- Basic Terms:
- Auteur: author
- Diegesis: includes objects, events, spaces and the characters that inhabit them, including things, actions, and attitudes not explicitly presented in the film but inferred by the audience.
- Editing: joining together of clips of film into a single filmstrip.
- Flashback Flashforward: A jump backwards or forwards in diegetic time. With the use of flashback / flashforward the order of events in the plot no longer matches the order of events in the story.
- Focus: refers to the degree to which light rays coming from any particular part of an object pass through the lens and reconverge at the same point on a frame of the film negative, creating sharp outlines and distinct textures that match the original object.
- Genres: types of film recognized by audiences and/or producers, sometimes retrospectively.
- Mise-en-scene: all the things that are “put in the scene”: the setting, the decor, the lighting, the costumes, the performance etc.
- Story/Plot: perhaps more correctly labelled fabula and syuzhet, story refers to all the audience infers about the events that occur in the diegesis on the basis of what they are shown by the plot — the events that are directly presented in the film.
- Scene/Sequence: a scene is a segment of a narrative film that usually takes place in a single time and place, often with the same characters.
- Shot: a single stream of images, uninterrupted by editing.
- Mise-en-scene:
- The representation of space affects the reading of a film. Depth, proximity, size and proportions of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through camera placement and lenses, lighting, decor, effectively determining mood or relationships between elements in the diegetic world.
- Decor: An important element of “putting in the scene” is décor, the objects contained in and the setting of a scene. Décor can be used to amplify character emotion or the dominant mood of a film.
- Rear Projection: Usually used to combine foreground action, often actors in conversation, with a background often shot earlier, on location. Rear projection provides an economical way to set films in exotic or dangerous locations without having to transport expensive stars or endure demanding conditions.
- Lighting: The intensity, direction, and quality of lighting have a profound effect on the way an image is perceived.
- Three-Point Lighting: The standard lighting scheme for classical narrative cinema. In order to model an actor’s face (or another object) with a sense of depth, light from three directions is used, as in the diagram below.
- High-Key Lighting: A lighting scheme in which the fill light is raised to almost the same level as the key light. This produces images that are usually very bright and that feature few shadows on the principal subjects.
- Low-Key Lighting: A lighting scheme that employs very little fill light, creating strong contrasts between the brightest and darkest parts of an image and often creating strong shadows that obscure parts of the principal subjects.
- Space: The representation of space affects the reading of a film. Depth, proximity, size and proportions of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through camera placement and lenses, lighting, decor, effectively determining mood or relationships between elements in the diegetic world.
- Deep Space: A film utilizes deep space when significant elements of an image are positioned both near to and distant from the camera. For deep space these objects do not have to be in focus, a defining characteristic of deep focus.
- Frontality: Frontality refers to the staging of elements, often human figures, so that they face the camera square-on. This arrangement is an alternative to oblique staging. Frontal staging is usually avoided by the invisible style of continuity editing, since it supposedly breaks the spectator’s illusion of peeking into a separate world, by having characters look directly into the camera as if they were aware of the viewers’ presence.
- Matte Shot: A process shot in which two photographic images (usually background and foreground) are combined into a single image using an optical printer. Matte shots can be used to add elements to a realistic scene or to create fantasy spaces.
- Offscreen Space: Space that exists in the diegesis but that is not visible in the frame. Offscreen space becomes significant when the viewer’s attention is called to an event or presence in the diegesis that is not visible in the frame.
- Shallow Space: The opposite of deep space, in shallow space the image is staged with very little depth. The figures in the image occupy the same or closely positioned planes. While the resulting image loses realistic appeal, its flatness enhances its pictorial qualities. Striking graphic patters can be achieved through shallow space.
- Costume: Costume simply refers to the clothes that characters wear. Costume in narrative cinema is used to signify character, or advertise particular fashions, or to make clear distinctions between characters.
- Acting: There is enormous historical and cultural variation in performance styles in the cinema.
- Typage: Typage refers to the selection of actors on the basis that their facial or bodily features readily convey the truth of the character the actor plays. Usually associated with the Soviet Montage school, these filmmakers thought that the life-experience of a non-actor guaranteed the authenticity of their performance when they attempted a dramatic role similar to their real social role. Typage is related to the use of stereotype in communicating the essential qualities of a character.
- Editing:
- Devices:
- Transitions: The shot is defined by editing but editing also works to join shots together. There are many ways of effecting that transition, some more evident than others. In the analytical tradition, editing serves to establish space and lead the viewer to the most salient aspects of a scene.
