Dictionary of Film Terms the Aesthetic Companion to Film Art Pdf
Tabular array Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Near the author
- Nearly the book
- Praise of the author
- This eBook tin be cited
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- A
- B
- C
- D
- Eastward
- F
- One thousand
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- K
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- Due west
- Z
- Term Alphabetize
- Motion-picture show Index
- Topical Index
- Artist Index
← viii | 9 → Foreword
Throughout his academic career, Professor Frank Beaver has opened the world of film for countless people through his reverence, enthusiasm, and amore for the movie theater. Non long after I entered the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, I heard the pupil buzz about Professor Beaver'southward courses. It was the general consensus that his classes were unofficially mandatory regardless of your major subject. This was not well-nigh the usual lure for undergraduates who discover that they tin can earn higher credit for watching movies; rather, Professor Beaver had the reputation for expanding students' cultural awareness and worldview. In his courses one discovered, and studied with substantial rigor, the masterworks of world movie house new and old, and came to empathize filmmaking every bit a universal art form linking usa across cultures and to our own history. Yep, he had a vast cognition of film history, theory, and practise, but Professor Beaver's real magic was in his talent and dedication equally a teacher. He had a rare power to truly connect people to cinema, fostering an understanding of the fine art course and a deeper engagement with films no matter where or how they are produced—from Hollywood to India, from commercial movies to auteur films, from experimental shorts to widescreen epics.
← ix | x → This same spirit jumps off every page of Frank Beaver'south fantabulous dictionary. This book is more than an extended glossary or a dry list of key terms and their definitions. As cinema's Samuel Johnson, Frank Beaver has thoroughly catalogued, with precision and dash, the essential terms used in the world of film product and scholarship. He has also expanded many of these definitions with an all-encompassing range of examples and references informed past his historical and cultural acuity. Looking upwards the word "archetype" yields no fewer than five film references, each serving every bit an example for a dissimilar facet of the term. The entry for the common editing term "outtake" doesn't merely define the word, but discusses four films that vividly illustrate what outtakes are and even reveals their creative potential—including their popular use as end credit cloth. And the ten film examples cited for "suspense picture (thriller)" trace the historic center of the genre from the classic models such as Rear Window (1954) to the most contemporary manifestations, such as the political suspense thriller Argo (2012). Each entry conveys the astute observations of a film historian and scholar and also demonstrates the touch of a master teacher passionate to share his knowledge of picture show.
To be sure, compiling a dictionary of moving-picture show terms requires a passion for the topic, but maintaining and updating a dictionary require superhuman vigilance. The cinematic universe contains not ane, but multiple languages: the visual language of storytelling, the slang of directors, grips, and gaffers on a set, the linguistic communication of disquisitional study, the parlance of popular soapbox, and the jargon of industry insiders. In add-on, this is a field that changes often, shedding and developing new technical practices, artful concepts, and fresh scholarly perspectives at a frenetic rate. Who better to author such a lexicon than a professor emeritus who has made the report of picture, with its unremitting evolution, his life's work? The many new entries in this edition, such as "epistolary film/narrative," "bullet time," "gender-bender," "wire fu," and updated film references such as Blue Jasmine, All Is Lost, Dallas Buyers Club, Within Llewyn Davis, and The Lego Film, ensure that however again The Dictionary of Film Terms accurately reflects the state of the art. For decades, ← 10 | eleven → Frank Beaver has been a trusted guide and companion, helping usa to fluently negotiate the many tongues of the motility picture medium. And just as the languages in cinema are multiple, the people who can apply this lexicon are many: the practitioner, the scholar, the student, and the film buff will all find this text an essential reference. Even the casual moviegoer should proceed this book nearby, equally words and expressions from film product and scholarship frequently move from specialized terminology to common usage, becoming essential vocabulary for basic media literacy. It is no wonder that this reference text has remained in print for over twenty years and continues to be distributed internationally. It's all in hither.
In my own career equally a filmmaker, screenwriter, and film professor I accept used Frank Beaver'south dictionary often. It'due south one of those indispensable and trustworthy reference books that I reach for. But beware: in flipping through these pages, it's easy to become lost in the book, to exist fatigued into the lively, timely, and endlessly fascinating give-and-take almost motion pictures. This is a give-and-take that Frank Beaver has been engaged in throughout his career—with students in classrooms, with colleagues at conferences, and with the readers of his books. Information technology is that same enlightening and vital discussion that inspired me to dedicate my own education and career to the written report of pic immediately after my first film form with Professor Beaver, and it is a discussion that will testify irresistible to anyone who picks up this wonderful dictionary.
