A near-field mix is a specific version of a film's soundtrack that has been optimized for playback in smaller spaces like home theaters, where the listener is closer to the speakers.
Filmmaking
Filmmaking Terms, A to Z
Go behind the camera and explore the art and craft of filmmaking. This category breaks down the technical and creative processes involved in bringing a movie to life — from cinematography and directing to editing, sound design, production roles, and special effects. Whether you're curious about how a scene is shot or how a film crew operates, dive into the world of practical movie-making knowledge.
- filmmaking terms
- 913
- of the whole glossary
- 30%
- starting letters
- 27
Page 9 of 16
All 913 Filmmaking Terms
Listed alphabetically, each with its one-line answer first. This page runs from Near-field Mix to Panavision DXL2. S is the busiest letter here, with 146 entries. Jump to a letter to see only the filmmaking terms that start with it.
Filmmaking terms starting with N
14 of 21 on this page · all N entries
-
-
A near-set lab is a mobile data management and dailies facility established close to a film's shooting location for rapid processing of digital files.
-
The deliberate removal of light from a scene to enhance contrast and depth
-
A Neural Radiance Field, or NeRF, is a sophisticated deep learning model that synthesizes novel 3D views of a scene by learning its volumetric properties from a set of 2D images.
-
Neural Rendering is a modern, AI-driven approach to computer graphics that uses deep learning models to synthesize highly realistic images and videos from a learned representation of a scene.
-
"NIGHT" is the standard time designator in a screenplay's slugline, indicating that a scene takes place after sundown.
-
Night for day is a cinematic technique that involves shooting a scene during the night and using powerful artificial lighting to create the illusion of it being daytime.
-
Filming conducted during nighttime hours to capture nocturnal scenes authentically.
-
Night-for-day is a cinematographic technique of shooting scenes during daylight hours but using filters and underexposure to create the illusion of nighttime.
-
A highly flammable film stock base made from cellulose nitrate used until the 1950s.
-
The Node Graph is a flowchart-style interface used in advanced color grading software where each step of the image processing pipeline is represented by an individual 'node' that can be connected in complex, non-linear ways.
-
Elements presented outside a film’s narrative world, such as music and voice-over
-
Score, voice-over, and effects unheard by characters shape tone and audience interpretation.
-
Scene numbering is the process of assigning unique, sequential numbers to each scene in a screenplay, primarily for use in a shooting script.
Filmmaking terms starting with O
-
"O.S." is the screenplay abbreviation for "Off-Screen," indicating dialogue from a character who is physically in the scene but not visible in the camera frame.
-
Object panning is the process in immersive audio mixing of moving a discrete sound element, or 'object,' through a three-dimensional space.
-
A filming approach that observes events impartially from an outside perspective
-
OCF, or Original Camera Files, refers to the raw, unaltered footage directly recorded by the camera before any color correction or transcoding has been applied.
-
A configuration file defining color transforms and display pipelines in OpenColorIO.
-
An Output Device Transform that maps scene-referred imagery to a specific display-referred color space.
-
Shooting 'off-speed' means recording footage at a frame rate that is different from the standard playback speed, primarily to create slow-motion or fast-motion effects.
-
Shooting 'off the grid' means filming in a remote location that lacks access to municipal power, requiring the production to be entirely self-sufficient.
-
An offline cut is the creative editing stage of a film, performed using low-resolution copies of the original footage to focus on storytelling, pacing, and performance.
-
The process of cutting a lower‐resolution copy of footage to preserve originals and streamline editorial
-
An Offload Manager is the crew member, typically a Digital Imaging Technician (DIT) or Data Wrangler, who is responsible for the secure copying and verification of all digital files from camera media to backup drives.
-
The Offset wheel is a primary color correction tool that uniformly raises or lowers the entire video signal—shadows, mid-tones, and highlights—simultaneously without changing their relative relationship.
-
'On book' refers to an actor who is performing a scene while still holding and referring to their script.
