Action Films Key Terms

When writing about the extract you have been shown examiners will expect you to use the appropriate technical language whenever necessary. Below is a list of these terms under the five areas you are expected to cover.

Camera shot, movement, position Camera angle, shot, movement and position establishing shot - eg shot of a building to show that what follows occurs inside; master shot - a shot that is returned to at the beginning or end of ’sections’; close-up; long shot; wide shot; two-shot - two people in the shot; high angle - the camera looks down on the subject; low angle - the camera looks up at the subject;

aerial shot - shot from above; point of view; pan - camera movement from side to side from a fixed position; crane - filmed with the help of a crane; tilt - like ‘pan’ but up and down; track - follow alongside the subject; dolly - the dolly is a short piece of track that allows movement either backwards and forwards or from side to side; zoom/reverse zoom; framing - the composition of a shot and the relationship of the elements within it; composition - what is included in a shot; hand-held; steadicam - like a hand-held camera but ’steadier’.

Editing Sound and vision editing - cut; fade; wipe; edit; FX - often used in the credits of programmes where the edit is enhanced. For example a sword may be used to make the wipe from one shot to the next; dissolve; long take - the time between edits is called a ‘take’; superimpose; slow motion; synchronous/asynchronous sound - the sound matches the action/or not.

Sound Soundtrack; theme tune; incidental music - used to create particular emotions (eg fear, sympathy) at key moments; sound effects; ambient sound - the sound from within the scene eg a radio; dialogue - people speaking; voiceover; mode of address/direct address - do the people in the scene speak to you, are they angry, sarcastic, patronising?

Special effects Graphics - pictures; captions - used to establish location. Spielberg uses this in Close Encounters of the Third Kind to add credibility and authenticity; computer generated images (CGI); animation - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom makes use of hand-drawn animation during the famous mining car chase; pyrotechnics - fire, explosions, fireworks etc; stunts; models - these can be big or little. Think of the ship in ‘Titanic’ as it sinks (big) and the space ships in Star Wars (little); back projection - a technique used to display an image behind a person/set. Often achieved using a ‘blue screen’.

Mise-en-Scene Location; set; studio/set design; costume; properties; ambient lighting - day light, lamp light that makes up part of the production eg a streetlamp; artificial lighting; production design period/era; colour design - remember colours have powerful connotations.