This wiki has exam information for the FILM and LITERATURE


Before you take the exam, you should know the following definitions:

narrative - An adjective describing a film as being primarily a work of fiction, or a noun that loosely means a fictional story.
point of view - Most people assume film always has a third-person perspective, film often has a more subjective perspective through the use of camera placement, voiceover, and other cinema techniques.
mise-en-scène - refers to everything in the frame of the film, which would include lighting, set, props, and the staging and movement of actors.
shot (and close-up v. long shot) - generally, the smallest unit of unbroken film. The camera can move within a shot, but the second that the film makes a transition to another shot, the previous shot has ended.
pan - the movement of a stationary camera on a horizontal axis. A camera on a tripod that moves from left to right.
tilt - the movement of a stationary camera on a vertical axis. A camera on a tripod that moves up and down.
tracking shot - the movement of the shot when the camera is no longer stationary.

crane shot - A shot taken from a crane. .
POV shot - stands for “Point of View” shot looking through the eyes of a character.
high-angle shot, low-angle shot - These terms refer to camera placement.
frame – Literally, a frame of film refers to the smallest unit of film possible.
shallow focus - refers to how much of the shot is in focus. With shallow or soft focus, generally we can only see the actor’s face in focus.
deep focus - refers to a shot in which everything, including the background, is in focus.
montage - a series of shots edited together to show a longer activity evolving in a shorter amount of time or to show a series of related activities.
transition - refers to the way a shot moves from one to the next. Films use several different kinds of transitions, including:
cut - simply splicing one shot to the next. The most common kind of transitions, cuts are used extensively in editing.

jump cut- a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly

match cut- a cut in film editing between either two different objects, two different spaces, or two different compositions.

establishing shot - In one context, establishing shot refers to the shot at a beginning of a film or scene that established location.
shot/reverse shot - After an establishing shot, the shot-reverse shot refers to the close-ups used when two characters are in conversation.
match cut: shots cut together by having a character finish an action in the second shot begun in the first shot. For instance, if a character lights a match in the first shot, the same character will draw it up to a cigarette in the second.
eyeline match - The directions that actors look affect the way we perceive their spatial relationships to one another.
180-degree rule - This term refers to the rule that once a spatial relationship has been confirmed with the establishing shot.