Film Vocabulary ExercisesLearning Target Goal
Students will use word study activities to enhance vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. Students will also incorporate vocabulary to enhance film responses, analysis, and presentations. Common Core Standard Language L.11-12.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases. Quarter 1: Vocabulary Lists 1-6 Quarter 2: Vocabulary Lists 7-12 Quarter 3: Vocabulary Lists 12-16 Quarter 4: Final Project and Essay
Vocabulary Exercises Assignments
http://www.filmsite.org/filmterms.html Directions: Analyze each vocabulary term. Label each category of words. Word study activities will enhance your vocabulary and increase your visual literacy skills. Part 1: 50 Points Word and Definition Synonyms and Antonyms or Similarities and Differences Part 2: 50 Points Only Choose 1 Sentences or Images Missing Information Missing Labels - 10 Point Deduction (Syn or Ant) Lack of Proofreading - 10 Point Deduction Vocabulary List 1 Types of Shots 1. Long Shot: A shot taken from a sufficient distance to show a landscape, a building, or a large crowd. 2. Medium Shot: A shot between a long shot and a close-up that shows people from the waist up. 3. Close-Up: A shot of a face or object that fills the screen completely. 4. Extreme Close-Up: A shot of a small object or a part of a face that fills the screen. 5. Wide Shot: The first shot of a new scene and establishes location. 6. Arc Shot: A shot in which the subject is photographed by an encircling or moving camera. 7. Over the Shoulder Shot: The camera records the action from behind the shoulder and or head of one of the characters. 8. Pull Back: A type of camera shot in which the camera physically moves away from or zooms out from the subject to reveal the full context of the scene. 9. Push In: a type of camera shot in which the camera physically moves toward or zooms in to the subject or object for a closer look. Camera Angles 10. Bird's Eye View: The camera is placed directly above the action being photographed. 11. High Angle: The camera looks down at what is being photographed. 12. Low Angle: The camera looks up at what is being photographed. 13. Oblique Angle: The frame is tilted laterally on its axis. Vocabulary List 2 Camera Movement 1. Pan: The camera moves horizontally on a fixed base. 2. Tilt: The camera points up or down from a fixed base. 3. Tracking (Dolly) Shot: The camera moves through space on a wheeled truck (or dolly), but stays in the same place. 4. Boom: The camera moves up or down through space. 5. Zoom: Not a camera movement, but a shift in a the focal length of the camera lens to give the impression that the camera is getting closer to or farther from an object. Transitions 6. Cut: The most common type of transition in which one scene ends and a new one immediately begins. 7. Fade-Out / Fade-In: One scene gradually goes dark and the new one gradually emerges from the darkness. 8. Dissolve: A gradual transition in which the end of one scene is superimposed over the beginning of a new one. 9. Wipe: An optical effect in which one shot appears to "wipe" the preceding one from the screen. Vocabulary List 3 Film Genres 1. Action: Characteristics of action films include high energy, physical stunts and chases, rescues, battles, fights, and escapes. It also includes races against time, non-stop motion, fast rhythm, and pacing. 2. Adventure: Adventure films are exciting stories with new experiences or exotic locales. 3. Comedy: Comedies are light-hearted plots deliberately designed to amuse and provoke laughter by exaggerating the situation, language, action, relationships, and characters. 4. Crime: Crime films feature the sinister actions of criminals, mobsters, bank robbers, underworld figures, and ruthless hoodlums. They operate outside the law and morality of society. 5. Drama: Dramas are serious, plot-driven films, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction. 6. Epics-Historical: Epics-Historical films often take an historical or imagined event, mythic, legendary, or heroic figure and add an extravagant setting and lavish costumes. It is accompanied by grandeur and spectacle and a sweeping musical score. 7. Horror: Horror films are designed to frighten and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. 8. Musicals-Dance: Musicals/dance films are cinematic forms that are centered on combinations of music, dance, song, or choreography. 9. Science Fiction: Science Fiction films are often quasi-scientific, visionary, and imaginative. They include heroes, aliens, distant planets, quests, fantastic places, new technology, or extraordinary monsters. 10. War: War films often acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting or conflict (against nations or humankind) provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film. 11. Westerns: Westerns are the major defining genre of the American film industry, a nostalgic eulogy to the early days of the expansive, untamed American frontier (the borderline between civilization and the wilderness). Vocabulary List 4 Film Sub-Genres 1. Film Genres: Film genres are various forms or identifiable types, categories, classifications, or groups of films. 