Introduction to Film Studies Chapter 1 to 4 review quiz PDF

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Introduction to Film Studies Chapter 1-4 Quiz Review: Terms from Glossary Chapter 1: Medium Realism: A range of style of filmmaking that attempt to represent reality as it is commonly perceived, with emphasis on authentic locations and details, long shots, lengthy takes, and a minimum of distorting techniques. Formalism, Formalist, and Formalistic: Applied to styles of filmmaking in which aesthetic forms take precedence over the subject matter as content. Time and space as ordinarily perceived are often distorted. Emphasis is on the essential, symbolic characteristics of objects and people, not necessarily on their superficial appearance. Formalists are often lyrical, self-consciously heightening their style to call attention to it as a value for its own sake. Bird's-eye View, or Bird's-eye Shot: A shot in which the camera photographs a scene from directly overhead. Avant-Garde: From the French, meaning "in the front ranks." Unconventionally daring, progressive, or experimental in style. Those artists whose works are characterized by innovation (often controversial) are also referred to as "the avant-garde." Classical Cinema, Classical Paradigm: A vague but convenient term used to designate the style of mainstream fiction films edited according to conventions of classical cutting and structured by narrative with clearly defined conflict, complications that intensify to rising climax, and a resolution that emphasizes formal closure. Slow Motion: Shots of a subject photographed at a faster rate than twenty-four fps, which when projected at the standard rate, produce a dreamy, dance-like slowness of action. Documentary: A nonfiction film that represents actuality, depicting people and situations that exist, or once existed, in the real world. Documentaries often claim, or imply an objective viewpoint, but they inevitably select and shape (and sometimes fabricate) the reality they depict. Crane Shot: A shot taken from a special device called a crane, which resembles a huge mechanical arm. The crane carries the camera and the cinematographer and can move in virtually any direction. Editing: The joining of one shot (strip of film) with another. Shot: In production, those images that are recorded continuously from the time the camera starts to the time it stops, in other words, a take. In the completed movie, an uninterrupted piece of film between edits.

Producer: An ambiguous term referring to the individual or company that controls the financing of a film, and often the way it is made. The producer may be concerned solely with business matters, or with putting together a packing deal ( such as script, stars, and director), or function as an expeditor, smoothing over problems during production. Auteur Theory: A theory of film popularized by the critics of the French journal Cahiers du cinema in the 1950s. The theory emphasizes the director as the major creator of film art, stamping the material with his or her own personal vision, style, and thematic obsessions. Metteur en Scene: The artist or technician who creates the mise en scene- that is, the director. In auteur theory, a director who acts as a technician rather than as an artist expressing a personal vision. Genre: A recognizable type of movie, characterized by certain pre-established conventions. Some common American genres as westerns, thrillers, sci-fi movies, ect. A ready-made narrative form. Day-for-night Shooting: Scenes that are filmed in daytime with special filters to suggest nighttimes setting in the movie image. Convention: A frequently used technique or device accepted by the audience as appropriate to a particular genre or style, e.g., that the hero in a western wears a white hat and the villain a black one, or that people burst into song in a musical. When a convention wears out it becomes a cliché. Star: A film actor or actress of great popularity. Plot: The arrangement of story events in the order in which they appears in the film. For example, events that occurred in the past might be introduced at any point through flashbacks or dialogue. Kinetic: Pertaining to motion and movement. Flashback: An editing technique that interrupts the present action by a shot or series of shots representing the past. Flash-forward: An editing technique that interrupts the present action by a shot or series of shots representing the future. Deep-Focus: A technique of photography that permits all distances planes to remain clearly in focus, from close-up ranges to infinity. Dolly Shot, Tracking Shot, Trucking Shot: A shot taken from moving vehicle. Originally tracks were laid on the set to permit a smoother movement of the camera.

Extreme Close-Up, Extreme Close-Shot: A minutely detailed view of an object or person. An extreme close-up of an actor generally includes only his or her eyes or mouth. Extreme Long Shot: A panoramic view of an exterior location, photographed from a great distance, often as far as four hundred metres away. Motif: Any unobtrusive technique, object, or thematic idea systematically repeated throughout a film. Metaphor: An implied comparison between two otherwise unlike elements, meaningful in a figurative rather than literal sense. Montage: An editing technique that stresses the dynamic relation between shots, often associated with the Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s and seen as an alternative to continuity editing. In Europe montage is often used as a synonym for editing. Intercutting , Parallel Editing, or Cross-Cutting: The alternating of shots from two sequences, often in different locales, suggesting that they are taking place at the same time. Allegory: A symbolic technique in which stylized characters and situations represent rather obvious ideas, such as Justice, Death, Religion, Society, and so on. Allusion: A reference of an event, person, or work of art, usually well known. Homage: A direct or indirect reference within a movie to another movie, filmmaker, or cinematic style. A respectful and affectionate tribute. Point-of-view Shot, or Pov Shot: Any shot that is taken from the vantage point of a character in the film, showing what the character sees. Omniscient Point-of-view: An all-knowing narration that provides the spectator with all the necessary information. New Wave, Nouvelle Vague: A group of young French directors who came to prominence during the late 1950s. Voice-Over: A non-synchronous spoken commentary in a movie, often used to convey a characters thoughts or memories. Tone: The manner of presentation and the general atmosphere of a movie. Screwball Comedy: A film genre, introduced in the 1930s in the United States, characterized by zany lovers, often from different social classes. The plot are often absurdly improbable and have a tendency to veer out of control. These movies usually feature slapstick comedy scenes, aggressive and charming heroines, and an assortment of outlandish secondary characters.

