Frames and footage

Words for judging, then the camera, the edit, light, sound, photography, animation, production and live events.

Read in order, or open the volume you need

Shots and Cues runs to two volumes so that each stays short enough to read in one sitting. Every volume holds whole sections in the toolkit’s own order, with the appendices for its own entries. The toolkit closes with the defects checklist, before anyone presses record, at the end of volume two.

Ask for “something more dynamic” and you get a guess.

Ask for “a slow push-in on the speaker, then cut to a wide” and you get a shot.

Each vague note has a precise one behind it

The notes on the left are what most reviews sound like. The ones on the right say the same thing in the crew’s words, and every one of those words is in this toolkit.

In the words, on the page, behind the screen, before the lens

Instruments and Moves names what happens in the words. Marks and Measures names what happens on the page. Stacks and Sprints names what happens behind the screen. This one names what happens in front of a camera, a microphone or an audience.

Every term is one of eight kinds.

Most are parts: things you can point at. Fifty-one are defects, named faults that play the part of the vices in Instruments and Moves. Concepts are new to the set, and belong almost entirely to Part three.

Where the words cluster

Theatre production and music hold the most terms, then scriptwriting and live events. The defects gather where sound and picture are captured, and in the critic’s vocabulary at the end.

Words with two meanings, and words held elsewhere in the set

Some words change meaning with the department. A pan turns the camera and also places a sound between two speakers; compression evens out a voice and also shrinks a file. When one of these comes up in a meeting, ask which is meant before arguing about the answer.

Terms, a drawing and where you’ll meet them

Part one works differently. Each judging word has its own slide: the definition, the line it usually arrives as in a notes session, and a drawing of the work as found and as mended. Part four sets each pair side by side, with the source’s test for telling them apart.

Three misreadings, refused in advance

The third misreading is the costly one. A reviewer who has just learnt “jump cut” tends to find them everywhere and to treat every one as a fault. Some are, and some are a choice. The words here are for better notes, not for overruling the people who make the work.

Words for judging

Seventeen critique words used by editors, directors and producers, in four groups. Most of them concern time.

How it moves in time

Five words for what moving pictures and live events have and print does not: duration, and the pattern of what happens within it.

Pacing

In the notes “The middle third drags”

Rhythm

In the notes “Every shot is four seconds. Vary it”

Beat

In the notes “Hold a beat before the title comes in”

Tight, loose

In the notes “Tighten the opening”, “the framing is loose”

Dead air

In the notes “Thirty seconds of dead air while the link loaded”

Whether the cuts hold

Four words for whether the shots join up: enough of them to cut from, details that agree, and a reason for every change.

Coverage

In the notes “We don’t have the coverage to cut that”

Continuity

In the notes “Her glass was full in the last shot”

Motivated

In the notes “The camera move isn’t motivated”

Jarring

In the notes “That cut to black is jarring”

What the frame shows, and how well

Five words for the image itself: where its edges fall, how it is arranged, how bright it is, what is sharp and how clean it looks.

Framing

In the notes “Frame out the clutter on the left”

Composition

In the notes “Too centred. It feels static”

Exposure

In the notes “Underexposed. The faces are muddy”

Sharp, soft

In the notes “The speaker’s soft. Focus is on the wall”

Noise, grain

In the notes “Too noisy to use at full screen”

How it sounds, and how polished it feels

Three words: whether the sound is clean, whether the speech can be understood, and the overall sense of craft.

Clean

In the notes “We need a clean take of that line”

Intelligibility

In the notes “The music masks her words”

Production value

In the notes “Good content, low production value”

Words for things

About 420 terms in sixteen families, from the size of a shot to the prompt book, the mixing desk and the Foley stage.

Shot sizes and angles

Shot sizes run from widest to tightest, and each says how much of a person or place the frame holds. Angles say where the camera sits relative to the subject. Together they set how close the audience feels and who seems to have power in the frame.