2. Film Sub-Genres: Sub-Genres are more specific sub-classes of the larger category of main film genres, with their own distinctive subject matter, style, formulas, and iconography. 3. Biopic: A biographical film. 4. Courtroom Drama: A genre of film in which a system of justice plays a critical role in the film's narrative. 5. Detective and Mystery: Detective and mystery films focuses on the unsolved crime. 6. Fantasy: Fantasy films often have an element of magic, myth, wonder, escapism, and the extraordinary. 7. Melodramas: Melodramas are characterized by a plot to appeal to the emotions of the audience. (Tearjerkers) 8. Romance: Romance films are love stories or affairs of the heart that center on passion, emotion, and affectionate involvement of the main characters. 9. Sports: Dramatic sports films have a sports setting, arena, a competitive event, and an athlete that are central and predominant in the story. 10. Superhero: This category is an off-shoot of fantasy - action films, based quite often on an original comic-strip or comic book character. 11. Supernatural: Supernatural films have themes including gods or goddesses, ghosts, apparitions, spirits, miracles, and other similar ideas or depictions of extraordinary phenomena. 12. Thriller / Suspense: Thriller and suspense films are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Vocabulary List 5 1. Motif: A recurrent thematic element in a film that is repeated in a significant way or pattern. 2. Iconography: The use of a well-known symbol or icon; a means to analyze the themes and various styles in a film. 3. Theme: A theme is the film's central, unifying concept. A theme evokes a universal human experience. 4. Payoff: A dramatic scene that justifies everything that preceded it. 5. Point of View Shot: A subjective shot made from the perspective of one of the characters to show the audience the scene as it would look through the character's eyes. 6. Novelization: Making a novel from a film or screenplay. 7. Obligatory Scene: A cliched and expected scene for a particular genre. 8. Nostalgia Film: A film that wistfully looks back at an earlier past time, often depicting it as more innocent and uncomplicated than it actually was. 9. Parody: A comedy that imitates or makes fun of an existing work in an absurd way and exaggerates its characteristics. 10. Ambiance: The feeling or mood of a particular scene or setting. Vocabulary List 6 1. Bookends: A term denoting scenes at the beginning and end of a film that complement each other and help tie a film together. 2. Bowdlerize: The purging of anything considered disturbing, vulgar, or adult in content in order to make it sanitized for mass market consumption and appropriate for children. 3. Call Sheet: A type of schedule given out periodically during a film's production to let every department know when they are supposed to arrive and where they are to report. 4. Cast: A collective term for all of the actors or performers appearing in a particular film. 5. Casting: The process of selecting and hiring actors to play the roles and characters in a film production. 6. Catharsis: During a film's climax, the audience may experience a purging or cleansing of emotional tension, providing relief or therapeutic restoration. 7. Computer Generated Imagery: A term referring to the 3D computer graphics and technology in film-making to create filmed images, special effects, and the illusion of motion. 8. Character Study: A film that uses strong characterizations, interactions, and the personalities of its characters to tell a story, with plot and narrative almost secondary to them. 9. Cheater Cut: The footage put into the beginning of a serial episode to show what happened at the end of the previous episode. 10. Cinematographer: The person responsible for capturing or recording images for a film through the selection of visual recording devices, camera angles, film stock, lenses, framing, and lighting. Vocabulary List 7 1. Crew: Those involved in the technical production of a film who are not actual performers. 2. Critic: An individual who writes or publishes a review of a film from an artistic or entertainment point of view. 3. Cyclorama: The curved backdrop used to represent the sky when outdoor scenes are shot in the studio. 4. Direct Sound: The technique of recording sound simultaneously with the image. 5. Director: The creative artist responsible for complete artistic control of all phases of a film's production. 6. Dubbing: The act of putting a new soundtrack on a film or adding a soundtrack. 7. Ellipsis: The shortening of the plot duration of a film. 8. Flop: A film that is a failure at the box office. 9. Punchline: A funny, witty line that culminates a story, joke, or scene. 10. Location Sound: The recording of background sound on location to improve the film's realism. Vocabulary List 8 1. Locked-Down Shot: A camera shot in which the camera remains immobile, while something happens off screen to create suspense. 2. Logline: A short, introductory summary of a film, usually found on the first page of a screenplay. 