Photography and Video Glossary - A collection of all the photographic and filmmaking terms

 During today's class we had to start creating our glossary of terms which we will be using in our continuation route. The list will be regularly updated with new terms.

Camera side view

Filmmaking/photography terms:

Act - The classic story structure is divided into three acts, beginning, middle, and an end. Lately often used to also visually divide the parts of the film, and shot the passage of time.

Close-up - Framing technique in which in frame is only characters head, or only a detail of some object is shown. Usually shot on portrait lenses.

Exposition/Establishing shot - Either wide or a long shot from far away which has for its purpose showing viewers the place of the action. 

Hot-shoe mount - a mount placed on the top of the camera, used to attach different accessories like flash or shotgun microphone

Ken Burns Effect - A digital zoom or pan created in post production which adds a dynamic to the static shot or a picture

Logline - shortest version of the script. Usually one or two sentences which are supposed to visualize the basic idea for the film.

Match cut (to) - a transition between two shots that are unrelated but used deliberately to establish a continuity.  

Medium shot - Shot photographed from a medium distance. Usually frames characters from knees up.

180 degree rule - a cinematography rule saying that while shooting a scene a camera should be recording on a 180 degree axes. 

Panning shot - Usually used for exposition shots, is a horizontal camera movement from side to side.

Reaction shot - a quick clip of a public, group or just other character's reaction to an ongoing action.

Red herring - a form of foreshadowing an action early in the film. For example showing an object in act one which will be very vital to the story in act three.

Rotoscoping - Technique used in both animation and live action films. It consists of keying out the character frame by frame out of the background.

Tracking shot - Shot usually from behind the character. As the name suggests the camera follows the characters movement.

Vertigo Effect - or in other words Dolly zoom, is an effect created by tracking camera away from the subject while at the same time zooming into it, keeping the subject the same size at all times. It is often use to express the character's state of shock or dizziness, as used for the first time in the Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958).



This glossary will be regularly updated with new terms. [Last Updated 04.06.2021]







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Sources:

www.filmsite.org. (n.d.). Cinematic Terms - A FilmMaking Glossary. [online] Available at: https://www.filmsite.org/filmterms13.html [Accessed 6 May 2021].

www.owlnet.rice.edu. (n.d.). Film Glossary. [online] Available at: https://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~engl377/film.html [Accessed 6 May 2021].

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