-
'On the fly' refers to the act of making a creative or technical decision in the moment on a film set, without prior planning or rehearsal.
-
Filming conducted at real-world sites outside the studio environment.
-
A photographer who works directly on a film set to capture production images for marketing and archival purposes.
-
A 'One-Eyed Jack' is a slang term for a camera shot that frames an actor in profile, showing only one of their eyes.
-
Single-line summaries of each scene form the backbone of the shooting plan presented to financiers and department heads.
-
A 2D animation technique that overlays adjacent frames to guide smooth motion.
-
An online cut is the technical, high-resolution finishing stage of a film where the locked offline edit is re-assembled using the original, full-quality camera footage.
-
Online editing is the final stage in post‑production where full‑resolution footage is conformed to create the master version of a film.
-
A packaging mode that separates audio, video and timed-text into individual MXF tracks.
-
Open Captions are textual transcriptions of a film's audio that are permanently embedded into the video image and cannot be turned off by the viewer.
-
Open matte is a technique where a film is shot with a larger frame area than intended for theatrical release, allowing it to be reframed for different aspect ratios.
-
'Open matte' is a filmmaking technique where a film is shot to protect a wider aspect ratio for television or home video, even though it is intended to be matted (cropped) for its theatrical release.
-
An open source film is a movie produced with its source files and assets made freely available to the public for reuse and learning.
-
OpenTimelineIO is an open-source software project that provides a standardized format and API for describing and exchanging editorial timeline information between different creative tools and production departments.
-
An in-camera or post-production technique that manipulates film imagery through optical printers.
-
An optical soundtrack is the audio information for a motion picture that has been photographically printed as a visual waveform directly onto the side of the film strip.
-
An 'orange hit' is a slang term for a prominent and often stylized flare or light effect in a warm, orange-gold color, typically from a direct light source hitting the camera lens.
-
An orchestrator is a highly skilled musician who translates a composer's musical score into a full score for an orchestra, assigning musical lines to specific instruments.
-
Original Camera Negative (OCN)
The Original Camera Negative (OCN) is the master, first-generation film that was physically exposed in the camera during principal photography.
-
The bespoke musical composition crafted specifically for a film’s narrative and emotional arc.
-
'Out of focus' describes an image, or part of an image, that is not rendered with sharp, clear detail by the camera lens.
-
A screenplay outline is a scene-by-scene structural breakdown of a story's plot points, used by a writer as a blueprint to organize the narrative before writing the full script.
-
An outtake compilation is an edited sequence of unused footage from a film, including alternate takes, deleted scenes, and on-set mistakes.
-
An over-the-shoulder shot frames a subject from behind another person, establishing perspective and spatial relationships.
-
Shooting at higher frame rates slows action in playback, opposite of undercranking yet born from the same hand-crank era.
-
An 'overhang shot' is a type of high-angle shot where the camera is rigged to an overhang or outcropping, looking down at the action below.
Filmmaking terms starting with P
7 of 74 on this page · all P entries
-
A wide-gamut color space based on DCI-P3 primaries with a D65 white point.
-
A P3-D65 trim is a specialized color correction pass that adapts a theatrical film master to the specific color standards required for high-end home entertainment and streaming platforms.
-
Pacing is the perceived speed at which a story is told, determined by factors like scene length, editing speed, and the rate of plot progression.
-
The page count is the total number of pages in a screenplay, a crucial metric used in the film industry to estimate a movie's potential runtime.
-
The page-per-minute rule is a widely used industry guideline which estimates that one page of a properly formatted screenplay corresponds to one minute of screen time.
-
A reprojection process cropping widescreen films to fit narrower screens
-
Large-format cinema camera system combining Panavision optics with RED sensor technology and color science.
Other categories
The Other Seven Categories
The rest of the glossary, each with its own A to Z index: genres and styles, characters and tropes, storytelling, industry and awards, pop culture and fandom, general terms, and the odd ones out.
