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What's After the Movie?

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What's After the Movie?
Filmmaking Camera, lighting, sound, editing and the crew roles behind every shot.

Concept Art: Meaning & Definition in Film

Illustrative designs that establish the visual style and look of a film’s elements.

  • 4 sections
  • 1 min read
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On this page 4 sections

Role in Pre-Production

Concept artists create mood boards, character designs, environment paintings and prop sketches to define a film’s aesthetic vision.

Techniques and Tools

Using digital tools like Photoshop and Procreate or traditional mediums, artists iterate on color palettes, lighting schemes and architectural styles.

Concept Art: Collaboration

Concept art informs departments—production design, costume, VFX—ensuring a cohesive visual language across sets, costumes and effects.

Concept Art: Notable Examples

Iconic concept art includes Ralph McQuarrie’s Star Wars paintings and Syd Mead’s futuristic designs for Blade Runner, which shaped the final on-screen worlds.

See the vocabulary at work in real films

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More Filmmaking Terms

Entries filed on the same shelf as Concept Art, each with the one-line answer first. They are the words that usually come up in the same conversation.

All 913 terms

  • RGB Parade

    The RGB Parade is a video scope that displays three separate waveform monitors side-by-side, one for each of the Red, Green, and Blue color channels of the image, used for precise color balance evaluation.

  • Disguise Server

    A Disguise server is an industry-standard media server platform used to manage and play back video content for large-scale displays like LED walls.

  • Sandbag It

    'Sandbag it' is on-set slang for the command to place a sandbag on the leg of a light stand to ensure it is stable and safe.

  • Truck Shot

    A lateral camera move performed by mounting on a wheeled platform or dolly

  • Two-Pole Boom

    A camera boom system using two counterbalanced poles for extended reach and stability.

  • Offline Cut

    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.