The wide sizes say where we are before they say who

Three sizes that hold the whole person or more: the place, the person in it, and the person alone from head to toe.

Each step in costs a little context and buys a little feeling

The four sizes most interviews and talks are cut from, named by where the frame cuts the body.

Who is in the frame, and whose eyes we are looking through

Shots named by how many people they hold, how they face the camera, and whose position the camera takes.

The master covers the scene. Inserts and reactions are cut into it.

The three shots that make a scene editable: one that runs from start to finish, and two kinds of shot cut into it.

Where the camera sits says who holds the power

Five heights and tilts of the camera, from the neutral eye level to the deliberately uneasy Dutch angle.

Camera movement

The key distinction is whether the camera turns, travels or only changes its lens. A pan turns the camera on the spot. A truck moves the whole camera sideways. A zoom moves nothing but the lens, which is why it looks different from a dolly even when the framing ends up the same.

A pan and a tilt turn the camera. They never move it.

The camera stays where it is: still, turning left or right, turning up or down, or turning so fast the picture smears.

A dolly, a truck and an arc move the whole camera

Five moves in which the camera itself travels: toward the subject, sideways, up and down, alongside, or around.

A zoom and a focus pull change the lens. The camera stays put.

Three moves made in the lens: one changes how much the frame holds, one changes what is sharp, and one fights a camera move with a zoom.

A reveal holds back the subject. Slow motion and time-lapse bend the clock.

Three ways a shot controls time: when the viewer first sees the subject, and how fast the action runs.

The rig decides the moves, and how steady they look

Five kinds of support, from the operator’s own hands to a camera that flies, and the moves each one makes possible.

Composition and continuity

Composition is how one frame is arranged. Continuity is how frames agree with each other, so the audience never has to work out where they are. Most continuity rules exist to protect the viewer’s sense of space.

Framing is mostly about where the empty space goes

Where the subject sits, how much space surrounds it, where text may go, and whether the horizon is level.

Depth comes from lines and layers the room already has

Three ways to make a flat picture feel deep, using what is already in the room.

Cameras on one side of the line keep people in their places

The line runs through two people’s eyelines. Cameras on one side of it keep a conversation readable; one camera across it breaks it.

Change the angle enough at a cut, and nothing else

Three checks on the join between two shots: the angle, the direction of movement, and the details.

Editing and transitions

Most edits are plain cuts, and most good editing goes unnoticed. The named transitions are tools for marking time, linking ideas or changing mood, and each loses force with use.

Every cut needs a reason: a move, a shape or a shock

Five cuts from one shot to the next: four with a reason the viewer can feel, and one without.

A cutaway laid over the join hides a jump cut

Shortening an interview leaves the speaker jumping in the frame. A shot of something else, laid over the join, covers it.

Two scenes taking turns, stitched by sound that leads or lingers

Crosscutting alternates between two places. J and L cuts move the sound across a cut, ahead of the picture or behind it.

A dissolve passes time, a fade closes a section, a wipe draws notice

Three transitions that take time on screen instead of a single frame, and what each tells the viewer.

Squeeze time, stop it, or show two pictures at once

Three ways an edit bends time and space: many short shots, two pictures sharing the screen, one picture held.

An edit is clips laid on a timeline: A-roll below, B-roll above

The editor’s workspace, the two kinds of footage most videos are cut from, and the stray frame a hurried edit leaves behind.

The edit starts long and loose, then closes in on its length

Five stages of the edit, from the chosen takes to the point where the timing stops changing.

Lighting and colour

Lighting decides whether a face reads as warm, flat, dramatic or tired before anyone speaks. The colour terms split into two stages: correction makes footage accurate, and grading gives it a look.

The key lights the face, the fill softens it, the back lifts it off the wall

The standard interview set-up: three lamps around one person, each with one job.

The bigger the source, the softer the shadow

Hardness is the size of the light as the subject sees it, and the crew changes it with fabric and white surfaces.

