1. Antagonist. The primary character in a plot (Please refer to
"Plot."), on whom the audience's interest centers, is the
protagonist (or alternatively, the hero or heroine) and if the plot
is such that he/she is in opposition with another character, that
character is the antagonist. The relation between them is one of
conflict. (Please refer to "Conflict.")
2. Anticlimax. Anticlimax denotes a screenwriter's deliberate turn
from the serious and elevated to the trivial and lowly in order to
achieve a comic or satiric effect.
3. Antihero. An antihero is the primary character in a modern
movie whose attributes are discrepant from those we associate
with the traditional protagonist of a serious work. Instead of
manifesting largeness, dignity, power or heroism, an antihero is
petty, disgraceful, passive, ineffectual or dishonest.
4. Auteur. An auteur is a director (Please refer to "Director.") who
exercises creative control of a movie and has a strong personal
style.
5. Character. Characters are the persons in a cinematic work who
have particular moral, intellectual and emotional qualities that
we infer from what they say and the distinctive ways they speak
(the dialogue) and from what they do (the action). The grounds
of the characters' moralities, temperaments and reactions are
their motivations. A character may remain stable with respect to
outlook and disposition or may undergo a radical change, either
through a gradual process of development or as the result of a
crisis.
6. Climax. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
7. Close-up. A close-up directs the attention of the audience to a
detail (face, buttocks, feet, et cetera) that is, at that moment,
important to the course of the plot.
8. Comedy. A comedy often ends happily, for its function is to
entertain, provoking laughter and satirizing manners. Comedy
focuses on humans in social situations and depends on codes of
conduct, manners and morality, which it uses to express or imply
a standard against which deviations are measured. Comedy may
be high (intellectual) or low (physical).
9. Composition-In-Depth. Please refer to "Montage."
10. Conflict. Most plots contain conflict. Conflicts may occur
between a protagonist and an antagonist, between a protagonist
and his/her fate, between a protagonist's circumstances and
his/her goal(s), or between the oppositional desires and values of
a protagonist.
11. Contrast. Contrast is a directorial technique that forces the
audience to compare seemingly disparate shots or scenes that
relate to one another, one strengthening the other.
12. Crisis. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
13. Cut. A cut is a transition from one scene to another via an
abrupt change of image or sound, as between shots in a film.
14. Denouement. Please refer to Freytag's Pyramid."
15. Dialect. A dialect is a regional variety of the standard literary
language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists that
differs in pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary. Screenwriters
often use dialects in an attempt to present a character more
realistically or to express significant differences in class or
background.
16. Dialogue. All the words two or more characters exchange with
each other in a scene is dialogue, but recently the term dialogue
has begun to mean all the language of a movie.
17. Director. The person who oversees the artistic production of a
movie is a director.
18. Dramatic irony. Such occurs when an audience is aware of
something that a character or characters in a movie do not yet
know. Screenwriters use it to heighten tension or suspense or to
increase an audience's sympathy and/or comprehension.
19. Dramatic time. The period of time that elapses in the plot of a
movie--in opposition to physical time, which is the period during
which a movie is screened--is dramatic time.
20. Episode. An episode is one of a series of related events in the
course of a sequence.
21. Flashback. The order of a united plot is a continuous sequence
of beginning, middle and end. The beginning initiates the main
action in a way that makes us look forward to something more;
the middle resumes what precedes and requires something to
follow; the end follows from what precedes but requires nothing
more.
The structural beginning may not be the initial stage of the
action that a screenwriter brings to a climax in a screenplay.
Many short films begin at the point of the climax--in medias res,
"in the middle of things"--and longer works often capture our
attention in the opening scene with a representative incident
that relates to and closely precedes the event which precipitates
the conflict. In movies such often occurs with flashbacks:
interpolated scenes--frequently memories, reveries or
confessions--that represent events occurring before the time at
which the works open.
22. Flat character. If a screenwriter builds a character around a
single idea or quality and presents him/her without much detail,
then the character is flat. Usually one can describe such a
character in a single phrase or sentence.
23. Foil. A character in a work who serves to stress and highlight
the distinctive temperament of the protagonist is a foil.
24. Foreshadow. To foreshadow is to present an indication or a
suggestion of an event that will occur later in the work.
25. Freytag's Pyramid. The German critic Gustav Freytag in
Technique of the Drama
(1863) introduces an analysis of plotknown as Freytag's Pyramid. He describes the typical plot of a
five-act play as a pyramidal shape--consisting of rising action,
climactic action, and falling action. Although his description
applies to a limited number plays, critics of film frequently use
his terminology. The rising action begins during or immediately
after the opening and continues with the development of a
conflict. The rising action (conflict) reaches the highest point of
tension (climax). Next, a reversal or turning point (crisis)
occurs, which inaugurates the falling action. Finally, the action
or intrigue ends in success or failure for the protagonist. Two
frequently used terms for the outcome of a plot are resolution
and denouement.
In many plots the denouement involves a reversal in the
protagonist's fortunes--failure or destruction in tragic works and
success in comic works. The reversal often depends on a
discovery, the discovery of something important that was
unknown to him/her.
26. Hero or heroine. Please refer to "Antagonist."
27. Image. An image is a visual likeness of a real object or person,
and in the act of specifying resemblance, image distinguishes
and establishes the entire category of visual experience that is
not a real object or person. In that specifically negative sense, in
which a photograph of a dog is not the dog itself, a photograph is
an image. But image also has some positive connotations: the
creative action of the imagination realized by an instrument. An
artist filters and modifies reality, combining that experience with
other experiences to create a conceptual image, an image subject
to the manipulations of his/her instrument(s). What emerges is a
plastic image that is a reality in its own right. A painting is not,
fundamentally, an image of a dog. It is a likeness of a mental
concept that may resemble a dog or, as in abstract
expressionism, bear no visible relation to any real object. If
realism is the term of a graphic image that precisely simulates
some real object, then a photograph--and hence a movie, being a
sequence of photographs--is a form of reality itself.
