Terms and Key Parts to Look in a Movie Flashcards

The accepted systems, methods, or conventions by which the movies communicates with the viewer

A continuity editing technique that smoothes the transition between shots portraying a single action from different camera angles. The editor ends the first shot in the middle of a continuing action and begins the subsequent shot at approximately the same point in the matching action.

One uninterrupted run of a motion-picture camera. A shot an be as short or long as the director wants, but it cannot exceed the length of the film stock in the camera. Compare setup.

Traditional devices in which a shot fades in from a black field on black-and-white film or from a color field on color film, or fades out out a black field (or a color field). Compare dissolve.

Also known as low shot. A shot that is made with the camera below the action and that typicially places the observer in a position of inferiority. Compare high-angle shot.

An association, connection, or inference that a viewer makes on the basis of the given (explicit) story and form of a film. Lying below the surface of explicit meaning, implicit meaning is closest to our everyday sense of the word meaning.

Everything that a movie presents on its surface. Compare implicit meaning.

Film analysis that examines how a scene or sequence uses formal elements to convey story, mood, and meaning.

A shared, public idea, such as a metaphor, an adage, a myth, or a familiar conflict or personality type.

The means by which a subject is expressed. The form for poetry is words; for drama, it is speech and action; for movies, it is pictures and sound; and so on. Compare content.

Slow movement of the camera toward a subject, making the subject appear larger and more significant. Such gradual intensification is commonly used at moments of a character's realization and/or decision, or as a point-of-view shot to indicate the reason for the character's realization. See also zoom-in . Compare dolly out.

The time a movie takes to unfold onscreen. For any movie, we can identify three specific kinds of duration: story duration, plot duration, and screen duration. Duration has two related components: real time and cinematic time.

The position fro which a film presents the actions of the story; not only the relation of the narrator(s) to the story but also the camera's act of seeing and hearing. The two fundamental types of cinematic point of view are omniscient and restricted.