A
ACCELERATED MOTION. Photographing action at a  slower than normal rate so that when projected it appears faster than in reality.
ADAPTATION. Transforming a story conceived for another medium (a novel, a play) so that it may be retold in the movies.
ALLUSION. A meaningful reference to another work of art or indeed to anything outside the film text.
AMBIENT LIGHT. Also called available light or natural light. Footage captured in ambient light uses no technological enhancements in capturing the image.
AMBIENT SOUND. Also called available sound or natural sound. Ambient sound captures voices and background noise without any attempt to select out the unwanted.
ANGLE. The perspective on the vertical axis from which a shot is taken: low, high, medium, etc.
ANIMATION. The use of artificial means to make still images seem to move: claymation, stop-action, cartooning, digital animation,  etc.
ART FILM.  A kind of genre film distinguished by its apparent absence of formula and its appeal to a highly specialized audience of film lovers (cinephiles).
ASPECT RATIO. The relative size of the width to the height of the frame: 1.85 to 1 in the current "Academy ratio." Altered when film is transferred to video.
AUTEUR THEORY. The hypothesis, originating in France in the 1950s as the "politique des auteurs" (as formulated by Truffaut and others) that a movie, though a collaboration--Bergman has likened the making of a film to the construction of a medieval cathedral--is given its essential identity by one person: the director. The body of films of a given director--the work of a director like Fellini, for example, or John Ford, and even that of lesser lights as well--say a James Cameron or a Spike Lee--will, according to the auteur theory, exhibit as well the distinctive signature(s) of its auteur and may be profitably studied as such.
AVANT-GARDE. Cutting edge art, art ahead of its time (the advance guard--as in an army).

B
B-MOVIE. Originally a cheaply made second feature. More generally, any low-budget film with poor production values.
BACKLIGHTING. Lighting an actor or actress from behind, thereby giving the character a sentimental halo effect. Common in early cinema, especially with leading ladies.
BIOPIC. A biographical film, especially those form the 1930s and '40s.

C
CINÉASTE.  Someone deeply involved in the cinema, though not necessaryily an actual filmmaker. Truffaut was a cineaste before he became a director. His fellow cineaste Bazin remained a critic.
CINÉMA VERITÉ.  A documentary style that arose in the 1960s and which emphasized real events captured usally with a handheld camera.
CINEMATIC APPARATUS. Describes not just the cinema-machine but the whole "institution" of the movies, when "'institution' is taken more widely than the habitual notion of the cinema industry to include the 'interior machine' of the psychology of the spectator, 'the social regulation of spectatorial metapsychology,' the industry of the 'mental machinery' of cinema,' cinema as technique of the imaginary" (Stephen Heath). Camera lenses, for example, already inscribe ideology in that they organize a visual field according to laws of perspective.
CINEMATIC CALCULUS.  Eisenstein's dreamed-of exact editing language which would produced Pavlovian predetermined, pre-calculated precise emotions in its spectators.
CINEMATOGRAPHER. The individual responsible for capturing a film's images on film.
CINEPHILE. Literally a lover of film. Not quite a cineaste.
CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD TEXT. The traditional, seamless Hollywood narrative, a system of representation which--according to Colin McCabe--"cannot deal with the real as contradictory" and always "ensures the position of the subject in a relation of dominant specularity."
CLOSURE, NARRATIVE. A conclusion giving the feeling that a narrative or narrative sequence has come to an end and providing it with an ultimate unity and coherence. An end creating in the receiver a feeling of appropriate completion and finality.
CO-OPTATION. The absorption or expropriation of formerly oppositional ideas or practices into the service of IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE. (Godfrey Reggio's 1983 film Koyaanisqatsi, for example, was intended as an indictment of the insanity of modern American culture, but its visual style has now become prominent in contemporary advertising.)
CONNOTATION. The suggestive or associative sense of an expression that extends beyond its literal definition. A second order system of signification which uses the denotation of a sign as its signifier and adds other meanings, other signfiers, often ideological in nature. A picture of Ronald Reagan denoted the actual person but connoted many other things to the electorate; for example, old fashioned values, the return of America to greatness again ("morning in America").
CONTINUITY. The ongoing logic and order of a movie narrative. Since movies are routinely shot out of order, making certain that props, sets, costumes, mise-en-scene, action, etc. are consistent and seem to follow naturally out of one another is a major problem for a film director
CONVENTION. The customary, "conventional" way of doing something in a work of art.
CREDIT SEQUENCE. That segment of a movie's beginning in which the credits appear, either as titles overlaying the action or separately, outside the diegesis.
CROSS-CUTTING. Moving back and forth between two parallel scenes..

