FILM TERMINOLOGY

  Key to understanding how a thoughtfully constructed film creates emotions and meanings is an understanding of what might be called "film grammar," the various cinematic devices filmmakers use that determine how what is shown appears on screen. The “shot” is the basic unit of most films. A “shot” is a continuous run of the camera; it can also be referred to as a “take.” Do not confuse “shot” with “scene.” A “scene” in a film generally refers to a section set in a single location and time.” Occasionally a scene will be depicted in a film in a single long take. Most often scenes are broken down into separate shots. Shots are linked by transitions, or “edits,” the most frequently used of which is a “cut.” With a cut, one shot is immediately replaced by another. The next most common type of transitions are the dissolve, in which one shot becomes another via a superimposition in which one grows darker while the next grows brighter, and the fade out, usually to black, sometimes followed by a fade in on the next shot. Please do not use the phrases "cross dissolve" and "cross fade." These were invented by software companies and have no place in a description of older films. Do not use “fade” when you mean “dissolve.” Also, please do not refer to “shots” as “cuts” or to “cuts” as “shots,” a common mistake. To repeat, a cut is an instantaneous transition between shots. The term "clip" will generally have no place in papers for this course. I much prefer "excerpt," or "section." One of the basics in describing a film is to describe how it is broken down into shots. Sometimes a very brief shot followed by a cut to a closer view, easy to miss, can be really important. Also, you mut describe the transitions, or edits, accurately. Never write phrases such as "the shot changes" or "the image changes" or "next we see." Write, "the film cuts to," or "the film dissolves to," or "the camera pans to," or "the camera moves to." Then you will be describing how the film functions as cinema, rather than simply telling us how what we are looking at changes, though of course what we are looking at is important too. How a change is made to the image on the screen is important, and is part of the meaning. A camera movement in to a close-up has a different effect than a cut to a close-up. Being attentive to all the details of a film is one path toward starting to understand how it achieves its emotional effects and articulates its meanings. Also, do not write, “The camera cuts to.” In studio made films, the cuts are not made in the camera, during shooting, but in the editing room much later. “The film cuts to” or “we cut to” are best. A “long take” is a shot that lasts a long time relative to a film’s pace. In some films, a half-minute shot can be a “long take.” In a film in which most of the shots are a half-minute, you might not want to use the term unless a take is two or three minutes. A film in which most takes are a minute or more could be said to be a film mostly of long takes. Rapid cutting means just what it suggests, cutting between shots of very brief duration. “Montage” refers to sequences, or whole films, in which many shots are cut together with some rapidity, and in which the editing is a key organizing principle. Battleship Potemkin would be the iconic example of a montage film. A cut is one of the filmmaker’s most powerful tools, because it takes the viewer from one image to a different one instantly, changing what is shown, affecting the mood, making a statement. Cuts can be used in many ways. “Matched” cuts juxtapose two shots with characters or other elements in similar positions, even as the composition may change, creating a flow of action that tends to make the cuts relatively invisible. Disjunctive or otherwise harsh cuts tend to call more attention to themselves. “Shot-counter shot” or “reverse angle” cutting usually involves a conversation between two people in which the editing alternates between shots in which one character is seen speaking while the other is seen from behind, in what are sometimes “over- the-shoulder” shots. This technique is often used to appear to welcome the viewer into the conversation, as an invisible observer. Dissolves, and fade outs followed by fade ins, are often used to represent the passage of time, or a movement across time, as when a dissolve introduces a flashback, or a flash forward. A “wipe” is an optical effect in which one image visibly replaces the previous one in a few seconds, often with sharp-edged lines or other patterns briefly separating them. A point of view or POV shot purports to show things from a single person's point of view, or the point of view of several people who are near each other. If a character is seen looking out a second story window, and we cut to a shot of the street seen in a high angle from approximately their perspective, this is likely a point of view shot, while in that scene, an image of the street from street level would not be. Strictly speaking, you can be sure an image is a point of view shot if it is part of a three-shot sequence, in which the first shows the face of the character looking, the second gives an image of what the character is seeing from their approximate position, and the third returns to the character looking. If, for example, the character is walking toward what he or she is looking at, a POV shot between two shots showing the character walking should also be moving forward from their eye level and at about the same speed. A point of view shot could also show a distant object in close-up, to represent the way one's attention can isolate and concentrate on a single object. If the first or last of the three-shot sequence is missing, we probably still have a point of view shot. But a moving shot can also begin as an apparent POV shot and then transform to include the character who was looking or begin by including a character and then seem to