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Jul 18, 2023 · Now that you have a good grasp of the different film genres, you're one step closer to fluency in the language of cinema: understanding film terminology and techniques. In the next section, we'll dive into film narrative structures, another key component of cinematic language.
Cinematic language refers to the visual and auditory elements used in film to communicate ideas, emotions, and narratives to the audience. This includes techniques such as camera angles, lighting, sound, editing, and mise-en-scène, which work together to create meaning beyond just the dialogue.
- Abby (Abby Singer): A term for the second-to-last shot of the day on a shoot.
- Above The Line: A budgeting term used to describe professionals who influence the creative direction of a film, such the screenwriter, producer, director, and actors.
- Act: A main division within the plot of a film.
- Aerial Shot: A bird’s eye view camera shot filmed in an exterior location in the air from far overhead as from a helicopter, blimp, balloon, plane, drone or kite.
In cinematic terms, films that point back themselves as films. Diegesis (Greek word for recounted story) – the “world” of the film’s story, or the “total world of the story action”. The diegesis includes events that are presumed to have occurred and actions and spaces not shown on screen.
- Establishing Shot
- Character Introduction
- Average Shot Length
- Vertigo Effect
- Long Take
- Method Acting
- Montage
- Story Time
- Framing
- Hitchcock’s Rule
An establishing shot is typically the very first shot of a film or scene. As we know, a film consists of film sequences that fall into scenes that again are composed of different shots. As the name suggests, an establishing shot sets up the narrative visually. As it’s the first shot we’ll get to see of a scene, it’s important to get that first impr...
What’s the establishing shot for the tone of a film or scene is the first appearance of a character. The characters are quite literally the souls of a story. Their first impression is crucial for the audience to connect with them. We learn who they are and what conflicts they face at the beginning of their character development. Where do they come ...
Obviously, making a film is about more than stitching a bunch of perfect shots together. In terms of the movie as a whole, the average length of a shot (ASL) can have a profound impact, too. This statistical measure is expressed in seconds and calculated by taking the total running time of a film and dividing it by the total number of shots. For co...
The Vertigo Effect was first invented by Alfred Hitchock in his 1958 classic, well, Vertigo. It’s achieved by moving the camera towards the subject while simultaneously zooming out or vice versa. While the subject remains the same size in the frame, the background appears to shift to or away from the foreground. The effect has many names. Since it’...
This example of film language requires even more skill. A take is an uninterrupted recording of a single shot. Many takes may be necessary to get a perfect shot to be used in the final version of a movie. The longer the take, the more difficult it obviously is to get everything just right. A well-executed long take can achieve quite a bit. The open...
If the characters are the souls of a film, their acting is what animates them. While the language of film knows various methods of acting, Method Acting, aka The Method, is probably the best known. Roughly speaking, Method Acting is a set of acting techniques in which the thespian attempts to find the traits of the character within himself or herse...
In common cinematic parlance, a montage is a series of brief shots edited together to give the audience the illusion of time passing. Typically, it shows different events with underlying music and no dialogue. As the Team Americaquote implies, it’s often used to show a hero’s progression in training without blowing out the movie’s running time and ...
Unless you’ve only been watching 24, you’re probably familiar with the idea that the running time of a film is very different to the time of the story told. For example, the running time of Forrest Gump(1994) is about 2 hours and 15 minutes (no pun intended). The storytime on the other hand spans over 30 years from the 1950s to the 1980s, which giv...
In the language of film, what’s in a shot (or isn’t) is as significant as what the characters do and say (or don’t). The effect a single image of a shot has on the viewer is not only determined by the choice of camera distance and angle. It’s also affected by how subjects and objects are composed within a frame. Admittedly, framing often seems to b...
In fact, framing is so important, Alfred Hitchcock coined a very specific rule about it. What should be in it in the first place and how prominent should it be displayed? Hitchcock’s Rule is a film language that answers those questions: In fact, the above-mentioned opening scene of Touch of Evilplays with this rule quite a bit. The framing of the f...
Understanding film grammar is crucial as it’s the language of cinema, a set of conventions that filmmakers use to tell stories visually. Just as writers utilize punctuation and syntax to shape text, directors employ camera angles, shot compositions, editing techniques, and sound design to convey meaning and emotion on screen.
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In the film language, the who question is typically answered with the close-up (CU). The primary point of focus in any close-up is the subject's face. This framing typically mimics the experience of what you would see in real life if you were conversing with a person.
