Film: Point Break (1991/dir. Kathryn Bigelow/2 hrs. 2 min./Tubi)
Key terms
· Persistence of vision: The tendency for one image to persist or linger on our retina as the next image enters our perception, contributing to the illusion of motion pictures.
· Frame: the smallest compositional unit of a reel of film: a single photographic image; also, the boundaries of the image.
· Identification: A mode of engagement with film content; something in the film reminds us of our own experience, and we tend to identify with the relevant character and his or her situation.
· Idealization: A mode of engagement with film content; something in the film resonates with our dreams and aspirations: if only our lives were quite like this!
· Shot: A continuously exposed, uninterrupted, or unedited piece of film of any length; a basic unit of film structure with discernible start and end points.
· Form: The visual and aural shape of a film. Form embraces all aspects of a film’s construction that can be isolated and discussed: the elements of narrative, mise-en-scène (the “look of the scene”), camerawork, sound, and editing.
· Classical Hollywood: The so-called “studio era,” roughly from the advent of sound through World War II. Distinguished by an approach to filmmaking that strove for an “invisible style” that allowed viewers to become absorbed by the world of the film.
· Film Noir: A French term for a style originating with American crime films of the 1940s and 1950s, characterized by deep shadows, night scenes, shady characters, and plots involving elaborate schemes and betrayals.
· Motif: Repeated images, lines of dialogue, or musical themes that are significant to a film’s meaning.
· Flashback: A scene that interrupts the chronological flow of story events by referring to an earlier time.
· Flash forward: A scene that interrupts the chronological flow of story events by skipping ahead to a later time.
· Exposition: The presentation of narrative information that provides context for the story and plot, including character development and the establishment of setting and/or location.
· Closure: The resolution of narrative questions and/or problems.
· Deus ex machina: The introduction of a contrived event to solve the problems set in motion in the story.
· A and B stories: A narrative formula that prioritizes one of the narratives while simultaneously tracking a second narrative.
· Ellipses: The omission of significant chunks of story time in the on-screen plot.
· Nondiagetic: A term used to denote material within a film that comes from outside the world of the story.
· Intertitle: A piece of text inserted into the film to cue the audience to the passage of time. Intertitles might also provide dialogue (in silent films), prologue, or epilogue copy.
· Metonymy: A type of metaphor in which a thing is represented through one of its attributes. Most often this rhetorical form uses a part to signify the whole, e.g., “the crown” to signify royalty.
· CGI: (computer-generated imagery) Images that are not photographically produced but are created on a computer.
· Props: Short for property, an object placed in the set. Props may play a significant part in the action.
· Blocking: The choreographed positioning of actors and camera(s).
· Three-point lighting: A balanced lighting scheme that employs three points of illumination: a bright light that directs our eyes to the subject (key light), a balancing (less intense) fill light that softens the shadows created by the key light, and a backlight behind the subject to add highlights.
· Chiascuro: Dramatic high-contrast lighting that exploits gradations and variations of light and dark in an image.
· Long shot: A shot that includes the entire person and background or a shot where the subject appears relatively small. Variations include the extreme long shot and the medium long shot, a shot of a person from the subject’s knees up or a shot where the subject is slightly smaller than a medium shot.
· Medium shot: A shot of a person from the waist up, or a shot where the scale of the subject is of moderate size.
· Canted shot: A shot made by tilting the camera at an angle on the subject.
· Establishing shot: Also known as master shot, it is a shot that orients the audience for the scene that follows.
· Off-screen space: The space in a scene that the audience cannot see but knows to contain someone or something of importance to the story.
· Tracking shot: A shot produced with a camera that moves smoothly alongside, behind, or ahead of the action.
· Long take: A single continuous shot of unusually long duration.
· Subjective point of view shot: A shot that simulates what a character sees.
· Pan: A lateral camera movement along an imaginary horizontal axis.
· Tilt: An upward camera movement along an imaginary vertical axis.
· Deep focus: Describes a shot where both the foreground and background planes are in sharp focus.
· Racking focus: Describes a shot where the focus shifts among foreground, middle ground, and/or background planes.
· Speed of motion: A camera-based special effect that makes the action on screen move at unrealistic speeds (fast, slow, or briefly paused, or stopped). Speed-of-motion effects are created by filming action at faster or slower speeds and then projecting the images at standard speed.
· Cut: The place where one shot ends and another begins; a direct transition from one shot to the next.
· Graphic match: Also known as a cut on form, it is a way of connecting two or more shots through repeated shapes or patterns.
· Non-diegetic insert: An image inserted into a scene that comes from outside the world of the story.
· Overlapping editing: The repeated presentation of a plot event, expanding its on-screen duration and underscoring its significance.
· Elliptical editing: Editing that allows an action to consume less screen time by transitioning between shots that suggest the passage of time.
· Montage sequence: A series of brief shots that summarizes a section of the story.
· Fade: A transitional device in which a shot slowly darkens and disappears (fade-out) or lightens and appears (fade-in).
· Dissolve: A transitional device in which one shot disappears as another appears.
· Screen direction:
· Iris: A transitional device in which the image contracts or expands within a small circle.
· Wipe: A transitional device where one image appears to be pushed aside by the next.
· Establishing shot: Also known as master shot, it is a shot that orients the audience for the scene that follows.
· Shot/reverse shot: An editing pattern that cuts between two characters in conversation.
· Eyeline match: An editing pattern that cuts between a character looking and the object of his or her gaze.
· Crosscutting: The process of cutting back and forth between two or more parallel actions; also known as parallel editing.
· Jump cut: A cut that seems to suggest a glitch or skip in the film.
· Diegetic sound: Sound that originates from within the story.
· Nondiegetic sound: Music, words, or effects from outside the story world that shape our experience of the film but do not originate within scenes.
· Sound bridge: A sound that connects two scenes. It could be a sound that carries over from one scene to the next or a sound from the second scene that is heard before the first scene ends.
· Non-simultaneous sound: Sound from the past or the future within the story world.
· Internal diegetic sound: A character’s thoughts and memories, heard but not spoken aloud.
· Line reading: The way in which an actor says the words from the scriipt; also called line delivery.
· Score: A nondiegetic musical accompaniment written specifically for a film.
· Fourth wall: The imaginary wall or barrier between the audience and the characters that creates the illusion of a separate story world.
· Dubbing: The process of rerecording dialogue and synchronizing it with shots; also known as looping.
· Voice-over narration: Lines spoken by a narrator that are nondiegetic.
· Musical motif: A brief and recurring pattern of notes.
· Foley artist: A member of the sound design team who creates sounds in a studio using various props.
· Sound cue: A musical theme or sound effect that signals the arrival of a character or the performance of an action.