a film that is nonrepresentational, using form and design to produce its effect and often describable as visual music.

a film that presents recognisable images in such a way that the aim is more poetic than narrative.

a type of filmic organisation in which the parts relate to each other through repetition and variation of such visual qualities as shape, colour, rhythm, and direction of movement. See associational form

a term for standardised shape of film frame established by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts and Sciences. In the original ratio, the frame was 1 1/3 times as wide as it was high (1.33:1); later the width was normalized at 1.85 times the height(1.85:1)

an old term for documentaries

a cue for suggesting represented depth in the image by presenting objects in the distance less distinctly than those in the foreground

a term used in literary criticism to suggest that it is an error to judge a work of art on the basis of its results, especially its emotional effect

theory that deals with the effect of a work of art rather than its creation.

an artistic technique that utilises chance conditions and probability. In aleatory film, images and sounds are not planned in advance.

the natural light surrounding the subject, usually understood to be soft.

a lens for making widescreen films using regular Academy ratio frame size. The camera lens takes in a wide field of view and squeezes it onto the frame, and a similar projector lens unsqueezes in onto a wide theatre screen. CinemaScope and Panavision are examples of anamorphic widescreen processes.

See camera angle

any process whereby artificial movement is created by photographing a series of drawings or computer images one by one.

a production in contrast to the mass production of studio production. A filmmaker, producer, and crew devote their energy to making a single film.

the relationship of the television or film frame's width to its height.

a type of organisation in which the film's parts are juxtaposed to suggest similarities, contrasts, concepts, emotions, and expressive qualities.

sound that is not matched with image, as when dialogue is out of sync with lip movements

Eisenstein's theory of film analyses the image as a series or collection of attractions, each in a dialectical relationship with the others. In this theory, attractions are thus basic elements of film form.

politique des auteurs, first stated by Francois Truffaut in his article "Une certaine tendance du cinema francais" in Cahiers du cinema in 1954, suggests that one person, usually director, has the artistic responsibility for a film and reveals a personal worldview through the tensions among style, theme, and the conditions of production. It argues that films can be studied like novels and paintings as a product of an individual artist.

an "author" of a film, usually identified as the director, especially a director with a recognisable style and whose personal vision dominates the film or filmmaking process, as opposed to just a "metteur en scene" whose direction is considered more like craftsmanship.

artists who are more intellectually or aesthetically advanced than are their contemporaries (if we assume that art is progressing). Avant garde films are generally non-narrative in structure.

In the continuity editing system, the imaginary line that passes from side to side through a main actors, defining the spatial relations of all the elements of the scene as being to the right or the left. It is also called the 180-degree line. When the camera crosses this axis at a cut, those spatial relations are reversed thereby confusing the audience. It is one of cardinal rules of continuity editing not to cross this axis during a sequence.