3. Long Take: A shot of lengthy duration. 4. Magic Hour: The optimum time for filming romantic or magical scenes due to warm and soft lighting conditions. It occurs around the time of sunset and sunrise. 5. Mainstream: A Hollywood made film with major stars, big budgets, and big hype. 6. Makeup: The materials that are used to prepare the performer for his or her respective role before the camera. 7. Mask or Blackout: The covering up or blocking out a portion of the frame with blackness or opaqueness. 8. Master Shot: A continuous shot or long take that shows the main action or setting of an entire scene. 9. Matte Shot: The optical process of combining separately photographed shots onto one print. 10. Megaplex: Movie chains with movie theaters that screen more than one film at a time, as opposed to single-screen theaters. Vocabulary List 9 1. Method Acting: Actors who give realistic performances based upon and drawn from their own personal experiences and emotions. 2. Mime: Acting without words, emphasizing facial expressions, body movements, and gestures. 3. Miniatures: Small-scale models photographed to give the illusion that they are full-scale objects. 4. Miscast: An actor or actress who is completely wrong, untalented, or unbelievable for the role he or she has been cast in. 5. Mix (Mixing) : The electrical combination of different sounds, dialogue, music, and sound effects from microphones, tape, and other sources onto the film's master soundtrack during post-production. 6. Monitor: A small television screen hooked up to the camera or recording device that allows crew other than the camera operator to check the quality of a scene as it is being shot. 7. Monologue: A scene or a portion of a script in which an actor gives a lengthy, unbroken speech without interruption by another character. 8. Moppet: The term for a child or pre-teen child actor. 9. Morality Tale: A literary term mostly used to refer to a film that presents a judgment on human behavior and character. It emphasizes the struggle between good and evil. 10. Morph: The transformation of one digital image into another with computer animation. Vocabulary List 10 1. Motion Pictures: A length of film with a sequence of images that create an illusion of movement when projected. 2. MPAA: Acronym-initials meaning Motion Picture Association of America. It is an organization that represents the interests of the major motion picture studios. 3. Mute: A print with only the picture image (minus the sound track). 4. Narration: The telling of a story and the supplemental information given to the film audience by an off-screen voice. 5. Narrative Film: A structured series of events that are linked by cause and effect that provide the plot of a film. 6. Oscars: The name given to the awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which are given each year to various performers and others in the film industry. 7. Academy Awards: The name given to the prestigious film awards presented each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (AMPAS) 8. Anthropomorphism: The tendency in animated films to give creatures or objects human qualities, abilities, and characteristics. 9. Anti-Climax: Anything in a film, usually following the film's high point, in which there is an unsatisfying and disappointing let-down of emotion, or what is expected doesn't occur. 10. Art Director: The individual that is responsible for the design, look, and feel of a film's set, including the number and type of props, furniture, windows, floors, ceilings dressings, and all other set materials. Quarter 3 Vocabulary List 11 1. Metaphor: A literary device that imaginatively draws a comparison between two unlike things. 2. Out-Takes: Camera shots that are not included in the final cut or print of a film. 3. Overexposed: A film shot that has more light than normal, causing a blinding, washed-out, whitish, glaring effect. 4. Overlap: The carry-over of dialogue, sounds, or music from one scene to another. 5. Pace: The speed/tempo of the dramatic action, which is usually enhanced by the soundtrack, the speed of the dialogue, and the type of editing. 6. Pan: To express a totally negative opinion of a film. It is also known as trashing a film. 7. Backdrop: A large photographic backing or painting for the background of a scene. 8. Backlighting: This phenomenon occurs when the lighting for the shot is directed at the camera from behind the subject causing the figure in the foreground to appear in semi-darkness or as silhouettes. 9. Billing: The placement or display of names of actors, directors, and producers for a movie in publicity materials, opening or closing credits, and on theater marquees. 10. Blooper: An actual error or mistake, usually embarrassing or humorous, made by a performer during filming. Vocabulary List 12 1. Eye Level Shot refers to when the level of your camera is placed at the same height as the eyes of the characters in your frame. 2. Cowboy Shot refers to when your camera is roughly waist-high. Hip level shots are often useful when one subject is seated while the other stands. 