Film Editing Glossary

ACCELERATED MOTION. Means whereby movement in a shot is represented as taking place at greater speed than it did in reality; opposite of SLOW MOTION.

ACTUAL SOUND. Sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film: e.g., words spoken by a character on screen; words spoken by a character whose presence has been previously visually established; the ringing of a bell which is either visible on screen or accepted to be present in the room. The term is used throughout the text of this book in this specially defi ned sense.

See also opposite: COMMENTATIVE SOUND.

ANGLE. See CAMERA ANGLE.

ASSEMBLE. To carry out the first process in film editing, namely, to collect together the required shots and join them in provisional order, thus producing a ROUGH CUT.

BACK-LIGHTING. Where the main source of light is directed towards the camera, thus tending to throw the subject into silhouette.

BACK PROJECTION. Projection of a film on to a translucent screen from a projector (placed behind the screen) in order to provide a moving background for actors working in a studio.

CAMERA ANGLE. Angle of view subtended at the lens by the portion of the subject included within the picture area.

CHEAT SHOT. Shot in which part of the subject or action is excluded from view in order to make the part which is recorded appear different from what it actually is (e.g., a shot of a man falling from the top of a building into a net spread six feet below, but with the net out of view in order to suggest that he has fallen a great distance).

CINEMASCOPE. 20th-century Fox’s trade name for their widescreen process, employing a ratio of 1:2.5.

CONTINUITY GIRL. Technician responsible for recording the details of each take during shooting in order to ensure that no discrepancies occur between shots when the material is edited.

CONTINUITY TITLE. Title designed to bridge a break in the pictorial continuity.

CRAB. To move the camera sideways on a dolly.

CRANE SHOT. Moving shot taken by the camera on a specially constructed crane.

CROSS-CUT. To intermingle the shots of two or more scenes in the course of editing so that fragments of each scene will be presented to the spectator’s attention alternately. See PARALLEL ACTION.

DAILIES. See RUSHES.

DEPTH OF FIELD. Distance between the nearest and farthest points from the camera at which the subject is acceptably sharp.

DIRECT CINEMA. See CINÉMA-VÉRITÉ.

DISSOLVE. Gradual merging of the end of one shot into the beginning of the next, produced by the superimposition

of a fade-out on to a fade-in of equal length.

DOLLY. Vehicle on which the camera and cameraman can be wheeled about during a take.

DOLLY SHOT. Shot taken while the camera is in motion on a dolly.

DUB. 1. To re-record the sound-track of a film, substituting for the speech of the language originally used, a spoken translation in some other language. 2. To re-record (q.v.).

DUPE. To print a duplicate negative from a positive.

DUPE NEGATIVE. Negative made from a positive print; negative which is not the original negative.

DUPING PRINT. Special soft print (lavender or fine grain) made from an original negative so that a dupe negative can subsequently be made from it.

EDITOLA. Trade name of one model of editing machine.

EFFECTS TRACK. Sound-track of sound effects other than speech and music.

ESTABLISHING SHOT. Shot (usually long shot) used near the beginning of a scene to establish the interrelationship of details to be shown subsequently in nearer shots.

FADE-OUT. Opposite of FADE-IN.

FLASHBACK. Sequence in a fi lm which takes the action of the story into the past; used either as a reminder to the audience of an earlier event or to indicate the recollections of one of the characters.

FOCUS PULL. To re-focus the lens during a shot so that a part of the image farther from or nearer to the camera is brought into sharp focus, so allowing the first subject to go “ soft. ”

FOOTAGE. Length of a film measured in feet.

FRAME. One single transparent photograph of the series printed on a length of cinematograph fi lm.

FREEZE-FRAME. At a chosen point in a scene a particular frame is printed repeatedly, so giving the effect of arresting, “ freezing ” the action.

INTERCUT. See CROSS-CUT.

IRIS. Circle-shaped mask (q.v.) and diminishing circle.

IRIS-IN and -OUT. A decorative fade-in or -out in which the image appears or disappears as a growing or diminishing oval. Much used in the silent cinema.

JOIN. See SPLICE.

JUMP CUT. Cut which breaks continuity of time by jumping forward from one part of an action to another obviously separated from the first by an interval of time.

KEY-LIGHTING, HIGH or LOW. A high-key image is one with a characteristic all-over lightness achieved by soft, full illumination on a light-toned subject with light shadows and background. Low-key is the reverse of this.

LAP-DISSOLVE. See DISSOLVE.

LEAD, LEADER, LEADER STRIP. Length of fi lm joined to the beginning of a reel for threading through the camera, projector, etc.

