"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.
Wiki search
Filmmaking Terms Starting With O
The filmmaking terms that begin with O, in alphabetical order.
1–39 of 39 entries
Definitions of Filmmaking Terms Starting With O
Open any entry for the full definition, where the term comes from and the films that show it best.
-
-
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.
By category
Or Browse by Subject
Eight subject indexes, each with its own alphabetical list: filmmaking, genres and styles, characters, storytelling, industry, fandom, general terms and the rest.