D

DEEP-FOCUS. Lighting and photographing a shot in such a way that all focal planes are in focus simultaneously.  For Bazin, Orson Welles' and Greg Toland's democratic use of deep focus in Citizen Kane marked a decisive turn away from Eisenstein's manipulative montage.
DENOTATION. The literal meaning of an expression. The first order of SIGNIFICATION. A photograph of Ronald Reagan denotes (is) Ronald Reagan.
DIEGESIS. The fictional world of the film, the "actual" world of the film's story created by its narrative.
DISCOURSE. 1) How a STORY is told; an aspect of NARRATIVE distinguishable from STORY; the expression plane of narrative as opposed to its content plane; the narrating as opposed to the narrated. 2) Sometimes used as roughly equivalent synonym for text, to refer to any sampling of verbal/non-verbal exchange/conversation singled out for critical study; for example: feminist discourse, academic discourse, sports discourse, cinematic discourse, etc.
DISSOLVE. When an image slowly disappears from the screen, replaced by another subsequent image which is momentarily superimposed upon it.

E
ESTABLISHING SHOT. An opening shot of a film or a film sequence intended to reveal (often with the use of titles) thee local in which the film or film sequence will take place.

F
FADE-IN. When the screen goes from dark to light, gradually revealing an image.
FADE-OUT. When the screen goes from light to dark, gradually obscuring an image.
FEMME FATALE. A strong female character who proves to be lethal to the careers and or lives of the men who beccome involved with her. A common element in the film noir formula.
FILM GENRE. The deep structure, the "grammar," from which individual GENRE FILMS draw (Schatz).
FILM NOIR. A "genre," first identified by the French, which emerged during and after the Second World War in America. Characterized by pessmism, visual and moral darkness, an obsession with crime, and extensive use of voice-over.
FINAL CUT. The final editing of a film for release. Though most Class A directors retain final cut privileges on their films, sometimes a studio or a prominent star may have final say.
FLASH FORWARD.  Jumping ahead to event which will happen in the diegesis' future tense..
FLASHBACK.  Jumping backward in time to an event that transpired before the movie's actual diegesis.
FORMULA. A customary, prefabricated, conventional style of plot/imagery/setting, etc. routinely/conventionally followed by an author/artist. Most genre films follow formulae.
FRAME. The border of a single exposed image.
FRAME TALE. Any story which is told within another story, with the story's narrator remaining in the outer frame. Examples: Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Princess Bride or Little Big Man.
FREEZE FRAME. When a single frame is held on screen for a discernible amount of time(achieved by repeating multiple copies of the same image). Example: the last shot of 400 Blows.

G
GENRE. An identifable type or form of film: screwball comedy, western, hardboiled detective, horror, sci-fi, etc., with its own distinct subject matter, formulae, iconography, and style.
GENRE FILM. The individual instance--a surface manifestation, roughly equivalent to a speech act ("parole")--drawing on, but capable of departing from or modifying, a deeper structure of a FILM GENRE (Schatz).
 

H
HAND-HELD CAMERA. A camera held by a cameraman (not on a tripod or a dolly), creating a moving, jumpy, easily identifiable visual style. Highly prized in cinema verite.
HIGH-ANGLE SHOT. Shot from above. Usually makes that which is seen seem vulnerable, even in great danger.
HOMAGE.  A spoof, "send-up" of another work of art, usually done in admiration of the original rather than for purposes of ridicule.

I

ICONOGRAPHY. Patterns, continuous over time, of visual imagery or symbols, of recurrent objects and figures, representative of a particular institution, system, genre. A given religion, for example, has its own iconography, but so too does, say, a Western film.
IDEOLOGY. A relatively coherent system of values, beliefs, or ideas shared by a social group and often taken for granted as natural or inherently true.
INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING. Filmmaking that works outside the studio system.
INTERTEXTUALITY. The tendency--typical of POSTMODERNISM--of TEXTS not merely to allude to other texts but to depend upon the similarities, differences, and contrasts between texts in order to establish their own SIGNIFICATION.
IRIS. An opening or closing circle which either reveals or occludes the images in a frame. An iris-in can serve as a kind of faux close-up calling the viewer's attention to a single aspect of a complex or larger image. by A now largely quaint editing technie.
 

J
JUMP-CUT. A very rapid cut from one image to another, usually startling the viewer..

K
KULESHOV EFFECT. The tendency, discovered by the Russian film theorist Lev Kuleshov, of the viewer to back-read images shown in montage, thereby creating metaphoric meanings. Shown a picture of a man followed by a picture of a baby, the viewer retro-reads the man's face as showing fatherly love; if the same face is followed by an image of a bowl of soup, the man will be understood to be hungry.

L
LONG SHOT.  A capturing of an image from a great distance, one that reveals architectural or landscape detail. .
LONG TAKE. A substantial segment of film (a scene or even a sequence) captured in a single run of the camera. Bazin advocated it as a democratic alternative to Eisensteinian montage.
LOW-ANGLE SHOT. Shot from below, with the camera looking up at a person, a building, etc. Always makes that which is seen seem significantly more powerful or larger.

