Joseph's Glossary of
Film Terms
- day-for-night shooting
- a shot taken during the day but filtered and printed so it appears to have
been shot at night.
- deep-focus shot
- a cinematographic technique using short focal length lenses which renders
in focus both near and far objects in the same shot.
- dialectical, dialectics (critical
term)
- a methodological term originally used by the German thinker Hegel and
later adopted by Karl Marx. Dialectical thinking involves the combining of
opposing or contradictory ideas (thesis and antithesis) to create new idea
(synthesis). Marx moved dialectical thinking from ideas to material events;
this process is known as dialectical materialism.
- direct cinema
- see cinéma vérité
- director
- the creative artist responsible for complete artistic control of all
phases of a film's production; the director's role always involves
interpreting the script and communicating this interpretation to the actors
by directing how to act a particular role and/or scene.
Sometimes a director's duties also include casting, and editing.
- director's cut
- the last edited version of a film, as approved by the director--a
director's cut clause in a director's contract guarantees the director
this right to final approval
- director's script
- the script used by the director in shooting the various scenes of the
film; such a script usually includes the director's handwritten notes
regarding direction, blocking, etc.
- Director of Photography or D.P.
- see cinematographer
- dissolve, lap dissolve
- an editing technique involving one shot gradually being replaced by another.
- distributor
- the company responsible for the distribution of the completed film to the exhibitors
- docudrama
- a dramatization of an actual event
- documentary
- a non-fiction film which usually, although not always, has a particular
point of view regarding its subject matter; John Grierson
of the National Film Board is known as the father of the documentary film;
see also cinéma verité.
- dolly shot, tracking shot, trucking shot
- a shot taken from a camera mounted on a platform (sometimes referred to as
a truck) which can move as the camera is running...some times these
platforms are mounted on a track (much like a train track) so the dolly can
be smoothly moved back and forth. Hence. the term
"dolly" is used to refer to the action of moving the camera
towards (dolly in) or away from (dolly back) the object that is being
filmed. First eight minutes of Robert Altman's The Player (1992)
is filmed by a dolly shot. A dolly shot is not the same as a
zoom shot. In a zoom shot, all
objects in the frame remain the same
relative to each other whereas in a dolly shot the content of the frame
changes as the camera moves in or out. See also boom shot.
- dominant contrast, dominant
- the difference between the lightest and darkest areas of the scene being
filmed
- double exposure
- the photographing of two or more images on a single film strip; the images
may be side-by-side or superimposed
- dubbing
- See automatic dialogue replacement
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