Characters
The Mentor is an archetypal character who prepares the hero for their journey by providing guidance, training, a crucial tool, or essential wisdom.
A to Z
Film Terms Starting With M
166 entries in the Movie Wiki begin with M, listed alphabetically with a one-line definition each. Open any of them for the full explanation.
61–120 of 166 entries
Definitions of Film Terms Starting With M
Open any entry for the full definition, where the term comes from and the films that show it best.
-
-
Characters
The Mentor Protector is a character archetype who not only guides the hero with wisdom but also actively uses their skills to physically defend the hero from harm.
-
-
Pop Culture
A merch booth is a designated sales point for official movie-related merchandise at screenings, conventions, or themed attractions.
-
Pop Culture
A merch drop is a scheduled, limited-edition release of merchandise, designed to create urgency and high demand among a fan community.
-
Industry
The commercial practice of producing and selling goods based on films and their characters.
-
Industry
Merchandising rights are a form of intellectual property licensing that grants a company permission to manufacture and sell consumer products based on a film's creative elements.
-
Characters
A character mindset in which one believes they are destined to save others or the world.
-
Pop Culture
The Met Gala is an annual fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute that has become a major global showcase for celebrity and fashion.
-
Storytelling
Meta-cinema describes any film that self-consciously acknowledges its own artificiality and the process of its creation.
-
Genres
A cinematic concept in which films draw attention to their own artifice and production
-
Industry
Metacritic is an online aggregator that assigns weighted average scores to films based on critic reviews.
-
Industry
Metadata Harvesting is the automated process of extracting, collecting, and indexing all available technical, descriptive, and administrative data associated with digital film assets to ensure they are discoverable and usable in the future.
-
Pop Culture
Network of persistent virtual spaces where films extend as interactive worlds, marketing stages, or co-creation venues.
-
Pop Culture
Live or pre-rendered performances hosted in virtual worlds that blend music, cinema, and interactive storytelling.
-
Pop Culture
A metaverse premiere is a virtual event where a film, trailer, or series debuts within a persistent, interactive 3D digital world like Roblox, Fortnite, or Decentraland.
-
Filmmaking
An acting technique emphasizing emotional truth through personal experience and psychological immersion.
-
-
Industry
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) is a legendary American media company, renowned for its major film studio that was a dominant force during Hollywood's Golden Age.
-
Pop Culture
A niche social media creator whose authentic engagement drives targeted movie promotion.
-
Pop Culture
A microtrend in film is a smaller, more niche, and often short-lived trend in aesthetics, storytelling, or subject matter that appears within a specific subgenre or community.
-
Storytelling
A mid-credit scene is a short clip that appears after a portion of the closing credits has rolled, but before the credits are fully complete.
-
Storytelling
A short interlude inserted partway through a film’s end credits for narrative or comedic effect.
-
Filmmaking
A 'Midday Matte' is a slang term for the harsh, unflattering, high-contrast light found when shooting outdoors in the middle of the day.
-
Pop Culture
Midjourney is a popular AI image generation service known for producing highly detailed, artistic, and often stylized images from text prompts.
-
Industry
Midnight Madness is a celebrated program at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that showcases the best in new genre films.
-
Pop Culture
A film shown in late‑night screenings that often cultivates cult followings.
-
Industry
A special late-night showing of a film, often for enthusiastic fans or event premieres.
-
Storytelling
The midpoint is a major plot point that occurs in the middle of a film's second act, often raising the stakes and changing the protagonist's approach to the conflict.
-
Storytelling
A midpoint false victory is a structural device where the protagonist seemingly achieves their goal, only for it to create an even greater problem.
-
Genres
Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that focuses on interstellar or futuristic warfare, emphasizing military life, technology, and tactics.
-
Industry
A 'milk run' is a production slang term for a simple, routine errand, typically assigned to a Production Assistant, that involves picking up or dropping off multiple items at various locations.
-
-
Pop Culture
A podcast series with concise episodes, typically under fifteen minutes each.
-
Industry
A mini-room is a small, short-term writers' room convened to develop a show before it is officially greenlit or to break stories for a future season.
-
Filmmaking
A practical technique using scaled-down models to simulate large-scale environments or structures.
-
Industry
A guaranteed payment from distributors to producers securing distribution rights.
-
Storytelling
A television narrative told over a limited number of episodes with a single overarching arc.
-
Characters
A Mirror Character, often a type of foil, is a character who shares many similarities with the protagonist but whose different choices highlight the protagonist's own journey.
-
Filmmaking
A 'mirror take' is a slang term for a subsequent take of a scene that is a near-perfect, almost identical replication of the previous one.
-
Genres
Mise-en-abyme is a sophisticated artistic technique where a film or image contains a smaller version of itself, creating a nested, self-reflecting, and often infinite loop.
-
-
Filmmaking
Audio routing that feeds a listener everything except their own microphone to prevent echoes and feedback.
-
Filmmaking
Mix room calibration is the meticulous, all-encompassing process of tuning a sound mixing environment to meet exacting industry standards for acoustics, speaker level, and frequency response.
-
Storytelling
A Mixed Alliance is a narrative trope where characters from opposing factions, often enemies, are forced to work together to defeat a common, greater threat.
-
Genres
Cinematic works blending real footage with interactive or spatially anchored digital elements in real time or post.
-
Storytelling
In film, a mixtape is a personally curated collection of songs, often on a cassette, that functions as a potent narrative device to develop character, convey emotion, and drive the plot.
-
Filmmaking
A mo-cap volume is a specially equipped performance space surrounded by tracking cameras, designed to capture the three-dimensional movement of actors and objects.
-
Filmmaking
The Mo-Sys StarTracker is an optical camera tracking system that provides precise, real-time positional data for virtual production.
-
Industry
A mockbuster is a low-budget film created to capitalize on the popularity of a major blockbuster through a similar title or premise.
-
Genres
A film or television genre parodying documentary conventions for comedic or satirical effect.
-
Industry
A model hallucination log records instances where AI systems generate incorrect or fabricated information during film-related tasks.
-
-
Storytelling
An extended speech by a single character crystallises inner conflict or rhetorical supremacy.
-
Genres
Monster romance is a genre that explores romantic and often sexual relationships between human characters and monstrous or supernatural beings.
-
Characters
The monster sympathizer is an archetype in horror and fantasy films who sees the humanity within the 'monster' and advocates for its compassion and understanding.
-
-
Genres
A montage sequence compresses time and information through rhythmic editing, music and visual metaphor.
-
Filmmaking
Mood, or atmosphere, is the pervasive emotional feeling that a film or a scene evokes in the audience, created through its aesthetic and sonic elements.
-
General
A mood board is a visual collage of images, text, and materials used to establish the aesthetic direction for a film or video project.
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.
