Film+Language

Back to... IB Film

** FILM LANGUAG﻿E ** Add key film language terms here. Remember to include definitions and examples... **Handheld Camera** : the use of cameraman's body as a camera support e.g. various scenes in //Motorcycle Diaries//. **Three-point Lighting:** the combined use of a key light, fill light and backlight to center attention on the main actors/objects, and is used in most films and television shows. **Key Light:** the dominant lighting source used to illuminate the scene, and usually casts strong shadows. **Fill Light:** the secondary lighting source used to soften shadows created by the key light. **Backlight:** the light source coming from behind the actors/objects in focus, and usually creates silhouettes. **Budget:** the amount of money used to produce a film. **Box office bomb** (aka **flop**): a film were the production and marketing costs exceeds the gross revenue regained by the movie studio (e.g. //Final Fantasy:The Spirits Within// of 2001). **Gross revenue**: the total amount of money gained at the box office for a certain movie. **Frequency**: in a narrative film it refers to the aspect of temporal manipulation that involves the number of times any story event is shown in the plot. **Boom**: a pole where the microphone can be suspended upon the filmed scene. It's used to change the microphone's position during an action shift. **Closure**: the degree to which the ending of a narrative film reveals the effects of casual events and resolves the lines of action. **Superimposition**: the exposure of more than one image on the same film strip/shot. **Variation**: in film, the return of an element with identifiable changes. **Snuff film**: A motion picture that depicts the actual death of a person for pure entertaining purposes. They are actually regarded as an urban legend because so far no real snuff film has ever been released. Fake-snuff films or presumed snuff films include the Japanese gore-horror series //Guinea Pig// and //Cannibal Holocaust// by Ruggero Deodato. **To green-light**: (verb) to give permission and approve production finance of a film. **Mondo film**: an exploitation documentary film (usually a pseudo-documentary) depicting astonishing topics, scenes and situations. A useful - if rather exhaustive - glossary... [] Other useful glossary sites... [] [] [] []