Basic film terms

Created by Kate HallfordSpring 2007

http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/index.htm

Writing it down• After coming up with an idea for a movie, the next step

is to create a film treatment.– A film treatment is a piece of prose, and is the step before

writing the first full length draft. – They include details of directorial style, key events, and

characters- they read like a short story.– Generally long and detailed.

• Anywhere from 30-80 pages in length- – 12pt Courier New font– The Terminator was 44 pages

Shooting Script

• A written breakdown of a movie story into its individual shots, often containing technical instructions. Used by the director and his or her staff during the production.

"FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF" by

John Hughes

16 INT. BEDROOM He walks across the room to his dresser. He opens his underwear drawer. There's an old model of a submarine on the top of the dresser. He picks it up.

FERRIS In eighth grade a friend of mine made a bong out

Of one of these. The smoke tasted like glue.

He pulls out a pair of underwear. He gets dressed as he speaks.

Storyboard

• A previsualization technique in which shots are sketched in advance and in sequence, similar to a comic strip.

• This allows the filmmaker to outline the scene and construct continuity before production begins.

Basic terms

Sequence: A series of related scenes or shots, as those taking place in one locale or at one time, that make up one episode of the film narrative. Shot: A shot is the film exposed from the time the camera is started to the time it is stopped. (To film a scene)

Various kinds of film shots

• Establishing Shot: A shot offered at the beginning of a scene indicating where the remainder of the scene takes place.– For example, an exterior shot of a large

building on a rainy night, followed by an interior shot of a couple talking, implies that the conversation is taking place inside that building

Basic Film Shots• Long shot long shot shows the entire object or

human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings

• Medium Shot: shot from a medium distance, revealing the subject from the knees or waist up.

• Close up: A shot that tightly frames a person or object. Most commonly used to frame actors faces.

Angle shots

• Low angle shot: shot from a camera positioned low on the vertical axis, often at knee height, looking up. – sometimes used in scenes of confrontation to

illustrate which character holds the higher position of power

• High angle shot: is when the camera is located high (often above head height) and the shot is angled downward– It is used to make the character look small

and also indicate that the character is weak or inferior.

– if the shot represents a character's point of view the shot can also be used to make the character tall, more powerful or threatening.

Bird’s eye view shot• The camera is placed overhead or

directly above the object or scene. – Characters and objects are made to look

small and vulnerable. A character or object could be followed at a different speed or pace.

POV

• Point of view shot: a short scene in a film that shows what a character is looking at.

Deep focus

• A shot where both the foreground and background are in focus.

Lighting

• Overexposed shots: Too much light enters the aperture of a camera lens, causing the bleaching out the image.

– Useful for fantasy or nightmare scenes.

Underexposed shots • Not enough light enters the aperture of a

camera lens, causing darkening of an image.

Rack Focus

• The blurring of focal planes in sequence forcing the viewers eyes to travel with those areas of an image that remain in focus.

Pan

• A camera movement with the camera body turning to the right or left. – Short for panorama

Tilt

• A camera movement with the camera body swiveling upward or downward on a stationary support.

WHIP PAN

• An extremely fast movement of the camera from side to side, which briefly causes the image to blur into a set of indistinct horizontal streaks

Zoom•The zoom shot uses a lens with several elements that allows the filmmaker to change the focal length of the lens while the shot is in progress.

•We seem to move toward or away from the subject, while the quality of the image changes from that of a shorter to a longer lens, or vice versa.

The value of sound.• Synchronous sound:

– Sound that is matched temporally with the movements occurring in the images, as when dialogue corresponds to lip movements.

• Sound and image match together.– The norm for Hollywood films is to

synchronize sound and image at the moment of shooting

• Non-synchronous sound:

– Sound whose source is not apparent in a film scene or sound that is detached from its source in the scene

• commonly called off-screen sound.

Mickeymousing• A type of film music that is

purely descriptive and attempts to mimic the visual action with musical equivalents. – Music that blatantly matches

action– Often used in cartoons

• Steamboat Willie was, however, the first sound cartoon to achieve wide recognition

Voice over

• When a voice, often that of a character in the film, is heard while we see an image of a space and time in which that character is not actually speaking.– Often used to convey the speakers thoughts

or memories.

From the editors perspective:

• Cutting to Continuity:– Editing in which shots are arranged to

preserve fluidity of an action with out showing all of it.

• Fade in/Fade out:– Fade out is the snuffing of normal brightness

to a black screen. Fade in is the opposite.

Dissolve

• A transition between two shots during which the first image gradually disappears while the second image gradually appears

• Dissolves can be used as a fairly straight forward editing device to link any two scenes, or in more creative ways, for instance to suggest hallucinatory states.

Superimposition

• When one picture is placed on top of another on a film strip.

Jump Cut

• An abrupt transition between shots, sometimes deliberate, which is disorienting in terms of the continuity of space and time.

Wipe

• A transition between shots in which a line passes across the screen, eliminating the first shot as it goes and replacing it with the next one

Iris

• A masking device that blacks out potions of the screen, permitting only a part of the image to be seen.– Usually in the iris is circular or oval in shape

and can be expanded or contracted.

Freeze Frame

• A shot composed of a single frame that is reprinted a number of times on the filmstrip, when projected, it gives the illusion of a still photograph.