- Cheat Cut: In the continuity editing system, a cut which purports to show continuous time and space from shot to shot but which actually mismatches the position of figures or objects in the scene.
- Crosscutting AKA Parallel Editing: Editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of action occurring in different places, usually simultaneously. The two actions are therefore linked, associating the characters from both lines of action.
- Cut-In, Cut Away: An instantaneous shift from a distant framing to a closer view of some portion for the same space, and vice versa.
- Dissolve: A transition between two shots during which the first image gradually disappears while the second image gradually appears; for a moment the two images blend in superimposition. Dissolves can be used as a fairly straighforward editing device to link any two scenes, or in more creative ways, for instance to suggest hallucinatory states.
- Iris: A round, moving mask that can close down to end a scene (iris-out) or emphasize a detail, or it can open to begin a scene (iris-in) or to reveal more space around a detail.
- Jump Cuts: Jump cuts are used expressively, to suggest the ruminations or ambivalences of a character, or of his/her everyday life, but they are also a clear signifier of rupture with mainstream film storytelling. Rather than presenting a film as a perfectly self-contained story that seamlessly unfold in front of us, jump cuts are like utterances that evidentiates both the artificiality and the difficulties of telling such a story.
- Establishing Shot/Reestablishing Shot: A shot, usually involving a distant framing, that shows the spatial relations among the important figures, objects, and setting in a scene. Usually, the first few shots in a scene are establishing shots, as they introduces us to a location and the space relationships inside it.
- Superimposition: The exposure of more than one image on the same film strip. Unlike a dissolve, a superimposition does not signify a transition from one scene to another. The technique was often used to allow the same performer to appear simultaneously as two characters on the screen.
- Wipe: A transition betwen shots in which a line passes across the screen, eliminating the first shot as it goes and replacing it with the next one. A very dynamic and noticeable transition, it is usually employed in action or adventure films. It often suggest a brief temporal ellypsis and a direct connection between the two images.
- Matches: Editing matches refer to those techniques that join as well as divide two shots by making some form of connection between them.
- Eyeline Match: A cut obeying the axis of action principle, in which the first shot shows a person off in one direction and the second shows a nearby space containing what he or she sees. If the person looks left, the following shot should imply that the looker is offscreen right.
- Graphic Match: Two successive shots joined so as to create a strong similarity of compositional elements (e.g., color, shape).
- Duration: Only since the introduction of editing to the cinema at the turn of the 20th century has not-editing become an option. The decision to extend a shot can be as significant as the decision to cut it. Editing can affect the experience of time in the cinema by creating a gap between screen time and diegetic time (overlapping editing) or by establishing a fast or slow rhythm for the scene.
- Long Take, AKA Plan-Sequence: A shot that continues for an unusually lengthy time before the transition to the next shot. The average lenght per shot differs greatly for different times and places, but most contemporary films tend to have faster editing rates.
- Overlapping Editing: Cuts that repeat part or all of an action, thus expanding its viewing time and plot duration. Most commonly associated with experimental filmmmaking, due to its temporally disconcerting and purely graphic nature, it is also featured in films in which action and movement take precedence over plot and dialogue: sports documentaries, musicals, martial arts, etc.
- Rhythm: The perceived rate and regularity of sounds, series of shots, and movements within the shots. Rhythmic factors include beat (or pulse), accent (or stress), and tempo (or pace). Rhythm is one of the essential features of a film, for it decisively contributes to its mood and overall impression on the spectator. It is also one of the most complex to analyze, since it is achieved through the combination of mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound and editing.
- Styles: The patterned use of transitions, matches and duration can be identified as a cinematic style.
- Continuity Editing: A system of cutting to maintain continuous and clear narrative action. Continuity editing relies upon matching screen direction, position, and temporal relations from shot to shot. The film supports the viewer’s assumption that space and time are contiguous between successive shots.
- Montage: 1. A synonym for editing. 2. An approach to editing developed by the Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s such as Pudovkin, Vertov and Eisenstein; it emphasizes dynamic, often discontinuous, relationships between shots and the juxtaposition of images to create ideas not present in either shot by itself. Sergei Eisenstein, in particular, developed a complex theory of montage that included montage within the shot, between sound and image, multiple levels of overtones, as well as in the conflict between two shots.
- Elliptical Editing: Shot transitions that omit parts of an event, causing an ellipses in plot and story duration. Elliptical editing need not be confined to a same place and time.
- Devices:
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