1EEEE 2 1113 4 1115 1116 7 8 9 1110 1 2 3 4 5 6EEE Glossary 7 8 9 1120 180-degree rule From one cut to another, the camera may not cross an imaginary line drawn 1 behind the characters. 2 3 90-degree rule The camera may never be placed 90 degrees facing the subject, but rather set 4 off the center to give an illusion of depth. 5 actualités Events filmed as they were happening, events that would be happening even if the 6 camera weren’t there. 7 8 ambient sound See room tone and world tone below: the sound added to a sequence to provide 9 aural atmosphere. 1130 1 anamorphic process The camera lens “squeezes” an image onto the film. When unsqueezed by 2 the projector lens, the ratio of the image is 1:2.35. Panavision was the most common proprietary 3 anamorphic process. 4 aspect ratio The relationship of screen width to height. There are four ratios. “Standard” ratio 5 existed from the early 1930s through the early 1950s and is 1:1.3. Two wide-screen ratios are 6 1:1.6 and 1:1.85. Anamorphic wide screen (CinemaScope, Panavision) is 1:2.35. 7 8 aura Critic Walter Benjamin’s term for the uniqueness of a work of art which is lost when, as in 9 film, it is mechanically reproduced. 1140 1 auteur Originally French but now a universal term for the film director who realizes a personal 2 style in his or her films. 3 auteur theory This analyzes film based on the idea that the director is the creative force. 4 4 automatic dialogue replacement (ADR) A method, largely digital, of dubbing in dialogue after 6EEE the film is completed. See also looping. 331 GLOSSARY avant-garde Often used to explain works of artists that are personal, experimental, and not aimed at a wide audience. backlighting Lights behind the characters that set them off from the background. back story Filling out the plot with a related story or action; filling in a character’s background. bandwidth This measures the amount of information or data that flows across the Internet. Bollywood Loosely applied to the vast number of films produced yearly, mainly in Mumbai, featuring extravagant production numbers, but also serious drama. captivity narrative One of the major dominant fictions of the United States, expressing its fear of being dominated. Articulated in film, it is realized by showing women in distress, held by vicious men, and in need of rescue by a strong hero. CGI (computer-generated imagery) The variety of backgrounds, foregrounds, digital animations, and effects created on the computer and transferred to film. chiaroscuro A term from art history that refers to the use of deep shadow in the mise-en-scène. CinemaScope Developed in 1926, introduced by 20th Century Fox in 1953, one of the first modern anamorphic processes that squeezed a wide image onto 35-mm film, which was then unsqueezed by the projector to a ratio of 1:2.35. cinéma vérité A version of documentary developed by the French in the late 1950s and 1960s that attempted to capture the ongoingness of everyday life without narration. cinematographer See director of photography. Cinerama A wide-screen process that originally used three cameras to capture the enormous width of the image on a curved screen, with a ratio of 1:2.65. classical Hollywood style or classical narrative style The classical Hollywood or narrative style refers to a complex collection of formal and thematic elements that became basic to Hollywood filmmaking by the early 1920s. Continuity cutting—including shot/reverse shot and over-the- shoulder cutting—the 180-degree rule, happy endings, psychologically motivated characters, villains getting punished, women becoming wives and mothers are all associated with the classical Hollywood style. The continuity style or cutting is a subset of the classical Hollywood style. close-up The actor’s face or an object fills the screen. Also, medium close-up, where the actor is seen from the shoulders up. coding Conventions that telegraph a lot of information economically, as in older films where the way a coffee cup was held or a cigarette smoked told the audience much about a character. A storm or the dying embers of a fireplace might indicate sexual intercourse. compilation film A film made by editing footage from other films. composition The arrangement of characters and surroundings within the boundaries of the screen frame. continuity style/continuity editing Smooth, seamless editing that links shots so that the cuts appear invisible to the viewer. 332 GLOSSARY 1EEEE coverage Filming enough variations of a scene to allow the editor to put it together with perfect 2 continuity. 1113 4 crane An apparatus that can lift the camera into the air and is therefore responsible for a crane 1115 shot. 1116 cross cutting Editing shots that represent different places, to give the illusion of simultaneity. 7 Also called parallel editing. 8 9 cross tracking A variation of shot/reverse shot in which what a character in motion sees is also 1110 shown in motion. Often used by Alfred Hitchcock. 1 cultural studies A wide-ranging critical approach to works of imagination that examines them 2 in light of the cultures they are part of and that create them. 3 4 culture The sum total of the intricate ways in which we relate to ourselves, our peers, our 5 community, our country, world, and universe. 6EEE cut Another word for edit, indicating the cutting and splicing together of two shots. 7 8 deep focus In deep-focus cinematography, all objects from front to rear of the composition are 9 in sharp focus. 1120 digital colorist He or she works with the director and cinematographer to achieve the desired 1 colors on the digital intermediate. 2 3 digital intermediate Film is turned into digital files for color correction and editing. 4 direct cut One shot follows another without any optical transition like a dissolve. 5 6 director The individual responsible for translating the script to screen. The director can be the 7 driving imaginative force of the film. See auteur. 8 director of photography or cinematographer Working with a film’s director, the cinematog - 9 rapher lights the scene, chooses the appropriate lenses and film stock, and therefore carries a 1130 large responsibility for determining the look of a film. 1 2 dissolve One shot fades out and another fades in. Usually the two occur simultaneously and we 3 see one shot fading out as the other fades in. In this case we have lap dissolve. 4 docudrama A film that mixes historical truth with a fictional narrative. 5 6 documentary A film that records actual events, often creating dramatic impact through editing. 7 dolly An apparatus that holds the camera but can, itself, move in, out, or from side to side. A 8 dolly-in or dolly-out refers to a movement toward or away from a figure. 9 1140 dominant fiction The templates or blueprints of the stories a culture wants to hear about itself 1 and that partake of the ideological structure of the culture. They are made concrete in the various 2 genres of film. 3 edit The cutting of a piece of film or the joining together of two pieces of film. 4 4 editing The process of cutting film footage and assembling the pieces into an expressive, narrative 6EEE structure. 333 GLOSSARY editor The person who assembles the shots of a film into its final shape. establishing shot Before a cutting pattern can begin, there must be a shot that establishes the whole space. Examples of establishing shots are the initial two-shot of characters in a dialogue sequence, or the image of an entire roomful of people, or of the city in which the film takes place. eye line match Continuity editing dictates that, if a character is looking in a certain direction in one shot, she should be looking in the same direction in the following shot. This is crucial in the over-the-shoulder pattern, where the characters must seem to be looking at one another (even if both actors are not physically present at the same time when the shots are made). fill lighting Lights that fill in the scene, creating accents, removing or adding shadow. film noir A genre of film developed in the 1940s. Noir has a literary heritage in the hard-boiled detective fiction of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and the novels of James M. Cain. Its cinematic lineage is German Expressionism, French poetic realism, and Welles’s Citizen Kane. It is marked by a mise-en-scène of heavy shadow and narratives of weak men destroyed by predatory women. final cut The version of the film released for distribution. flashback When we see something a character remembers. flat wide screen A non-anamorphic process in which the film is matted top and bottom to create the illusion of wide screen, usually 1:1.66 or 1:1.88. flow A notion developed by the British cultural scholar Raymond Williams to define the ways in which disparate and incoherent elements, commercials, promotions, and the shows themselves move together seamlessly on television. foley Foley design and the foley artist create the sound effects of a film. The name comes from a sound effects pioneer, Jack Foley. frame The borders of the screen that, along with the composition of the shot, determine the limits of what we see. A single image on an actual strip of film is referred to as the frame.