become a shot from their point of view as they leave the frame. I would not, however, call those POV shots, but the inclusion of a POV section can be noted. No film device has a fixed meaning, but many have a most common meaning. The close-up brings us closer to a character's face, encouraging us to feel their emotions. The point of view shot typically builds some degree of identification between viewer and character, by causing us to see an approximation of what the character sees. “Jump cut” is a widely misused term. Many assume that any cut that seems to “jump,” such as a cut to a new location, is a “jump cut.” This is completely wrong. In a jump cut, the camera angle changes either not at all or only a little, but time has passed, though sometimes only seconds, between the two shots being cut between, so that the position of a character appears to “jump” a little at the point of the cut. In classical filmmaking, in which transitions are typically smooth, this type of cut was considered a mistake to be avoided, as jump cuts tend to call attention to themselves. They were often used unintentionally in very low-budget Hollywood films, when there was no money for retakes to fix a mistake. Jean-Luc Godard famously used jump cuts intentionally in his film Breathless, inspired by their use in those earlier Hollywood films. Because this is an unusual type of shot for which we have no other proper term, I think we should fight the misuse of this term, which would leave us with no way of describing what is now called a jump cut. The camera’s distance from the principal subject is expressed in terms such as close-up, medium shot, and long shot, terms that should be self-explanatory. There are no clear rules about when a close-up becomes a medium shot. If a face fills at least half the height of the frame in a shot, that shot is probably a close-up if the image focuses on a single character. If you can see most of the character’s body, then it is not a close-up. There are also phrases such as “extreme close-up,” “medium close-up,” “extreme long shot.” A “two-shot” is a shot, fairly close, of two characters. The camera’s relationship to the subject is expressed in terms of camera angles. In a high shot or high angle shot, the camera is above the principal subject, which could be a character, an object, or a landscape or streetscape. In a low shot or low angle shot, the camera is below, for example looking up at a character. This can be confusing: keep in mind that a high angle shot looks down, or low, and a low angle shot looks high, or up. Often, a high angle shot of people makes them look small, and lacking in power; a low angle shot of a character makes them seem to loom powerfully over us. But these meanings are not fixed, and shots can be used in ways that produce effects and meanings contrary to their usual function. In shots including people the main character’s face or eyes are usually what determines the angle; hence a shot neither high nor low angle can be called an “eye-level” shot. An overhead shot of characters can be called just that, or nearly overhead could be called an extreme high angle. In a tilted shot the camera is titled with respect to the ground, or the subject; these are sometimes called “Dutch angles,” but I would very much like to avoid that unnecessarily silly, even possibly offensive term, which etymologically results from a mistake anyway. Holland is a wonderful country whose mostly flat landscape does not suggest tilted views. In fact, the term is based on a linguistic confusion with “Deutsch,” which means “German,” and the original reference was to the many titled shots in German expressionist filmmaking. Shots in which the camera does not move can be called static shots. The camera can also move through space. This was traditionally done with the camera on wheeled vehicles called dollies, or on a dolly mounted on tracks, and hence such shots have been called “dolly shots” or “tracking shots.” Either is fine, but I think “moving shot” is usually preferable. Typically, the camera will move in or out, or move laterally, often following the movement of characters, or combine several different movements in a single take. The camera can also move hand-held, and that has become common in recent decades as means were devised of stabilizing the vibrations inherent in hand-holding a camera. In a panning shot the camera is fixed on a tripod, or handheld in a fixed position, and rotates from a static point in space. Similarly, a camera can execute a tilt, which is like a pan in the vertical direction. Do not confuse panning shots and moving shots. They look very different and can have very different effects, even different meanings. Of course, sometimes both can be used at once, the camera panning or tilting or both as it also moves, and it can be a little hard to analyze such combinations. If you see such a combination, just note it. The camera can also move up or down through space. In a “crane” shot, a crane up or crane down, the camera is on a platform that is raised or lowered, allowing for large movements up or down, so that an eye level shot can become a high angle shot in a single take. Do not use the word “zoom” for any of these shots. Zooms are generally executed with the use of a zoom lens, which did not come into common use until 1958. Very occasionally short zooms were made earlier using an optical printer, a device used for special effects in the pre-digital age that allowed film to be rephotographed a frame at a time, but such examples are rare, and typically also brief. Most films made before 1958 had no zooms of any type. It is common in daily speech to use the word “zoom” to refer to concentrating on something – “I just zoomed in on the fact that my rent is due.” But when writing about a film, use “zoom” only for shots made with a zoom lens. If you think you see an optical zoom, call it an optical zoom. Zooms look notably