio in sync with the picture.
- Fourth wall
- The imaginary barrier between the story and the audience.
G
- Golden hour
- The short period after sunrise or before sunset when daylight is warm, soft and low.
I
- Inciting incident
- The event that disrupts the protagonist's world and sets the story in motion.
- Interval
- The intermission in an Indian feature film, usually placed right after a major twist.
J
- J-cut and L-cut
- Edits where the sound of the next shot starts early (J-cut) or the sound of the last shot carries over (L-cut).
- Jump cut
- A cut between two shots of the same subject from a similar angle, making time visibly jump.
K
- Kuleshov effect
- The finding that viewers read meaning into a shot from the shots placed around it.
L
M
- MacGuffin
- An object or goal that drives the plot but matters little in itself.
- Match cut
- A cut that links two shots through a matching shape, movement or sound.
- Method acting
- An approach in which actors draw on their own experiences and emotions to build a role.
- Mise-en-scène
- Everything placed in front of the camera: setting, props, costume, lighting, and where the actors stand and move.
- Montage
- Building meaning by joining shots together.
- Motion capture
- Recording an actor's movements to drive a digital character.
P
- Production design
- The overall visual world of a film: sets, locations, props and colour, led by the production designer.
R
- Rack focus
- Shifting focus from one subject to another during a shot.
- Room tone
- A recording of a location's ambient sound with no dialogue, used to smooth gaps in the edit.
S
- Set dressing
- Furnishing a set with the objects that make it feel lived in.
- Subtext
- What characters mean or feel beneath what they actually say.
T
- Table read
- A session where the cast reads the whole script aloud together before production.
- Teal and orange
- A grading approach that pushes shadows toward teal and skin tones toward orange.
- Three-act structure
- A way of shaping a story into setup, confrontation and resolution.
- Three-point lighting
- A standard lighting setup of key light, fill light and back light.
No terms match that search yet. Suggest a term