M
MEGAGENRE. A large, all encompassing, umbrella genre, having no distinct subject matter or style or iconography or formulae. The megagenres of the movies might be thought of as non-fiction (documentary) film, fiction film, animated film, and experimental/underground film.
MINDSCREEN. Bruce Kawin's term for that cinematic narrative technique in which an individual's thought-world become visible on screen. In My Left Foot, for example, Christy Brown's nurse reads his autobiography, and as she reads, the events of the book are enacted.
MISE EN SCÉNE. All those aspects of a movie that pertain to arrangement of an image in a frame.
MOGUL. A major, powerful figure in a major studio during the studio era.
MONTAGE. The rapid juxtaposition of images, cutting from one to another to create an effect. Eisenstein beleived it to be the essence of film art.
MOTIF. An element--incident, device, reference, formula--which recurs frequently in a work or works.
MULTIPLE EXPOSURE. Special effect in which more than one frame of film is exposed at the same time.
MYTHOLOGY. For Barthes, investigation into the acquired connotative meanings of cultural signs in order to divest them of their acquired, taken-for-granted meanings. For example, television, though an object of wonder at the beginning of its history, is now a commonplace; its significance now so caught up in the culture's semiotic system that it is difficult to describe or explain. A mythology of TV would seek to decode it, to make its connotations again fresh and visible.

N
NARRATEE. The specified or unspecified person to whom a narrator is supposedly speaking. May include "the live studio audience" before which a television show was filmed, the perfect listener (the host of a talk show, the anchorman/women to whom reporters tell their tale), or the "laugh track" which represents the audience's idealized response.
NARRATION. When an off-screen, extra-diegetic voice speaks to us in a movie.
NARRATIVE. The fancy word for story telling.
NARRATOLOGY. The systematic multi-media study of narrative--of storytelling and its techniques.
NEO-REALISM. A post-WW II movement in Italian fillmaking, lead by directors DiSica, Rossellini, and Fellini and the writer Zavattini, which sought to tell stories about the ordinary lives of ordinary people, often using non-actors. 
NEW WAVE (NOUVELLE VAGUE). A late1950s/early 1960s movement in French filmmaking led by directors like Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, and Resnais that placed new emphasis on the creative role of the director and made frequent use of on location filming, innovative editing, handheld camerawork.
NICKELODEON. An early (1905-1915) American movie "theatre."
NON-FICTION FILM. Another, perhaps better, name for documentary.
NONSYNCHRONOUS SOUND. Sound that does not have a visible source in the film's diegesis.
NOVELIZATION. Turning a movie screenplay into a novel. The reverse of adaptation as normally conceived.

O
ON LOCATION. Filming in real locales, often using ambient light and sound, instead of in a studio.
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY DEGREE RULE. The unwritten rule in editing that warns against showing a character from opposite camera positions in subsequent images.
 

P
PAN. A slow movement of the camera on an axis from left to right or right to left.
PASTICHE. Describes a work of art made up almost entirely of assembled bits and pieces from other works. (According to Frederic Jamieson, the characteristic form of expression in POSTMODERNISM.)
PERSISTENCE OF VISION. The ability (disability?) of the mind that holds an image on the retina when it is no longer present to the eye. Its existence makes movies possible.
PHOTOGENIC. Although it now means tending to photograph well, it originally meant the magical power of photographic images.
PLOT. The main incidents of a NARRATIVE; the outline of situations and events thought of as distinct from the characters involved in them or the themes illustrated by them.
POINT OF VIEW. The perceptual or conceptual position in terms of which the narrated situations and events are presented.
POINT-OF-VIEW SHOT. A shot in which the action as seen from the general perspective of a character.
POST-SYNCHRONIZATION. Adding sound after filming.
POSTMODERNISM. A cultural style or sensibility, a response to and evolution from modernism, which exhibits--indeed embraces--disunity, superficiality, SELF-REFERENTIALITY, INTERTEXTUALITY, parody, pastiche, recombination, irony, indifference, discontinuity, disrespect, alienation, meaninglessness.
PRODUCER. The  individual/s responsible for the money side of filmmaking. May   manifest itself in various forms, including "executive producer," "producer," etc.
PRODUCTION VALUES.  Refers to the quality (or lack thereof) of the visuals, sound, special effects, etc. of a movie--all those things that are dependent on technology, expertise, and money. 
PROP. Any object--from a gun to a hat to breakable window--needed on a set in a given shot or scene.

