Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film which increasingly involves the use of digital technology. When putting together some sort of video composition, typically, you would need a collection of shots and footages that vary from one another. The act of adjusting the shots you have already taken, and turning them into something new is known as film editing.
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard-definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects.
In film and video production, split screen is the visible division of the screen, traditionally in half, but also in several simultaneous images, rupturing the illusion that the screen's frame is a seamless view of reality, similar to that of the human eye. There may or may not be an explicit borderline. Until the arrival of digital technology, a split screen in films was accomplished by using an optical printer to combine two or more actions filmed separately by copying them onto the same negative, called the composite.
Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two or more images or video streams together based on colour hues. The technique has been used in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video – particularly the newscasting, motion picture, and video game industries. A colour range in the foreground footage is made transparent, allowing separately filmed background footage or a static image to be inserted into the scene. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production. This technique is also referred to as colour keying, colour-separation overlay, or by various terms for specific colour-related variants such as green screen or blue screen; chroma keying can be done with backgrounds of any colour that are uniform and distinct, but green and blue backgrounds are more commonly used because they differ most distinctly in hue from any human skin colour. No part of the subject being filmed or photographed may duplicate the colour used as the backing, or the part may be erroneously identified as part of the backing.
Special effects are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world. It is sometimes abbreviated as SFX, but this may also refer to sound effects.
Cinematography is the art of motion picture photography.
Visual effects is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action footage or CGI elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX.
A film transition is a technique used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing by which scenes or shots are combined. Most commonly this is through a normal cut to the next shot. Most films will also include selective use of other transitions, usually to convey a tone or mood, suggest the passage of time, or separate parts of the story. These other transitions may include dissolves, L cuts, fades, match cuts, and wipes.
Douglas Hunt Trumbull was an American film director and visual effects supervisor, who pioneered innovative methods in special effects. He created scenes for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of Life, and directed the movies Silent Running and Brainstorm.
Corpse Bride is a 2005 stop-motion animated dark fantasy film directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton from a screenplay by John August, Caroline Thompson, and Pamela Pettler, based on characters created by Burton and Carlos Grangel. The plot is set in a fictional Victorian era village in England. Johnny Depp leads the cast as the voice of Victor, while Helena Bonham Carter voices Emily, the title bride. An international co-production between the United States and United Kingdom and produced by Tim Burton Productions and Laika Entertainment, Corpse Bride is the first stop-motion feature film directed by Burton and his first stop-motion film distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures after previously producing 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas and 1996's James and the Giant Peach for The Walt Disney Company.
Deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field. Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image, or how much of it appears sharp and clear. In deep focus, the foreground, middle ground, and background are all in focus.
Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image with a background image. In this case, the matte is the background painting. In film and stage, mattes can be physically huge sections of painted canvas, portraying large scenic expanses of landscapes.
This article contains a list of cinematic techniques that are divided into categories and briefly described.
A front projection effect is an in-camera visual effects process in film production for combining foreground performance with pre-filmed background footage. In contrast to rear projection, which projects footage onto a screen from behind the performers, front projection projects the pre-filmed material over the performers and onto a highly reflective background surface.
Dean Raymond Cundey, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer and film director. He is known for his collaborations with John Carpenter, Steven Spielberg, and Robert Zemeckis, as well as his extensive work in the horror genre, in addition to numerous family and comedy films. His filmography as a cinematographer includes Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982), the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Jurassic Park (1993), Apollo 13 (1995), and Garfield: The Movie (2004).
The over-the-shoulder shot is a camera angle used in film and television, where the camera is placed above the back of the shoulder and head of a subject. This shot is most commonly used to present conversational back and forth between two subjects. With the camera placed behind one character, the shot then frames the sequence from the perspective of that character. The over-the-shoulder shot is then utilised in a shot-reverse-shot sequence where both subject's OTS perspectives are edited consecutively to create a back and forth interplay, capturing dialogue and reactions. This inclusion of the back of the shoulder allows audiences to understand the spatial relationships between two subjects, while still being able to capture a closer shot of each subject’s facial expression. In film and television, the filmmaker or cinematographer’s choice of an OTS shot’s camera height, the use of focus and lenses affect the way audiences interpret subjects and their relationships to others and space.
Hans Canosa is an American film director, screenwriter, film editor and producer best known for his independent film Conversations with Other Women (2005), starring Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter.
A film —also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay, or flick—is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally accompanied by sound and other sensory stimulations. The word "cinema" is a shortening of the word "cinematography" and is used to refer to either filmmaking, the film industry, the overall art form, or a movie theater.
Articles related to the field of motion pictures include:
This glossary of motion picture terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to motion pictures, filmmaking, cinematography, and the film industry in general.