Mick Hurbis-Cherrier
Professor of Motion-picture show
Hunter Higher—CUNY New York, 2014 ← 11 | xii →
← xii | 13 → Preface
In updating Lexicon of Moving picture Terms to a Fifth Edition, I have included several dozen new and expanded definitions that provide for a comprehensive overview of the cinematic techniques, aesthetic concepts, structural elements, genres, and styles that have evolved as vital components of motion picture show fine art and movement picture criticism.
New terms include, amid many others: brocom/bromantic, bullet fourth dimension, epistolary moving picture, gender bender, LED lighting, reunion film, and wire fu. Among those definitions that accept been expanded to contain new commentary and their meanings within contemporary film art are, to cite a few: dorsum story, computer-generated imagery (CGI), psychosexual (analysis), queer movie theater, gross-out film, and running gag. In add-on, there are more than 150 new movie references within term definitions that were not cited in previous editions.
Altogether this Fifth Edition comprises an upwards-to-date, concise handbook on the methods and unique multifaceted and constantly changing medium of motility picture storytelling and creative expression. Through definition, caption, and select photographic illustrations, the Dictionary offers both the commonly used and the non-so-familiar terms that have been employed in describing cinema in all its aspects.
← xiii | fourteen →In an try to provide a thorough overview of film aesthetics, Dictionary of Film Terms includes definitions that are relevant to the determinative development of the movement movie, such as actualité, last-minute rescue, and Russian montage (encounter montage); as well as those that are applicable to contemporary movie house, such equally animatronics, bluescreen/greenscreen procedure, digital cinema/projection, neo-noir moving picture, synthespian, franchise motion picture, and wire fu. Many film terms accept both historical and contemporary value. When this is the case I take noted the historical continuity by citing earlier every bit well as more recent films for which the concept or technique has relevance. For example, in the definition of multi-tasking narrative, reference is made to D.W. Griffith's four-story ballsy Intolerance (1916), as well as to the innovative I'm Non In that location (2007), a multi-story handling of facets of singer Bob Dylan'south life.
Technical terminology has been incorporated freely into the Dictionary, only in each entry involving a technological concept, an endeavour has been made to expand the definition then that it encompasses and suggests the term's value as an aesthetic variant of film expression. The term "grain," for example, carries both a chemic and an aesthetic pregnant. Similarly, the term "vertigo effect" refers not only to a camera lens procedure, but likewise to a technique with unusual expressive possibilities.
I take fabricated an attempt to ascertain each term so that information technology stands on its own. For easy referencing, nonetheless, a term that is used in defining a concept and that appears elsewhere in the Dictionary as a divide definition is indicated in boldface blazon. Other relevant terms to which the reader might desire to refer are listed at the end of the definitions.
For further referencing and written report, a topical alphabetize is included at the finish of the Lexicon. This special index lists groups of terms that relate to umbrella concepts of film art such as editing, cinematography, lighting, sound, limerick, and so on.
My goal has been to provide a dictionary of film terms that the filmgoer and film pupil will find illuminating in the range and clarity of its entries.
Frank Due east. Beaver
← xiv | xv →Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to the following individuals for their invaluable contributions to the evolution of this fifth edition of Dictionary of Motion picture Terms. Kickoff to Mary Savigar of Peter Lang Publishing for her advice on new, gimmicky terms that would bring the dictionary into the present, and for her astute and precise editing of the last manuscript. It was again a great do good and pleasance to have Mary's editorial skills at paw. I besides must once more acknowledge Daniel Madaj for his impeccable training of the manuscript and for the arduous creation of the four concluding index entries, which assistance increase the dictionary's referential value. Thank you to Phil Hallman, Film Studies Field Librarian at the University of Michigan, for his aid in selecting new photographs that would bring the dictionary's movie entries upwardly-to-appointment. For their ongoing encouragement I offer gratitude to Prof. Mick Hurbis-Cherrier of Hunter University, to Prof. Michael Frierson of the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and to Sultan Sharrief, award-winning filmmaker and media educator. All three were former students of mine at the University of Michigan. The staff of the British Film Institute Library in London provided gracious research help. Also ← xv | xvi → in London I profited from the good advice of Eleanor, Abigail, and Charles Smith, ages xix, 16, and eleven, who told me about films they had seen that they thought fit well as new entries in existing definitions. I might have been surprised past their insights, but then they are my grandchildren, and they seem to love film as much as their "Bompa." Thank y'all to one and all.