different from shots in which the camera moves through space. A zoom compresses or expands space, and feels rather mechanical; in a camera movement, you are going on a journey across space, and can sometimes see objects passing by on the sides. Learn to see the difference. Sound can be synchronous or asynchronous. With sync sound, we hear the sound that some objects in the scene are emitting – most often a speaking character, or, all too often in recent years for a few of us, an explosion. Asynchronous sound, rare in conventional filmmaking, pairs a completely different sound with an image: in Peter Kubelka’s Unsere Afrikareise, a hat flies off a man’s head to the sound of a gunshot. In a “sound bridge,” the sound of the next scene may start earlier, or less commonly of a previous scene linger after. Off-screen sound is implied to come from a location outside what we see in the composition, but is not meant to be understood as asynchronous. Often offscreen sound such as a character speaking will begin during a shot, and then the character will become visible. “Diegetic” sound, similar to synchronous sound in the case of narrative movies, comes from the space of the narrative we are observing; whether originating from on or off-screen, there is an identifiable source. Nondiegetic sound does not originate from a source in the story space of the film. Movie music is the most common type of non-diegetic sound in commercial films, though occasionally what we first thought was non- diegetic sound will later be revealed to be emanating from, for example, a radio within the scene. Voiceover narration, even from a character who we see but do not see actually speaking, is another example of non-diegetic sound. In almost all silent films, and sometimes too in sound films, printed text appears occupying most or all of the screen. These are generally called intertitles in silent films, and such titles in sound films that serve a similar function are also called intertitles. Do not call such shots a "slide," or a "subtitle," or a "text box." The small printed texts that appear at the bottom of the screen in foreign-language sound films, translating the dialogue or occasionally translating words such as store signs in another language that appear in the image, are called subtitles. Most films made before 2013 were shot on celluloid, and before 1990 virtually all were. They were shot on physical film, in other words, and all theatrical features were projected on celluloid in their initial release until recently. Therefore, do not refer to any of the films we see in this class as "videos." You are now seeing them on digital video, but that is not how they were made to be seen. Please never use the phrase “breaking the fourth wall.” If it is used in your other classes, that’s fine with me, don’t argue, but please do not use it here. Most typically, students will use it for a moment in which a character appears to look directly into the camera. The problem with it is that it is a term from theater, and to use it for a film implies that the film never calls attention to itself, and that you are expected to lose yourself in the action without even noticing you are watching a movie, and that the film permits that. Most films do permit that, but my whole point is that you get so much more from the best films if you become a more active viewer. In many films, for example, a complex relationship between the characters and the camera shows that you are always encouraged to be aware of cinema, and of how that relation shifts, which is to say, be aware of the camera. This certainly happens when the camera moves through space. It can also happen in a static long take, in which the actors position themselves and gesture as if they are aware of where the camera is. Thus, in the best films, those rare moments where a character might appear to look into the camera are part of a continuum of moments of aware filmmaking. The purpose of this little glossary is to help you use terms correctly, and to ensure that we all understand what we are talking about. But this is not just a question of getting your terms right. As you begin to recognize these different cinematic devices, you should begin to notice things such as the very different effect of a pan and a camera movement through space, and to think about their effects and meanings within particular films. As always, write me with any questions or objections. It is required that you get movie titles, the names of anyone who worked on a film, and the names of characters in the film, exactly right. In some cases, a film title may take more than one form. With “foreign” films, sometimes the title is in common use in English in the original language and in more than one translation, and sometimes, the translated tittle is the one in common use. Robert Bresson's 1956 feature has a long title in French; in English, it is A Man Escaped. But, insisting on absolute accuracy, I would count Man Escaped as a points-off error. In French, “l’argent” means “money,” but the most common form of the title of the 1983 Robert Bresson film is “L’Argent.” It is also sometimes written “L'argent”; there are competing conventions for capitalizing French titles. But in English, all the words in a title have their initial letters capitalized except for short conjunctions such as “to” and “at,” or articles such as “a” or “the,” unless one appears at the beginning of the title. I insist that you take care here; you will just make yourself look unprofessional, and even silly, if you write a paper on a film you call “Searchers” when you are writing about the 1956 film The Searchers. And in fact, there is a 2016 film called “Searchers.” You are an aspiring professional, and should behave that way. Style titles in Italics, preferably, or inside quote marks. When writing about characters in a movie, use their character names, unless you are discussing the acting. Thus