28. In media res. Please refer to "Flashback."
29. Mise en scene. This term refers to the arrangement of
performers and properties on a stage before the camera.
30. Montage. Cinema is a two-dimensional art that creates the
illusion of a third dimension through montage, a rapid succession
of shots from different angles at different ranges, and through
composition-in-depth, movements of the camera or of the
performers.
31. Motif. A motif is a conspicuous element--such as a symbol,
image or theme--that appears throughout a work, contributing to
the unity of the work.
32. Narrator. The cinematic narrator is a composite of a large and
complex variety of communicative elements. I present some of
them in the following diagram, which is incomplete. My purpose
is simply to deconstruct the multiplex channels.
Auditory Channel
/ \
Kind Origin
/ / \ / \
noise voice music onscreen offscreen
/ \
earshot commentary
Visual Channel
/ \
Nature of image Treatment of image
/ / \ / \
prop location performer cinematography editing
/ \ / / \ \ / \
appearance performance / / \ \ type rhythm
/ / \ \ / \
/ / \ \ straight fade
/ / \ \
lighting color camera mise en scene
/ / \
distance angle movement
The cinematic narrator is the interaction of the spectator with all
the aforementioned elements.
33. Pan. To pan is to move a camera in such a way as to follow an
object or to create a panoramic effect.
34. Parallelism. This technique resembles contrast (Please refer to
"Contrast.") but is considerably wider in scope, as when two
seemingly disparate thematic incidents develop simultaneously.
35. Plot. The plot in a movie constitutes its events and actions,
rendered and ordered to achieve specific artistic and emotional
effects. That description is deceptively simple because
characters perform the actions--verbal discourse as well as
physical actions--that are the means by which they exhibit their
qualities. Therefore, plot and character are interdependent
critical concepts.
There are a great variety of plot forms: tragedy, comedy,
romance, satire and other genres. Each exhibits diverse
plot-patterns and may be narrative or dramatic.
36. Producer. A producer finances a movie.
37. Prop. A prop is a theatrical property.
38. Protagonist. Please refer to "Antagonist."
39. Resolution. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
40. Reversal. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
41. Rising action. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
42. Romance. Generally, romance refers to a comedy in which
sentimental love conquers all.
43. Round character. A director presents a round character with
subtle particularity because the character is complex in
temperament and motivation. Such a character is difficult to
describe adequately, and similar to a real person, he/she is
capable of surprising us.
44. Satire. Despite the aesthetic and often comic pleasure of satire,
satirists incline toward self-promotion as judges of morals and
manners, of thought and behavior. Numerous satirists ridicule or
berate the shortcomings of their own times, hoping that their
values will outlast the occasion or crises of the moment.
45. Scene. Narrowly, a scene is any part of a movie in a single
setting with an unchanging number of characters. Broadly,
scene refers to a brief portion of a movie that has its own
identity and development.
46. Script. A director will divide a script (a copy of a screenplay)
into sequences, each sequence into scenes, and each scene into
shots from various angles. In other words, he/she will construct
a scene from shots, a sequence from scenes, and a reel from
sequences.
47. Set. A set is the entire enclosure in which a movie is filmed. It
is also referred to as the soundstage.
48. Setting. The overall setting of a movie is the general locale,
historical time, and social circumstances in which its action
occurs. The setting of a single scene within such a work is the
particular physical location in which the scene takes place.
49. Shot. The basic unit of cinema, a shot is a single cinematic
take. Please refer to "Take."
50. Simultaneity. This technique allows a director to construct the
falling action of a movie from the simultaneous, rapid
development of two parallel actions, in which the outcome of
one depends on the outcome of the other.
51. Soliloquy. A soliloquy is a dramatic form of discourse in which
a character reveals his/her thoughts when alone or unaware of
the presence of other characters.
52. Stock character. Stock characters are types that occur
repeatedly in a particular cinematic genre and are recognizable
as part of the conventions of the form.
53. Subplot. A subplot is a story within a story (a movie) that is
complete and interesting in its own way(s). Please refer to
"Parallelism."
54. Suspense. A lack of certainty, on the part of the audience,
about what will happen, especially to characters with whom the
audience has established a bond of sympathy, is suspense. If
what occurs violates any expectations the audience formed, then
it is surprise.
55. Symbolism. In the broadest sense of the term, symbolism means
anything that signifies something. With respect to that sense, all
words are symbols. With respect to cinema, however, a symbol
is an object or event that signifies another object or event, which
in turn signifies something beyond itself. Some symbols are
public; some symbols are private.
56. Take. When a director films a scene without interrupting the
run of the camera, it is a take. A take may be either short or
long.
57. Theme. A theme is a general concept or doctrine, implicit or
explicit, which a screenwriter incorporates into his/her work and
makes persuasive to an audience.
58. Tragedy. A tragedy normally features a reversal of fortune from
good to bad and ends in catastrophe and death for the
protagonist and others. It is the genre of most movies that focus
on the meaning and significance of life.
59. Voice-Over. The voice of an offscreen narrator or of an
onscreen character the audience does not see speaking in a
movie is a voice-over.
60. Zoom. To zoom is to simulate movement rapidly away from or
toward a subject, using a zoom lens.