Chapter 2: Story Story: All the events that we see, hear about, or infer in a fiction film order in which they are supposed to have happened. The filmmaker constructs the plot from these events; the spectator reconstructs the story on the basis of the information supplied by the plot. Iris: A making device that blacks out portions of the screen, permitting only a part of the image to be seen. Usually the iris is circular or oval in shape and can be expanded or contracted. Dissolve, Lap Dissolve: The slow fading out of one shot and the gradual fading in of its successor, with a superimposition of images, usually at the midpoint. Diegesis, Diegetic: The fictional world presented in a film and its properties. Diegetic sound is thus sound that has an established source within the Diegesis Studio: A large corporation specializing in the production of movies, such as Paramount , Warner Brothers, and so on; any physical facility equipped for the production of films. Script, Screenplay, Scenario: A written description of a movie's dialogue and action, which occasionally includes camera directions. Setup: (1) The positioning of the camera and lights for a specific shot. (2) The opening section of a narrative. Lyrical: A stylistic exuberance and subjectivity, emphasizing the sensuous beauty of the medium and producing an intense outpouring of emotion. Adaptation: A film based on a work in another medium, usually a novel or a play. Adaptations may be loose, faithful, or literal, depending on the extent of the changes made to the source material. Iconography: The use of a well-known cultural symbol or complex of symbols in an artistic representation. In movies, iconography can involve a star's persona, the pre-established conventions of a genre (like the shootout in a western), the use of archetypal characters and situations, and such stylistic features as lighting, setting, costuming, props, and so on. Archetype, Archetypal: An original model or type after which similar things are patterned, Archetypes can be well-known story patterns, universal experiences, or personality types. Myths, fairy tales, genres, and cultural heroes are generally archetypal, as are the basic cycles of life and nature. Reflexive Phase: Making apparent the process by which a film is made. Applied to avant-garde cinema and a phase of genres or modes in which films play self-consciously with conventions and film history (sometimes in the form of parody).

Revisionist Phase: Applied to a phase of genres or modes that follows the classical phase, in which the established norms are subject to critical questioning. Formative Phase: Applied to the early stages of a genre or mode of filmmaking in which the classical norms have not yet become fully established. Sometimes referred to as the "primitive" phase. Classical Phase: Adhering to the established norms of films style (as in classical cinema) or of a particular genres or mode of filmmaking ( as in the classical musical, classical documentary.)

Chapter 3: Photography Cinematographer, also Director of Photography: The artist or technician responsible for the lighting of a shot and the quality of the photograph. Neorealist or Neorealism: An Italian film movement that produced its best works between 1945 and 1955. Strongly realistic in its techniques, neorealism emphasized documentary aspects of film art, stressing loose episodic plots, ordinary events and characters, natural lighting, actual location settings, nonprofessional actors, a preoccupation with poverty and social problems, and an emphasis on humanistic and democratic ideals. Low Key Lighting: A style of lighting that emphasizes diffused shadows and atmospheric post of light. Often used in mysteries and thrillers. Available Light: That light which actually exists on location, either natural (the sun) or artificial (house lamps). When available light is used in interior locations, generally a sensitive fast film stock must be used. Telephoto Lens, Long Lens: A lens that acts as a telescope, magnifying the size of objects at a great distance. A side effect is its tendency to flatten perspective. Establishing Shot: Usually an extreme long or long shot offered at the beginning of a scene, providing the viewer with context of the subsequent closer shots. Full Shot: A type of long shot that includes the human body in full, with the head near the top of the frame and the feet near the bottom. Medium Shot: A relatively close shot, revealing the human figure from the knee or waist up. Three Shot: A medium, featuring three actors. Wide-Angle Lens: A less that permits the camera to photograph a wider area than a normal lens. A side effect is its tendency to exaggerate perspective. Also used for deep-focus photography.

