Film

The vocabulary of film

Shot sizes, angles, lenses, light, colour grades and cuts: the words filmmakers use for how a picture is made. Press a term and watch the same actor on the same street change.

All terms

Shot sizes

Extreme wide shotalso: EWS, XWS: The actor is a speck in a big place. Shows scale, isolation, or where the story is.
Wide shotalso: long shot, WS, LS: The whole person and plenty of their surroundings. Sets up who is where.
Full shotalso: FS: Head to toe, just fitting the frame. Body language and costume read; the face doesn't yet.
Medium widealso: cowboy shot, MWS, American shot: From mid-thigh up. Named for westerns, where it kept the holster in frame.
Medium shotalso: MS, waist shot: From the waist up. The workhorse of interviews and dialogue: face and gestures both read.
Medium close-upalso: MCU: Chest up. Close enough for emotion, loose enough for a little movement. Typical for talking heads.
Close-upalso: CU: The face fills the frame. Every flicker of expression reads, so use it for the moments that matter.
Extreme close-upalso: ECU, XCU: One detail: the eyes, a hand, a button. Intense and intimate, or a beat of tension.
Establishing shot: A wide, often high view at the start of a scene that tells you where (and when) you are.
Two-shot: Two people in one frame. Shows the relationship: who stands close, who faces whom.
Over the shoulderalso: OTS: Past one person's shoulder at the other. Keeps both in the scene while we watch one of them talk.
Point of viewalso: POV: What a character sees, from their eyes. The audience steps into their shoes.
Insertalso: insert shot: A close shot of an object that matters to the story: a cup, a phone screen, a key. Usually filmed separately.

Camera angles

Eye level: The camera at the actor's eye height. Neutral: we meet them as an equal.
High angle: Looking down on the actor. They look smaller, weaker or more vulnerable.
Low angle: Looking up at the actor. They look taller, stronger, in charge. Heroes and villains get this one.
Bird's-eye viewalso: overhead, top shot: Straight down from above. Turns a scene into a map or a pattern; detached, sometimes godlike.
Worm's-eye view: From the ground, looking steeply up. Exaggerates height: towering people and buildings.
Dutch anglealso: Dutch tilt, canted angle: The camera rolled so the horizon tilts. Something is off: unease, madness, a world out of balance.

Composition

Rule of thirds: Put the subject on a third line, eyes near the top third, instead of dead centre. Feels balanced and natural.
Centre framingalso: symmetrical framing: The subject dead centre, the frame balanced either side. Formal and striking; Wes Anderson's signature.
Headroom: The space between the top of the head and the frame. A little looks natural; too much makes the actor sink.
Lead roomalso: nose room, looking room: Space in front of where someone looks or moves. Without it they seem boxed in, about to hit the edge.
Negative space: Lots of empty frame around a small subject. Loneliness, calm, or room for a title.
Foreground framingalso: layering, frame within a frame: Something in the foreground, the subject in the middle, the world behind. Gives a flat screen depth.

Lens and focus

Wide-angle lens: A short focal length up close: more background, stretched perspective, a nose that looks bigger. Energetic, a little distorted.
Telephoto lensalso: long lens, compression: A long lens from far away. The background looks huge and close behind the actor: the town is "compressed" onto them.
Shallow depth of fieldalso: shallow focus, bokeh: Only the actor is sharp; everything else melts into blur. Isolates the subject and looks expensive.
Deep focus: Everything sharp, near to far. The viewer chooses where to look; famous from Citizen Kane.
Rack focusalso: pull focus, focus pull: Focus shifts from one distance to another during the shot, moving the viewer's eye from the leaves to the actor.
Dolly zoomalso: Vertigo effect, zolly, contra-zoom: The camera moves back while the lens zooms in, so the actor stays the same size and the world behind stretches. Dread, realisation.

