Kinetoscope - Sara VandergriffA kinetoscope was a device used in early motion-pictures as a peephole viewer. Its was used to view films by looking through the peephole at the top of the box one viewer at a time. The kinetoscope was invented by Thomas Edison and his employee, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson in 1891.
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Long Shot - LaShonda Davidson
Macguffin - Rachel Mellen
Magic Lantern - Sara VandagriffMagic Lantern is an early form of the movie projector.
In 1880, the English artist, Eadweard Muybridge used the magic lantern to display a series of his photos. By doing this he was able to show motion in his photography. |
Masking - Derek McClanahan
Masking is a technique used during the film editing process to enhance or simply change the quality and appearance of the film. This includes color correcting, sharpening, color effects, and brightness and contrast editing.
Masking can also define the act of separating a particular subject from a frame to protect it from changing with the rest of the picture. Editors use these types of masking to alter the original appearance of the footage to match the tone of the story. Darker pictures are more specific to horror or drama films, while bright, vibrant pictures are used in comedies and love stories. Masking techniques are also implemented to compensate for poor lighting conditions. While some of this can be done with the camera itself, most is done in post-production. In early motion picture production, masking was limited because it all had to be done manually with the nitrate film strips themselves. However with the advanced computer software of today, there really is no limit to what editors can do to a film. |
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Master Shot - Sara Vandergriff
A master shot is usually a long shot that keeps all the characters in view throughout the sequence.
Doing this can make the shot have a stage-like quality. Most films in the 30's and 40's would build scenes by using the master shot as top priority making it look “stagey”. Since then film has moved away from that, but the master shot is still important and used today. http://movieclips.com/8Yb75-catch-me-if-you-can-movie-nobodys-chasing-you/ link to a master shot from Catch Me If You Can |
Match Cut - Stephanie FitzgeraldMatch cut in film is a technique in which an element or object from one scene is brought into the next scene which sometimes creates continuity and symbolism, while other times it is used for its visual appeal. To create the right effect, the objects must be similar their proportions to the rest of the screen. A match cut is sometimes used to show continuity between to places or time periods that are very far away. The opening scene of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) is considered to be the earliest use of match cut. The angles in the chain-link fence match the angles of the mansion. Then, the snow outside is cut to a match of snow inside of a snow globe. Twenty years later, Hitchcock used match cut in the shower scene of Psycho (1960). The shot of blood running down the drain zooms in to the drain which then cuts to an eye of the same shape and proportion. Many people also cite 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as the most famous (and blatant) example of match cut when the bone tossed in the air is matched with a satellite. The two objects occur thousands of years apart, but the shape of the two objects shows similarity without jolting the audience.
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2011/05/25/graphic-content-ahead/ http://www.comixtribe.com/2011/03/07/mastering-the-match-cut/ http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MatchCut |
Meaning - Brittany Buckner
Referential Meaning is derived from an allusion to particular items of knowledge outside the film that the viewer is expected to recognize. A viewer unacquainted with such information would miss some of the meanings cued in the film. Relies on the audience ability to identify certain references to setting, time, etc.
Explicit Meaning is the significance presented in the film often near the beginning or ending of the film. Controlled by context. Concrete point of the film. Specifically related to the events of the film. Implicit Meaning is used when the significance not stated directly in the film, but left for the viewer to discover upon analysis or reflection. An interpretation. Symptomatic Meaning comes from the significance that the film presents through its historical or social context. Characteristics of the movie based on the social beliefs at the time. Relates the events of the film and point it makes to the society. |
Method Acting - Joshua SkaggsThe act of submersing an actor into the lifestyle, culture and likeness of the character they are portraying. Actors that use this method typically employ the characters specific character traits, psychological behaviors and physical demeanor. In addition to the psychological aspects, actors often either gain weight or change their physical appearance to fit the part.
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Mise-en-scène - Jennifer DunivantMise-en-scène, taken from the French meaning “scene setting” or “staging” refers to every element inside a frame of film. The director has specifically deemed all these elements as worthy of framing in order to evoke an emotion or a specific mood from the audience; therefore all the components are important. Elements of mise-en-scène include the lighting, the props, the placement of the props and the actor(s), color schemes (if applicable), an actor’s make-up, hair and wardrobe, as well as any sounds, music and dialogue.