LIBRARY SHOT. Shot used in a fi lm but not recorded specially for it; shot taken from a library or store of shots kept for future use.

MARRIED PRINT. Positive print of a fi lm carrying both sound and picture.

MASK. Shield placed before the camera to cut off some portion of the camera’s field of view.

MASTER SHOT. Single shot of an entire piece of dramatic action taken in order to facilitate the assembly of the component closer shots of details from which the sequence will finally be covered.

NARRATAGE. Method whereby one of the characters in a story fi lm is depicted as telling the story of the film.

OPTICAL. Any device carried out by the optical department of a laboratory requiring the use of the optical printer, e.g., dissolve, fade, wipe.

OPTICAL PRINTER. Apparatus for enabling images from one fi lm to be photographed on to another film by means of a lens, used in making reduction prints and for special effects and trick work.

PAN. To rotate the camera about its vertical axis during a shot.

PANNING SHOT. Shot taken with a panning camera.

PARALLEL ACTION. Device of narrative construction in which the development of two pieces of action is represented simultaneously by showing first a fragment of one, then a fragment of the other, and so on alternately. See CROSS-CUTTING.

PLAN-SEQUENCE. A long and usually complex shot involving much camera movement during which a whole scene is shot in one take without cuts.

PLAY-BACK. Reproduction of a sound-track in a studio during shooting to enable action or additional sound or both to be synchronized with it.

POST-SYNCHRONIZATION. Recording and adding sound to a picture after the picture itself has been shot.

PRINT. Positive copy of a film.

RELATIONAL EDITING. Editing of shots to suggest association of ideas between them.

RE-RECORD. To make a sound record from one or more other sound records; especially to make a single sound-track from the several component tracks of a film.

RE-TAKE. Repetition of a take.

RE-WIND, RE-WINDER. Apparatus for re-winding film.

ROUGH CUT. First assembly of a film which the editor prepares from the selected takes, joining them in the order planned in the script but leaving finer points of timing and editing to a later stage.

RUSHES. Prints of takes which are made immediately after a day’s shooting so that they can be viewed on the following day.

SET-UP. Camera position.

SLOW CUTTING. Cutting and joining of shots so lengthy that they follow each other in slow succession on the screen.

SLOW MOTION. Means by which movement in a shot is represented as taking place more slowly than it did in reality. Opposite of ACCELERATED MOTION.

SOUND-TRACK. Narrow path normally running along one side of the frames of cinematograph sound film, in which the sound is recorded in the form of a light trace varying in its light transmission.

SPECIAL EFFECT. Any effect which is introduced into a film after shooting by the special effects department, e.g., matte shots, “ ghost ” images, special montages.

STOCK-SHOT. See LIBRARY SHOT.

SUPER-IMPOSE. To print two shots, one on top of the other, on the same length of film, so that when projected on the screen each can be seen through the other.

SYNC. See SYNCHRONIZE.

SYNCHRONIZE. To place, during editing, the sound-track in such a position relative to the picture track that on projection a particular selected sound will be heard at the same instant as a particular selected image is seen. In most cases, this is done in order to make the reproduced sound coincide with the appearance on the screen of the sound’s natural source.

SYNCHRONIZER. Apparatus which facilitates the mechanical operation of synchronizing two tracks.

SYNCHRONOUS SOUND. Sound which has been synchronized with the picture.

TAKE. Single recording of a shot.

TILT. To turn the film camera up or down in shooting so that the axis of the lens rotates through a vertical plane.

TRACKING SHOT. Shot taken with a tracking camera.

TROLLEY. Wheeled vehicle on which the camera can be moved while taking a shot.

TRUCKING SHOT. Shot taken when the camera is in movement on a truck or trolley.

TWO-SHOT. Shot framing two people, usually from the waist up.

WIDE-ANGLE LENS. Lens of short focal length with a wide angle of view and great depth of field.

WIDESCREEN. Screen ratios wider than the 1:1.33 of the traditional sound cinema. Inaugurated in the form of Cinemascope (q.v.). Later adopted throughout the industry in a variety of forms with ratios of 1:1.65 and wider.

WILD SHOOTING. Shooting the picture of a sound film without at the same time recording the sound of the action.

WILD TRACK. Sound-track recorded independently of any picture with which it may subsequently be combined.

WIPE. Form of transition from one shot to another in which a line appears to travel across the screen removing, as it travels, one shot and revealing another.

ZOOM. To magnify a chosen area of the image by means of a zoom lens (variable focal length), so appearing to move the camera closer to the subject.

35_K52185:32:07 PM