Lighting

Three-point lightingalso: key, fill and back light: A key light for shape, a soft fill to lift the shadows, a back light to separate the actor from the background. The interview standard.
High key: Bright, even light with few shadows. Upbeat: commercials, sitcoms, product shots.
Low key: One hard light, deep shadows, lots of black. Mystery, drama, film noir.
Rembrandt lighting: Key light high and to the side, no fill, leaving a small triangle of light on the shadow cheek. Named after the painter's portraits.
Rim lightalso: back light, hair light: A strong light from behind traces the edge of the head and shoulders, pulling the actor off a dark background.
Silhouette: The actor against a bright sky with no light on their front: a dark shape. Mystery or iconic endings.
Golden houralso: magic hour: Low warm sun just after sunrise or before sunset: long shadows, glowing skin. The most flattering natural light.
Blue hour: The deep blue twilight after sunset, with street lights just coming on. Calm, melancholy.
Practical lightalso: practicals, motivated light: A light that is part of the scene, like this street lamp, motivating the light on the actor. Night scenes are built around them.

Colour grading

Log footagealso: flat profile, ungraded: What a cinema camera records: flat, grey and washed out, keeping detail in shadows and highlights for the grade.
Teal and orange: Teal shadows, orange skin tones. The blockbuster look: faces pop off the background.
Warm grade: Pushed towards amber. Nostalgia, comfort, summer, the past.
Cool grade: Pushed towards blue. Cold, clinical, lonely or tense. Thrillers and tech.
Bleach bypassalso: skip bleach, silver retention: Low saturation and harsh contrast, like film that skipped the bleach bath. Gritty war and crime films.
Crushed blacks: Shadows pushed to pure black. Punchy and graphic; music videos and moody ads.
Matte lookalso: faded, lifted blacks: Blacks lifted to a soft grey, like an old print. Gentle, nostalgic, Instagram-era.
Black and white: No colour at all. Timeless, serious, or a flashback.
Day for night: Shot in daylight, graded dark and blue to pass as night. Cheaper than lighting a real night.
Film grain: The fine texture of film stock, added in the grade. Makes digital footage feel organic and cinematic.
Vignette: Darkened corners that pull the eye to the centre. Subtle, it reads as "cinematic"; heavy, it reads as old.

Aspect ratio

2.39:1 Scopealso: CinemaScope, anamorphic widescreen: The widest common cinema frame, often shot on anamorphic lenses. Epic landscapes and big-screen feel.
1.85:1 Flat: The standard cinema widescreen. A little taller than scope; most dramas and comedies.
16:9: TV, YouTube and laptop screens. What most video is delivered in.
4:3also: Academy ratio, 1.33:1: Old TV and early film. Today it reads as vintage or intimate.
1:1 Square: Equal sides. Instagram feeds and carousels.
9:16 Vertical: Full-screen on a phone: TikTok, Reels, Shorts and Stories. Frame for a person, not a landscape.

Time

Real time: The baseline: the car drives at the speed it was filmed.
Slow motionalso: slo-mo, overcranking: Filmed at a high frame rate and played back at normal speed, so time stretches. Drama, detail, beauty.
Fast motionalso: undercranking: Filmed at a low frame rate, played back fast. Comedy chases or a hurried passage of time.
Speed ramp: The speed changes within the shot: full speed, a sudden slow-down on the key moment, back to speed. Action and sports edits.
Timelapse: One frame every few seconds over hours, played fast: the sun sweeps across, shadows swing, traffic streaks.
Freeze frame: The picture stops dead on one frame, often with a flash or a sound. A punchline, a "that's me", an ending.

Editing

Wide, medium, closealso: coverage, progression: The classic way into a scene: where we are, who is there, then how they feel. Each cut moves closer.
Shot / reverse shotalso: shot-countershot: Two people talking, cut back and forth over each other's shoulders. Both cameras stay on one side of them (the 180° rule).
B-rollalso: cutaways, supporting footage: The A-roll is the main footage (here, the interview). B-roll is everything cut over it: details, places, action, while the voice carries on.
Cutaway: A quick cut to something else in the scene, then back. Hides a cut in an interview, or shows what the actor is looking at.
Jump cut: Cuts within the same framing, so the actor jumps from place to place. Feels restless; vloggers use it to cut out the pauses.
Match cut: A cut between two shots that share a shape or a movement, here a glowing lamp at night becoming the setting sun.
Cross-cuttingalso: parallel editing: Cutting between two things happening at once in different places, here the actor waiting and the car on its way, to build anticipation.
Montage: A run of short shots that compresses time or builds a feeling, usually cut to music.
Smash cut: An abrupt cut from a quiet moment to a loud, bright one with no warning. Shock or comedy.