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Mixing - Adam Dewitt
A very basic definition of audio mixing would be combining more than one recorded sound track onto a single track. Mixing is used in editing to add and sometimes fix dialogue, music, and sound effects in a film. The first step in determining what is needed is called spotting. This is done with a sound editor, and sometimes the director of the film, by going through each second of the film and listing each sound that needs to be added, replaced, or even augmented. The dialogue can sometimes be very muffled by production noises or can just be something as trivial as one syllable being unheard. Sometimes it is easier to just not record the sound of a scene when shooting is on location. The dialogue in these scenes are recorded and added to the soundtrack later. The sound effects give a lot more creative license to the sound editors. This track is usually made from scratch. This gives the sound editors the power to choose what is heard and how it is heard by the audience. Another editor does the score for the film. The music editor must synchronize the music to the exact cue in the film. This is done by marking each cue before the music is composed and then working with the composer to make this happen.
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Montage - William McCormick
A montage is a flow of images edited in a manner to give the viewer lots of information in a small amount of time. The images can also be unrelated to inflect ideas not brought out by each individual shot but rather their relation to one another. This technique is used in films like Rocky where the main character is seen training in the montage that covers months in a matter of minutes.
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Montage Sequence - Yerang Jeong
“Montage” is derived from French “monter” which means to gather or compound, and "sequence" means a series of scenes. That is, montage sequence indicates a process to edit several scenes. Montage sequence is especially used to connect many images fast and continuously. This technique can not only provide a variety of information to viewers in a short time because of compression of time and space, but also can imply a dream, illusion, or recollection of the past events. It includes fade, dissolve, wipe, superimposition, and so on.
In Citizen Cane, in the scene that Carter goes outside from the office after he fought with Kane, dissolve, one of the technique of montage sequences, was used. We can see that two scenes are overlapped concurrently. |
Motif - William McCormack
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A motif is an element
of a film which can range from an item to an idea to individuals who represent
something subtle but important to the flow and narrative of the film.
Motifs create expectations for the viewer. When presented with a red balloon is The Sixth Sense, the viewer understands that something bad is coming. A kiss on the cheek in The Godfather and the viewer is waiting for the demise of the recipient of the kiss. Motifs can identify the signature of certain artists and help us place their work in a larger context. Some directors place motifs of the same nature in various films, putting their own personal tag on their works. Motifs such as Bond’s gadgets stretch over all Bond films. |
Narrative Film - Thomas Matthew McCombs A narrative is almost always a fictional movie that tells a story. The narrative film focuses strongly on characters and a series of events the characters go through to unveil the story. A narrative film focuses heavily on camera work and other elements to help draw the audience into
the characters and the story. In the early 1900s most films were very short, mostly consisting of one scene, and these films were usually documentaries or technique how to films. In 1903 Edwin S. Porter directed Life of an American Fireman, which many film historians consider one of the earliest attempts to add some story telling elements to film. D.W. Griffith is known as the first master of the narrative film. His 1908 film The Fatal Hour tells the story of a woman kidnapped by a villain, and then she is rescued by the hero. It is now a typical narrative story, but not so typical at the time. Over the next century the stories became more masterful, and new techniques continued to be developed to help bring the narrative film to life. source: http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/120/empire/narrativefilm.html |
Nondiegetic Insert - Anna Beth Ferguson
A nondiegetic insert is a shot or a sequence of shots that show images not in the realm of the narrative. Usually, something the character imagines and is shown in a dream like presentation.
The term “diegesis” is a Greek word for "recounted story." So the story’s diegesis is the total world of the story action. While diegetic inserts come from inside the story world and non-diegetic from outside, they form the film’s entire story. An example would be from the movie Mean Girls. In this scene, the main character Cady has a daydream that the conflict she is exposed should be settled like it is in the animal world. So, the characters act as if they were animals, with nondiegtic inserts including a lion roaring as Kady attacks Regina. Then, we are brought back to the actual story and shows how she really responds. |
Omniscient Point of View - Jennifer DunivantAn Omniscient Point of View in film is usually a shot taken from a very high angle, showing what the characters cannot see, but the camera can. This shot succeeds in illustrating how small the lead character is (one of the dots below) compared to the political entity that is the UN building
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