Light already in the room is free, until it flickers

The windows and lamps a location comes with: worth using, and worth checking.

A dark face is a look when chosen and a defect when not

Three ways the balance of light and dark reads on screen, one of them a mistake made every day on video calls.

Every light has a colour, and the camera is set for one at a time

Light runs from warm to cool, the camera is told which light counts as white, and two colours of light in one frame cannot both be right.

Footage is shot flat, set straight, then given its look

What happens to colour once the edit is locked: flat footage, a preset to start from, a fix, then a look.

Sound

Audiences forgive soft pictures far more readily than bad sound. Most of these terms concern capturing clean speech and keeping it intelligible under music and effects.

Some sound belongs to the scene. The rest is laid on top.

Four kinds of sound on a soundtrack, sorted by whether they come from inside the scene or are added from outside it.

Sync sound must match the lips. Voiceover has no lips to match.

Two ways speech reaches the picture, and the fault that shows when the first one slips.

Room tone and ambience are quiet. They hide every join.

Three sounds the viewer is not meant to notice: the silence of a room, the sound of a place, and a sound that carries across a cut.

The music steps back whenever someone speaks

How the voice and the music are balanced into one track, and the units that track is measured in.

Get the microphone close: on the chest, or just above the frame

Three ways of putting a microphone near a speaker, and how the two signals reach the recorder.

Clipping, pops and hisses are peaks: too much, too briefly

Three faults that spike above the rest of the voice, and the screen that stops one of them.

Echo and hum fill the gaps between the words

Two faults that sit under the speech rather than above it: the room answering back, and the mains leaking in.

Photography

The still image has its own vocabulary, most of it about how much light reaches the sensor and how much of the scene is sharp. Most of these settings apply to video cameras too.

Three settings buy light, and each one charges a different price

The three settings that decide how bright a photograph is, and what each one changes besides brightness.

A shallow depth of field flatters one face and loses the rest

How much of the picture is sharp, what the blur behind it looks like, and how the camera decides where to focus.

The lower the millimetres, the more of the room the lens takes in

Three words for choosing a lens: how wide it sees, which end of the range it sits at, and whether its view can change.

The histogram shows what the screen hides: tones piled against a wall

A graph of the picture’s tones, the habit of shooting several exposures, and the two faults the graph exposes.

A headshot shows the face. An environmental portrait shows the job.

Four kinds of people picture a brief asks for, from the tight profile photo to the unnoticed moment.

Shoot RAW, choose from a contact sheet, retouch only the keepers

What happens between the shoot and the published photograph: the files, the choosing and the correcting.

If everything blurs, the camera moved. If one thing does, the subject did.

The two kinds of blur a slow shutter lets in, and the habit that catches a moment the eye would miss.

Three faults made by the equipment, and the move that cures each

Faults that come from the lens or the sensor, not from the light, and the move that removes each.

Animation and motion

Much educational video is animated or recorded from a screen rather than filmed. These words cover drawn and digital movement, from explainers to interface motion.

Set the keys and let the tweens fill in, or make every frame by hand

Two ways to make the frames of an animation: set a few and fill the rest, or make every one with a pencil or a camera.

Good motion speeds up and slows down. Janky motion stops and starts.

Three words for how motion runs over time: its speed, its seam, and its failure to flow.

Approve the animatic first, and choose the output early

The stages an animated piece passes through, from timed boards to the file that is finally delivered.

An explainer is the job. The other four are ways to make one.

One short video form and four common ways of making it, from animated charts to a recorded screen.

Motion should carry meaning, and switch off for those who ask

A popular effect, the setting that turns effects down, and the fault of motion without a purpose.

Production: process and roles

Production runs in three phases: pre-production plans the shoot, production captures it, and post-production makes it into the finished piece. Most of the cost of a mistake lies in finding it late, so most of these documents exist to settle decisions early.

Most decisions belong in pre-production, where changing them is cheap

The three phases of a production, and the first two documents that shape it.

