Moving images

Film Language - Technical terms

Mise-en-Scene

• Production design:
  - Location: The arrangement of actors and scenery on a stage for a theatrical production. The physical setting of an action (as of a narrative or a motion picture) context.
  - Set design: The setting of a scene and the objects (props) visible in a scene. Set design can be used to amplify character emotion or the dominant mood, which has physical, social, psychological, emotional, economic and cultural significance in film.
  - Costume: Costume simply refers to the clothes that characters wear. Using certain colours or designs, costumes in narrative cinema are used to signify characters or to make clear distinctions between characters.
  - Make-up: Establish time period, reveal character traits and signal changes in character.
• Lighting & Colour design:
  - Lighting: The intensity, direction, and quality of lighting can influence an audience’s understanding of characters, actions, themes and mood. Light (and shade) can emphasize texture, shape, distance, mood, time of day or night, season, glamour; it affects the way colours are rendered, both in terms of hue and depth, and can focus attention on particular elements of the composition. Highlights, for example, call attention to shapes and textures, while shadows often conceal things, creating a sense of mystery or fear.^[ For this reason, lighting must be thoroughly planned in advance to ensure its desired effect on an audience. Cinematographers are a large part of this process, as they coordinate the camera and the lighting.
  - Colour design: Colour is one of the most important things in your scene because it can make it look completely different. The colour can be symbolic or suggestive. The colour differences can be used to suggest brightness or many different things. Colour has a major impact on your film. Colour can be used to make your audience feel lots of different types of emotions. This isn’t just important for your film, but it’s also very important for marketing.
• Representational Features:  Representational features that you would have to look at when writing about mise-en-scene would be: Gender, Age, Ethnicity, Sexuality, Social class and status (e.g. occupation), physical ability/disability and Regional identity.

Sound
Diegetic Sound – is the sound heard by the audience but is implied that it is also heard by those present in the film for example; voices of characters or sounds made by objects in the story, i.e. some of the thoughts heard in the film Psycho; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_4hOY-9nKA

Non- Diegetic Sound – the sound that is not part of the action and therefore can’t be heard by the film’s characters, for example an attack scene from the film Jaws; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tMqcARKRSE

Synchronous – the sound that is matched to particular movements happening in the scene, like when footsteps correspond to feet walking, this can be added in or recorded as is, i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feznEKTyNTQ

Asynchronous – sound that matches the action being performed however is not precisely synchronised with the action, here is an example; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T77JVoRYlM

Sound Effects – a sound other than speech or music that is made artificially for use in a film, for example the T-Rex roar in Jurassic Park (1:18); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjxvA4kjwM

Sound Motif – a sound effect or a combination of sound effects which are associated with a specific character, place or situation throughout the film, for example the music that accompanies Darth Vader in Star Wars; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8

Sound Bridge – when the scene starts with the carry-over sound from the previous scene before the new sound begins, for example this scene from The Matrix; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZ-gPQ0ew8

Dialogue – a conversation between two or more people, as a feature of a film i.e. this clip from
Horrible Bosses 2; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar7eZsKlO94

Voiceover – a piece of narration in a film whilst a scene is going on which is not accompanied by an image of the speaker, for example the voiceover of the character Mary Alice Young in Desperate Housewives; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqdIfpMPgqA

Mode of Address – how the media speaks to the audience, for example how music magazines are presented to the audience, i.e. the variety of party scenes in The Great Gatsby; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG3EwKUAOzQ

Direct Address – when a narrator or character speaks directly to the audience whilst looking straight into camera, for example the opening of the Miranda episodes; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IHx5Nmx2fU

Sound Mixing – the person who mixes various sound sources into a composite programme; this can also be the name of a piece of equipment designed for mixing sound, for example a different mix for the film Alice of Wonderland; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY

Sound Perspective – helping the audience determine the place a sound is coming from; near or distant within the scene, for example the death scene in Desperate Housewives (0:53); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgQay9I9zhg

Soundtrack

Score – any music which is composed and arranged for the specific cause of the production i.e. the song ‘Writing on the Wall’ by Sam Smith for the new James Bond film, Spectre; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHoq1oj1oE

Incidental Music – music used in a film or a play as a background to create or to enhance a particular atmosphere, for example this scene from The Lovely Bones; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJimPUh3vmQ

Themes – the topic or a discussion in a piece of artistic work, i.e. the clear love theme in Forest Gump; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvKzyYy6qvY

Stings – a short musical phrase, mainly used in broadcasting and in films as a form of punctuation

Ambient Sound – the background sound but it doesn’t have to be in the field of vision, for example the traffic from outside being heard from the scene going on inside i.e. the faint audience sounds from She’s the Man; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opCf3mp24dE

Camera

Shots:

Establishing Shot: It is generally a long- or extreme-long shot at the beginning of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sqj7pNAHnWg

Master shot: is a film recording of an entire dramatized scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view.