Angle: The camera's angle of view relative to the subject being photographed. A high-angle shot is photographed from above, a low angle from below the subject. There are five basic angles in cinema: (1) The bird's-eye view, (2) the high angle, (3) the eye-level shot, (4) the low angle, and (5) the oblique angle. High-Angle Shot: A shot in which the subject is photographed from above. Eye-Level Shot: The placement of the camera approximately one and a half to two metres from the ground, corresponding to the height of an observer on the scene. Low-Angle Shot: A shot in which the subject is photographed from below. Oblique-Angle Shot: A shot photographed by a camera that is not set up horizontally. When the image is projected on the screen, the subject itself seems to be tilted on a diagonal. Focus: The degree of acceptable sharpness in a film image. "Out of focus" means the images are blurred and lack acceptable linear definition. Key Light: The main source of illumination for a shot. Dominant Contrast, Dominant: The area of the film image that compels the viewer's most immediate attention, usually because of a prominent visual contrast. High Key Lighting: A style of lighting emphasizing bright, even illumination, with few conspicuous shadows. Used mostly in comedies, musicals, and light entertainment films. High Contrast: A style of lighting emphasizing harsh shafts and dramatic streaks of lights and darks. Often used in thrillers and melodramas. Lens: A ground of moulded pieces of glass, plastic, or other transparent material through which light rays are refracted so they converge or diverge to form the photographic image within the camera. Backlighting: Lighting for a shot that derives from the rear of the set, thus throwing the foreground figures into semidarkness or silhouette. Overexposure: Too much light enters the aperture of a camera lens, bleaching out the image. Useful for fantasy and nightmare scenes. Expressionism, Expressionist, Expressionistic: A formalist style of filmmaking emphasizing extreme direction, lyricism, and artistic self-expression at the expense of objectivity. Used more specifically to describe a movement in German cinema after World War I.

Filters: Pieces of glass and plastic placed in front of the camera lens that distort the quality of light entering the camera and hence the movie image. Soft Focus: The blurring out of all except one desired distance range. Can also refer to a glamorizing technique that softens the sharpness of definition so facial wrinkles can be smoothed over and even eliminated. Rack Focusing, Selective Focusing: The blurring of focal planes in sequence, focusing the viewer's eyes to travel with those areas of an image that remain in sharp focus. Stock: Unexposed film. There are many types of movie stocks, including those highly sensitive to light (fast stocks) and those relatively insensitive to light (slow stocks). Fast Stock, Fast Film: Film stock that is highly sensitive to light and generally produces a grainy image. Slow Stock, Slow Film: Film stocks that are relatively insensitive to light and produce crisp images and a sharpness of detail. When used in interior setting, these stocks generally require considerable artificial illumination. Matte Shot: A process of combining two separate shots on one print, resulting in an image that looks as though it had been photographed normally. Used mostly for special effects, such as combining a human figure with animation, like giant dinosaurs. Optical Printer: A machine used to create special effects in movies. Today many of these effects are created with digital technology. Double Exposure: The superimposition of two literally unrelated images on film. Location: A place where a film or part of a film is shot (as opposed to a studio).

Chapter 4: Mise en Scene Mise en Scene: The arrangement of visual weights and movement within a given space. Cinematic mise en scene encompasses both the staging of the action and the way that it is photographed Frame: The dividing line between the edges of screen image and the enclosing darkness of the theatre. Can also refer to a single photograph from the filmstrip. Aspect Ratio: The ratio between the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the screen. Widescreen: A movie image that has an aspect ratio wider than the standard Academy ration of 1.33:1 (i.e. one third wider than its height) or the now standard ratio of 1.85:1. Most widescreen films now have a ratio of 2.45:1.

Viewfinder: An eyepiece on the camera that defines the playing area and framing of the action to be photographed. Masking: A technique whereby a portion of the movie image is blocked out, thus temporarily altering the dimensions of the screen's aspect ratio. Subsidiary Contrast: A subordinated element of the film image, complementing or contrasting with the dominant contrast. Intrinsic Interest: An unobtrusive area of the film image that nonetheless compels our most immediate attention because of its dramatic or contextual importance. Majors: The principal production studios of the golden age of the Hollywood studio systemroughly the 1930s and 1940s- MGM, Warner Brothers, RKO, Paramount Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox. Art Director: The individual responsible for designing and overseeing the construction of sets for a movie, and sometimes its interior decoration and overall visual style. Production Values: The box-office appeal of the physical mounting of a film, such as sets, costumes, props, ect.. Back-lot: During the studio era, standing exterior sets of such common locales as a turn-of-thecentury city block, a frontier town, a European village, and so on. Tight Framing: Usually in close shots. The mise en scene is so carefully balanced and harmonized that the people photographed have little or no freedom of movement. Loosing Framing: Usually in longer shots. The mise en scene is so spaciously distributed within the confines of the framed image that the people photographed have considerable freedom of movement. Pan, Panning, Panning Shot: Short for panorama, this is a revolving horizontal movement of the camera from left to fight or vice versa. Proxemic Patterns: The spatial relationship among characters within the mise en scene and the apparent distance of the camera from subject photographed. Open Forms: Used primarily by realist filmmakers, these techniques are likely to be unobtrusive, with an emphasis on informal compositions and apparently haphazard designs. The frame is exploited to suggest a temporary masking, a window that arbitrarily cuts off part of the action.

Closed Forms: A visual style that inclines toward self-conscious deigns and carefully harmonized compositions. The frame is exploited to suggest a self-sufficient universe that enclose all the necessary visual information, usually in an aesthetically appealing manner. Aleatory Techniques: Techniques of filmmaking that depend on the element of chance. Images are not planned out in advance, but must be composed on the spot by the camera operator. Usually used in documentary situations. Anticipatory Camera, Anticipatory Setup: The placement of the camera in such a manner as to anticipate the movement of an action before it occurs. Such setups often suggest predestination....