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The film industry is built upon many technologies and techniques, drawing upon photography, stagecraft, music, and many other disciplines. Following is an index of specific terminology applicable thereto.
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 used to be called SFX but this short form has also expanded to include “sound effects” as well.
Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments.
Cinematography is the art of motion picture photography.
A blacklight, also called a UV-A light, Wood's lamp, or ultraviolet light, is a lamp that emits long-wave (UV-A) ultraviolet light and very little visible light. One type of lamp has a violet filter material, either on the bulb or in a separate glass filter in the lamp housing, which blocks most visible light and allows through UV, so the lamp has a dim violet glow when operating. Blacklight lamps which have this filter have a lighting industry designation that includes the letters "BLB". This stands for "blacklight blue". A second type of lamp produces ultraviolet but does not have the filter material, so it produces more visible light and has a blue color when operating. These tubes are made for use in "bug zapper" insect traps, and are identified by the industry designation "BL". This stands for "blacklight".
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.
Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today, most, though not all, compositing is achieved through digital image manipulation. Pre-digital compositing techniques, however, go back as far as the trick films of Georges Méliès in the late 19th century, and some are still in use.
Petro Vlahos was an American engineer and inventor, considered to be one of the pioneering scientific and technical innovators of the motion picture and television industries. He is remembered in particular for creating the Ultimatte process, which refined the colour process known as chroma keying. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded multiple Oscars, as well as an Emmy Award.
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.
Rear projection is one of many in-camera effects cinematic techniques in film production for combining foreground performances with pre-filmed backgrounds. It was widely used for many years in driving scenes, or to show other forms of "distant" background motion.
The sodium vapor process is a photochemical film technique for combining actors and background footage. It originated in the British film industry in the late 1950s and was used extensively by Walt Disney Productions in the 1960s and 1970s as an alternative to the more common bluescreen process. Wadsworth E. Pohl is credited with the invention or development of both of these processes, and received an Academy Award in 1965 for the sodium vapor process as used in the film Mary Poppins.
In cinematography, bipacking, or a bipack, is the process of loading two reels of film into a camera, so that they both pass through the camera gate together. It was used both for in-camera effects and as an early subtractive colour process.
Primatte is a brand of chroma key software used in motion picture, television and photographic host applications to remove solid colored backgrounds and replace them with transparency to facilitate ‘background replacement’. It uses a unique algorithm based on three multi-faceted polyhedrons floating in RGB colorspace that are used to isolate color regions in the foreground image. Primatte is often referred to as a compositing technology and is usually used as a plug-in for host products such as Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Media and Entertainment Inferno or Flame, Eyeon Fusion and several other compositing and editing software packages.
In photography and cinematography, a reflector is an improvised or specialised reflective surface used to redirect light towards a given subject or scene.
The Williams process or Williams doublematting process is a matte creation technique patented by the American cinematographer Frank D. Williams in 1918. Unlike prior matte techniques, it allowed for the integration of the actors' movements with previously shot backgrounds.
The special effects of the 1990 action film Total Recall were developed by visual-effects company Dream Quest Images, with contributions by Stetson Visual Services, Metrolight Studios, and Industrial Light & Magic. Over 100 visual effects were produced for the film, which relied almost entirely on practical effects at a time when computer-generated imagery was a new and rarely-used technique.
The special effects of the 1991 American science fiction action film Terminator 2: Judgment Day were developed by four core groups: Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Stan Winston Studio, Fantasy II Film Effects, and 4-Ward Productions. Pacific Data Images and Video Images provided some additional effects.
References
- ↑ "Jonathan Erland Bio". digitalgreenscreen.com. Composite Components Company. Retrieved 23 March 2023.
- ↑ Kroon, Richard W. (2010). A/V A to Z an Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., Publishers. p. 564. ISBN 978-0786457403.