*need to film

Close Up: is a type of shot, which tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vp26Iv4B47A

Mid shot:  is an angle shot from a medium distance.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qGPs-0trAb0

Long Shot: is a shot that typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/tNjrfXOgZkM

5:26

Wide shot: similar to the extreme wide shot as it shows a lot of the area and environment around the subject but in this case the wide shot moves closer to the subject so it can be seen more easily compared to the extreme wide shot.

Two shot: a cinema or television shot of two people together.

Aerial shot:  This suggests a shot be taken from a plane or helicopter (not a crane). For example, if a scene takes place on a tall building, you may want to have an aerial shot of the floor the action takes place on. 

Point of view shot:  is a short film scene that shows what a character (the subject) is looking at (represented through the camera).

Over the shoulder shot: is a shot of someone or something taken from the perspective or camera angle from the shoulder of another person. 

Angles:

High angle: where the camera looks down on the subject from a high angle and the point of focus often gets "swallowed up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V1uE1-wTPs

Low angle: is a shot from a camera angle positioned low on the vertical axis, anywhere below the eye line, looking up. Psychologically, the effect of the low-angle shot is that it makes the subject look strong and powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V1uE1-wTPs

Canted angle: where the camera is set at an angle on its roll axis so that the shot is composed with vertical lines at an angle to the side of the frame, or so that the horizon line of the shot is not parallel with the bottom of the camera frame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmptU7vEkNU - fight clip 

Movements:

Pan: Panning is a camera movement technique that involves moving the camera horizontally to the right or left.

Tilt: in which the camera is stationary and rotates in a vertical plane (or tilting plane).

Track: A tracking shot is when a camera follows a person or an object physically moving with the subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGhFEwjANzk

Dolly: The camera is mounted on the dolly and records the shot as it moves. Dolly shots have a number of applications and can provide very dramatic footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTZj6c_OHs0

Steadi-cam: fir taking shots in motion and keeping them steady whilst doing so. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f3mUs7rS1I

Hand Held: for taking shots in motion giving the impression that the cinematographer is in scene. Usually creates suspense and tension or the impression someone is moving or running. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBZsyR_BiL8

Zoom: a camera shot that changes smoothly from a long shot to a close-up or vice versa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrK61S_axCE

Reverse zoom: While zooming is increasing the focal length of the lens, reverse zooming is when the camera is moving towards the background while zooming out or the camera moves away from the character or background while zooming in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrK61S_axCE

Composition: 

Framing: framing is the presentation of visual elements in an image, especially the placement of the subject in relation to other objects. Framing can make an image more aesthetically pleasing and keep the viewer's focus on the framed object

Rule of thirds: is a "rule of thumb" or guideline which applies to the process of composing visual images such as designs, films, paintings, and photographs. The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.

Depth of field: is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image.

Deep shallow focus: In shallow focus one plane of the image is in focus while the rest is out of focus. Shallow focus is typically used to emphasize one part of the image over another.

Focus pulls: is a creative camera technique in which you change focus during a shot. Usually this means adjusting the focus from one subject to another.

 EDITING
Cutting:
shot/reverse shot: Shot reverse shot (or shot/counter shot) is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0xiCIMIwLY

Eye line Match: An eyeline match is a film editing technique commonly associated with continuity editing. Eyeline refers to the path of the looking eye and is similar to the shot reverse shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUR3jCeGCm4

Graphic match: is a cut in film editing between either two different objects, two different spaces, or two different compositions in which objects in the two shots graphically match, often helping to establish a strong continuity of action and linking the two shots metaphorically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7bvT1w77Yg

Action Match: Cutting on action or matching on action refers to film editing and video editing techniques where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first shot's action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o7WUnnDzIc

Jump Cut:A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ov4mQJIHhc

Crosscutting:is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in two different locations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmptU7vEkNU

Parallel editing: is the technique of alternating two or more scenes that often happen simultaneously but in different locations. If the scenes are simultaneous, they occasionally culminate in a single place, where the relevant parties confront each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_I82117oAw

Cutaway: is the interruption of a continuously filmed action by inserting a view of something else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtKWxOgpQPs


continuity system: Continuity editing is the predominant style of film editing and video editing in the post-production process of filmmaking of narrative films an television programs. The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots.In most films, logical coherence is achieved by cutting to continuity, which emphasizes smooth transition
of time and space. However, some films incorporate cutting to continuity into a more complex classical cutting technique, one which also tries to show psychological continuity of shots. The
montage technique relies on symbolic association of ideas between shots rather than association of simple physical action for its continuity.