3. Knee Level Shot refers to when your camera height is about as low as your subject’s knees. This is ideal when you want to focus on characters walking. 4. Ground Level Shot refers to when your camera's height is on ground level with your subject. This is used to feature a character walking without revealing their face. 5. Shoulder Level Shot refers to a camera angle that is as high as your subject’s shoulders. A shoulder level shot can maximize the feeling of superiority when paired with a low angle. 6. Ambient Light: The natural light (usually soft) or surrounding light around a subject in a scene. 7. Pipeline refers to movie projects in the system that are under development or production and scheduled for release in the future. 8. Pitch: Orally or written proposals for film projects usually made by screenwriters. 9. Pivotal Character: The character that launches the action between the protagonist and the antagonist. 10. Portmanteau Film: A style of film in which everything revolved around or was tied together by a single event, person, or location. Vocabulary List 13 1. Dutch Angle / Dutch Tilt Shot refers to when the camera is slanted to one side. This creates a sense of disorientation, a de-stabilized mental state, or increases the tension. 2. Ariel Shot: A shot that is taken from an aircraft or flying object. The shot is taken from an elevated vantage point. It establishes a large expanse of scenery. 3. Establishing Shot: A shot at the head of a scene that clearly shows us the location of the action. 4. Extreme Wide Shot/ Extreme Long Shot: A camera shot that makes the subject appear small against their location. You can also use an extreme long shot to make your subject feel distant or unfamiliar. 5. Full Shot: A camera shot in film that lets your subject fill the frame, head to toe, while still allowing some features of the scenery. 6. Post-Credits Sequence: A throwaway scene or an epilogue that happens during or after the end credits. 7. Post-Modern refers to a return to tradition in reaction to more modernist styles. 8. Post-Production: The final stage in a film's production. 9. Post-Synchronization: The post-production process of recording the sound after the film has been shot. 10. Potboiler: A literary reference to the hard-edged, American detective/crime thrillers. Vocabulary List 14 1. Premiere: The first official public screening of a movie, marking the kick-off, opening or opening night. 2. Premise: The main idea of a movie, usually explainable in a few sentences. 3. Prequel: The second or third film in a series of films that presents characters and/or events that are chronologically set before the time frame of the original movie. 4. Preview : A short film, usually with excerpts from a future film, intended as an advertisement. 5. Pre-Screen: To view a movie before it is released to the public. 6. Product Placement refers to how companies buy advertising space within a film for their products. 7. Production: The general process of putting a film together, including casting, set construction, costuming, rehearsals, and shooting. 8. Prologue: A speech, preface, introduction, or brief scene preceding the the main action or plot of a film. 9. Protagonist: The lead or main character in a film. 10. Q Rating refers to an ad research rating that gauges how easily a celebrity is recognized. Vocabulary List 15 1. Reaction shot: A quick shot that records a character's or group's response to another character or some on-screen action or event. 2. Rear (Screen) Projection: A special effects technique to create backgrounds in which actors are filmed in front of a screen that is projected. 3. Red Herring: An instance of foreshadowing that is deliberately planted to make viewers suspect an outcome and the opposite outcome happens. It is also known as a false clue. 4. Redlighted refers to a film project that was in production, but lost its financial backing. 5. Reel refers to a plastic or metal spool for winding film. 6. Re-enactment: A film production that re-creates an actual event as closely as possible. 7. Reference refers to how one film in its story line alludes to, recalls, or refers to another film. 8. Resolution: The outcome of tension in the scenes after the climax of a film. It refers to how things turned out for all of the characters. 9. Scene: A block of storytelling within a film. 10. Symbolism: The use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. Vocabulary List 16 1. Scenario: (1) The outline for a screenplay. (2) A complete screenplay. 2.Film Score: The background music in a film. 3. Screenplay: A script or text for a film production. 4. Segment : A section or episode of a film. 5. Sequel: A cinematic work that presents the continuation of characters, settings, and/or events of a story in a previously made film. 6. Series: A sequence of films with shared situations, characters or themes and related titles. 7. Set: The environment where the action takes place in a film. 8. Set-Piece: An elaborate scene or sequence that stands on its own. 9. Shoot: The process of filming or photographing any aspect of a motion picture with a camera. 10. Sleeper: A movie that is released with little publicity or pre-release consumer buzz. |