The script runs in story order. The shot list runs in filming order.

The words and pictures of a video, and the same shots resorted for the shoot day.

The recce finds the problems. The call sheet plans the day around them.

The visit before the shoot, the page that runs the day, and the names for its last shot and its end.

Every face, track and photo needs written permission, with limits

The paperwork that lets a finished video be shown: permission from the people in it, and the terms for what was bought.

The slate names every take, so the rushes can be found again

How footage is labelled as it is shot, and what the editor receives at the end of each day.

Talk to the producer about time and money, the director about the look

Who answers to whom on a shoot: the two leads, the people in front of the camera and the general help behind it.

The DP leads the picture crew. The sound recordist works alongside.

The crew on set: the picture department with its lighting and rigging hands, and the person listening on headphones.

The editor shapes the story. The grade and the graphics finish it.

The three roles of post-production, and when each one starts work.

Formats, delivery and access

The last mile: what the finished video is made of, how it opens and closes, and how people who can’t hear or see it fully still get the content. Accessibility standards such as WCAG expect captions for recorded video and audio description where visuals carry information (W3C, 2018).

Bars appear when the picture’s shape and the screen’s shape differ

Four frame shapes in common use, and the black bars that appear when one is shown on a screen of another.

Resolution counts the pixels. Frame rate counts the frames.

Two numbers on every delivery spec: how much detail each frame holds, and how many frames pass in a second.

Edit from light copies, keep a heavy master, send out small files

What a video file is made of, and the copies a project makes on its way from the camera to the viewer.

Start on the content, keep the branding short, end on one action

The running order of a finished video, from the first seconds to the last, with markers viewers can jump to.

Text on the picture, and the still that stands in for it

Four pieces of graphics a commissioned video usually needs, from the full-screen title to the image that earns the click.

Closed captions ride along as a file. Open ones are part of the picture.

Text for viewers who can’t hear or don’t know the language, carried as a separate timed file or burned into the frame.

A transcript is for reading. Audio description fills the pauses.

Two more ways the content reaches people who can’t follow the sound or the picture: a page to read, and narration of what is shown.

Live events and stage

The words of town halls, conferences and talks, borrowed from theatre and broadcast. Directions are the commonest trap: stage left is the performer’s left as they face the audience, which is the audience’s right.

The run of show lists every cue. Standby and go fire each one.

The paperwork of a produced event, and the two words that make each line of it happen on time.

Each rehearsal adds a layer: words, then places, then cues, then all

Four ways to practise an event, from a speaker alone with a timer to a full run as on the day, and the time each person must arrive.

Stage left is the speaker’s left, and the audience’s right

Directions on a stage, named from two points of view, and the hidden spaces at either side.

The stage manager runs the stage. The desk at the back runs the room.

Where speakers wait, where the show is run from, and the person who links the two.

Lights, screen and sound all change together on the word go

What the audience sees and hears from the doors opening to the first speaker, lane by lane.

The speaker stands on the podium and reads from the lectern

The furniture and screens that keep a speaker on script without turning their back on the audience.

One overrun pushes every item after it. Time cards stop the first.

Who keeps a programme to time: the host who links it, the chair of each panel, and the signals both of them use.

Feedback is a loop. Keep the roving mic out of the speaker’s path.

The audience microphone at question time, and the howl it makes when it hears itself.

One AV desk feeds two audiences: the hall and the stream

How a hybrid event is fed: everything on stage passes through one desk, then to the hall and out to the internet.

Continued in volume two, Curtains and Critics

This volume ends with its last section, and volume two picks up at section B12. The toolkit closes with the defects checklist, before anyone presses record, at the end of volume two.

Seventeen works

The definitions are the source glossary’s own. Where a term rests on a published source, the source is named in the definition and listed here.

Every term in this volume is indexed, with its definition, at https://www.geraldajam.com/library/glossary/phrasebooks/shots-and-cues.