R
READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM. A school of criticism which argues that the reader/viewer is as responsible for the construction of a text as the author.
REALISM. Any approach to art which holds that art's function is to "hold a mirror up to" the actual world.
REAR-SCREEN PROJECTION. A special effect in which projected images become part of the visual field of a frame (as when we see a road disappearing behind a "moving" car when the car and its occupants are actually sitting stationary on the set.
REMAKE.  Using a film made before as the inspiration for a "new" film.
REVERSE ANGLE SHOT. A shot that shows the action from position exactly the reverse of the previous shot.
REVERSE MOTION. Projecting  film backwards; results in actions "unhappening."
ROUGH CUT. An unfinished, unpolished editing together of film footage that merelyapproximates the finished film.
 

S
SCENE. A discernible segment of narrative usually defined by a specific locale.
SCREENPLAY. The literary text of a film to be shot, including dialogue, shot breakdown, stage directions, etc.
SCREWBALL COMEDY.  A 1930s American movie genre, distinguished by its clever dialogue and strong heroines.
SELECTIVE FOCUS. When different planes of focal depth come in and out of focus selectively. Also called rack focus.
SELF-REFERENTIALITY. The tendency of a work of art to become self-conscious, to call attention to itself--its conventions, structure, signification--as part of its own discourse.
SEMIOTICS. The systematic study of signs and their significance.
SEQUEL. A movie that continues the story of another movie.
SEQUENCE. A discernible segment of narrative containing scenes and marking an identifiable dramatic part of the overall story.
SHOOTING RATIO. The ratio of exposed film to amount of film actually used in a final cut.
SIGNIFIED. The immaterial aspect of a sign; that which the SIGNIFIER represents. May be approached only through the SIGNIFIERS of any given TEXT.
SIGNIFIER. The material aspect--an image, an object, a sound--of a sign. Signifiers tend to take on meaning through opposition to other possible alternative signifiers (i.e., woman/horse) not represented in a given SYNTAGM. According to Saussure, the relationship of the signifier to SIGFNIFIED in language is entirely arbitrary.
SLAPSTICK. Physical, visual comedy.
SLOW MOTION. Shooting at a faster than normal rate of speed so that, when projected, the images will appear slower than in reality.
STORY. 1) What happens to whom in a NARRATIVE, distinct from DISCOURSE; 2) a perceived narrative which implies a general kind of pointedness or teleology, producing in the listener/viewer expectations about patterning and content (Scholes).
SUBGENRE. An identifiable subclass, having its own distinctive subject matter, formulae, style, and iconography, of some clearly defined larger film genre.
SUBJECTIVE CAMERA. A POINT OF VIEW shot in which the camera seems to become the eyes of a character.
SUBTEXT. An underlying, emergent theme in a work or works.
SUBTITLE. Visible words on the screen translating the words being spoken on the soundtrack.
SWISH PAN. A very rapid left to right or right to left movement of the camera on a fixed axis.
SYNCHRONOUS SOUND. Sound which seems to have a source in the images pon screen and in the film's diegesis.
SYNTAGM/SYNTAGMATIC. When the significance of a shot "depends not on the shot compared with other potential shots [PARADIGMATIC], but rather on the shot compared with actual shots that precede or follow it . . ." (Monaco). Describes "what follows what" (Monaco). A unit of actual rather than potential relationship. An "ordering of signs, a rule-governed combination of signs in sequence" (Seiter). The "dimension . . . along which the MESSAGE unfolds" (Guzzetti).

T
TAKE. That which is captured on film in one run of the camera.
TARGET AUDIENCE. The demographic group a studio and its marketers presume will show up for a certain film.
TELEPHOTO LENS. A special lens that enables images shot from afar to appear as up close.
TEXT. Any division of DISCOURSE--a poem, a painting, an advertisement, a music video, a film or  all the films of Sam Peckinpah.
TILT. Movement of the camera up and down on a fixed axis.
TIME-LAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY. A cinematic technique, similar in principle to animation, in which the exposure of "individual frames of film at pre-determined intervals" results in a "compressed visual record of events occurring over long periods of time" when these frames are later projected at normal speed (Katz 1135).
TITLE. Any words (credits, subtitles, etc.) on screen but not part of the image proper.
TRACKING SHOT. A moving camera shot in which the camera (hand-held, on a dolly, etc.) follows along with the action.
TWO SHOT. A shot capable of capturing two individuals talking at least from the waist up.

U
UNDERGROUND/EXPERIMENTAL FILM. Non-theatrical, independent, "art" film, usually of an avant-garde nature.

V
VOICE-OVER. When the voice of one of the characters speaks over the narrative on the sound-track, helping to tell the story.

W
WIDE-ANGLE LENS. A special lens capable of capturing a wider than normal perspective on the horizontal plane.
WIPE. An editing technique in which a horizonal or vertical line or curtain wipes an image off the screen, usually replacing it with a subsequent image which follows behind the line.
 

XYZ
ZOOM. Using a special (zoom) lens in order to move, seemingly from a great distance,  rapidly into or out of an image.