Likewise, gratitude must be paid to Tom Bechtle and Bernadette Shade at Peter Lang for their invaluable re-create editing.
Too I want to acknowledge Bob Goodrich and his staff at Quality 16 Theaters for assuasive me to lookout films the way they are all-time seen: on a wide screen in a darkened movie firm.
← xvi | 1 → A
Absolute motion-picture show Another term used to define abstract, non-representational expression in movie theater that developed as part of the avant-garde, experimental film movement in Europe in the 1920s. Form in the absolute film is derived from graphic and rhythmic emphases rather than from whatsoever narrative or logical ordering of the images.
Abstract film A type of film that expresses, through its rhythms and visual design, intentions that are essentially non-narrative. Brainchild emphasizes grade over content. In an abstruse motion picture that employs recognizable objects, the images are used not to suggest their usual meanings but for effects that are created past the movie's editing, visual techniques, sound qualities, and rhythmic design—that is, form. The rhythmical and mechanical motion of common objects in Fernand Léger'due south Ballet Mécanique (1924) represents a type of abstract film. Many contemporary blithe films, in which colors and shapes are the principal interest of the artist, can also be described as abstruse in quality. The animated calculator films of John and James Whitney, for example, represent a type of abstract film: Permutations (1968), Lapis (1963–66). These films consist of abstract configurations that are calculator generated. The images are enhanced ← 1 | 2 → by optical techniques such as filter coloring and dissolves to give the works a feeling of totally free, not-associative course. Stan Brakhage in Mothlight (1963) created an abstract design in motion by attaching moth wings to Mylar tape and then printing the images on film without an accompanying audio runway. See Experimental moving picture, Avant-garde.
Academic editing (run into Invisible cut)
Accelerated montage (meet Montage)
Acting (for film) The flick actor has been divers in many ways: equally a nonactor, equally a mannequin, as a "maker of faces." These descriptive labels result in part from the mosaic, edited nature of film construction. A film performance, like a film scene, is often "built" rather than shot. Information technology has besides been said that the screen actor is more dependent on physical characteristics than the phase histrion and that physique and facial features oft decide the kinds of roles a flick actor plays throughout an unabridged career. A skilful example of this can be seen in Clint Eastwood'southward performance equally an aging boxer-trainer in Million Dollar Baby (2004), a film he also directed. Eastwood'due south familiar screen prototype has remained nearly unchanged from his 1960s "spaghetti westerns" through the rogue-cop Dirty Harry series and into individual character roles, e.g., The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Whatever the role, Eastwood'due south face on screen has been locked in a perpetual squint with the rima oris slightly agape. Withal in the final thirty minutes of One thousand thousand Dollar Baby, the filmgoer experiences the magic of contextual editing'south affect on screen functioning. In spite of the familiar visage, Eastwood'southward face seems to harbor and convey a complex range of psychological emotions. The issue, achieved ← 2 | 3 → by intercutting close-ups of Eastwood with other characters and diverse inanimate objects, is unforgettably powerful (see Montage of attraction).
Acting. Cate Blanchett as a troubled ex-New York socialite in Woody Allen's Blueish Jasmine (2013) exhibited nuanced acting skills and psychological intensity in a screen performance that earned her critical accolades and several acting awards.
Because of the possibility for candid, natural acting and considering the screen functioning does non always demand refined theatrical skills, the film thespian has often been described by theorists as an individual whose art is that of effective behaving. "Behaving" in motion-motion picture acting implies concessions to the piecemeal process of filmmaking. Unlike the phase actor, who enjoys the do good of a continuous functioning, the motion picture actor must commonly develop a graphic symbol in bits and pieces and usually out of story-line sequence. The manager guides the actors from scene to scene, oftentimes giving them on the spot the emotions and actions required in a given situation. Rehearsal time is often kept to a minimum because of both the shooting process and the economics of filmmaking.
Source: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1054423