the character played by John Wayne in The Searchers is Ethan Edwards. Write, “We cut to a close-up of Ethan,” or, “John Wayne does an excellent job of portraying Ethan’s determined mood.” In your first mention of a real rather than a character name, use both first and last names – “John Wayne,” “John Ford.” Subsequently, use only last names for people who worked on a film, and the form the character name most often takes in the film's dialogue, which in The Searchers is Ethan. Wikipedia is a reasonably reliable source for movie titles, character names, actor names, and the names of others who worked on a film. If there is an error on Wikipedia, I will consider it an adequate defense if you have copied a mistake from Wikipedia. When you include a direct quote from another source, you must get that quote exactly right. This includes a quote from the dialogue or the subtitles of a film. So many times, students get the quote wrong by introducing significant grammatical errors, thus revealing not only an inability to copy but an inability to use a plural verb form with a plural subject. It is also an insult to the writer, to quote them as lacking basic grammar skills. Learn to copy and paste. If you are using a source for which that is not possible, such as (I would hope!) a printed book, or the sound track, recheck your quote word by word and letter by letter against the source after you have typed it, looking or listening back and forth between your screen and the source one word at a time. Always run spell and grammar check just before turning your work in. These valuable tools will not catch every mistake; mistakes as “camera angel” make logical sense in English, and so they will pass through these tools. Thus, you must also proofread with care. Also, some recent versions of MS-Word are annoyingly fussy about suggesting writing improvements to sentences that are not grammatically incorrect. I find nothing wrong with “this type of cut was considered a mistake to be avoided,” as I wrote earlier, but one version of Microsoft Word thinks I should drop “considered,” which actually changes the meaning. Word also thinks “rephotographed” is not a word. Check a dictionary in such cases. To repeat, always proofread your papers carefully. Including errors such as missing words that anyone would recognize as mistakes just makes you look careless and, again, unprofessional. Every time you write something, think of it as training for that crucial job application letter that might make or break your career. More importantly, think of it as fostering the kinds of attentiveness to detail and care that will be important to any artist. And if you find errors in anything I write, please do message me. SHOT LIST Constructing a shot list will help you become more attentive to film viewing, even if you list only three or four shots, and by increasing the accuracy of your observations should give you a better understanding of how a film works, and more material on which to base your interpretations. Always begin your shot list with the starting running time. In making your shot list, number each shot. A shot ends with a transition such as a cut, dissolve, or fade out. If it's a long take, do not give parts of it separate numbers, just spend more time describing it. You don't have to describe every aspect of a long take if there are many details. Making a shot list is in part an exercise in determining what is important. Be sure to give the running time of the beginning of your first shot. It's a good idea in many cases to list the length of each shot, as in "3s, 6s," to help you notice relative shot lengths. If you don't specify otherwise, we will assume that the camera is static (does not move through space or pan or tilt or zoom), that the shot is a medium shot at eye level. Therefore, mention camera movements of all types, if the shot is a high or low angle, and if it is close or long (also called "wide") rather than a medium shot. Also, always mention the transition, as in "3. Cut to a low angle medium close-up..." Mention significant or unusual uses of sound. Don't mention the ordinary uses of movie music to enhance mood. If the music suddenly vanishes when a door closes, and returns when the door is opened, that could be interesting. Mention significant uses of offscreen sound. Also mention significant movement of characters, and if they connect with camera movements. If there are many complex movements, as for example in some long takes, you don't have to mention every one, just the ones you think are significant. Making a shot list is itself a commentary on the film. For example, the shot you choose to begin with is itself an important choice. If the shot right before it is important in understanding its meaning, then start with that one. What you choose to mention is also a comment on what is important. Here is an example of a shot list from the film M (Fritz Lang, 1931). 5:04: 1. Cut to medium shot of Elsie's mother preparing food, camera slightly below eye level. She looks up. 10s 2. Cut to slightly low angle of clock on the wall, apparently from her POV. 3s 3. Cut back to mother, same setup as 1, looking up at the clock. We hear offscreen sounds and pan as the mother walks to the door and opens it. 11s 4. Cut to low angle looking up at children climbing stairs, apparently from the mother's POV. She is heard to ask the children about her daughter. 8s 5. Cut to low angle of mother outside her apartment on the balcony looking up at the children. She looks down, and then goes back into her apartment and starts closing the door. Cut while the door is not yet completely closed but is still closing. 14s 6. Cut to high angle shot of a street. A man who we see only from the rear is with a little girl buying her a balloon from a blind street vendor. There is a street sound and the man also whistles a tune. They walk away from the vendor and exit at screen right. 22s