Curtains and critics

Theatre, music and sound design, scripts, Foley and performance, the words for analysis, and the pairs most often confused.

Where this volume sits

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 findings and the explanation of how the toolkit works open volume one. The toolkit closes with the defects checklist, before anyone presses record, at the end of this volume.

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.

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.

Theatre production

B11 covers events borrowed from theatre. This family covers theatre itself: the spaces, the stagecraft and the long chain of calls, notes and cues that gets a show up every night. British and American terms differ, and both are given where they do.

Spaces and scenery

Twelve terms on three plates, from proscenium stage to flats.

Name a stage by the sides the audience sits on

Five shapes of theatre space, from the framed picture of the proscenium to the empty room of the black box.

Above, below and in front of the stage, each part has its use

The parts of a traditional theatre that sit around the playing space: the flies above, the trap below, and the apron and pit in front.

Flats make the walls. The cyc and the scrim change with the light.

Three kinds of scenery: the solid walls of a set, and two cloths whose look depends on how they are lit.

Lighting and stagecraft

Eleven terms on four plates, from props (properties) to QLab.

Props and costume are run from the wings, every night

What performers handle and wear, and the backstage routine that keeps both in the right place for every show.

A wash lights the whole stage. A special lights one moment.

The lights a show hangs and the plan that records them, and the two jobs a lamp can do.

Pick the lamp for its edge, then change the beam

Four common stage lights, and three things added to a lamp or the air to change what the audience sees.

Each lighting and sound change is a numbered cue

The shorthand the cue sheet uses for each department, and the software many theatres use to play the cues.

Crew, calls and the run

Twenty-two terms on seven plates, from prompt book to corpsing.

Every cue is written in the book: a standby, then a go

The stage manager’s master script, the act of calling cues from it, and what happens when one comes late.

Stage left is the performer’s left, facing the audience

The two sides of the stage as the crew names them, and the two stage managers who work from them.

One adviser for the text, and cover for every part

Two kinds of support a production plans for: someone who knows the text deeply, and performers ready to step in.

From the get-in to press night, every session ends in notes

The stretch between arriving at the venue and opening the show, when the set goes up, the cues are set and the show is still changing.

Matinees by day, a dark night, then the get-out

How a run of performances fills a week, and how it ends.

One evening, from the half to the show report

The calls that count the company down to curtain up, the shape of the evening, and the record kept of it.

A dry needs a prompt. A corpse needs the scene to carry on.

The person who follows the script in rehearsal, and two ways a performer loses a scene in front of an audience.

Music, sound design and podcasts

B6 covers capturing sound on a shoot. This family covers making sound into something: designing it for a scene or a stage, scoring and mixing music, and producing a podcast. Several words here also have a different meaning on camera, such as pan and compression. Part D sets them side by side.

Sound design and music for picture and stage

Ten terms on three plates, from sound designer to sync licence.

The soundtrack is everything heard. The score is only the music.

Four words for the layers of sound in a finished film or show, and for the person who builds the layers that are not music or speech.

Temp music holds the place. Numbered cues replace it one by one.

How music is laid against picture: in numbered pieces, some of them quiet beneath speech, and at first borrowed.

A needle drop needs a sync licence, and the cue sheet records it

The paperwork behind any music you did not commission: the permission to use it, and the list that proves what was used.

Recording and mixing

Twenty-seven terms on eight plates, from DAW (digital audio workstation) to DI box.

Each source on its own track, grouped into stems, bounced to one file

The working session in audio software, from separate tracks to the single file that leaves it.

Every channel strip feeds the bus, and every move can be recorded

A desk is a row of identical channel strips. Each one shapes one source and sends it on.

Mud and masking are crowding. EQ clears room for each sound.

Shaping a sound by frequency, and the two faults it is most often asked to fix.

A compressor narrows the range. A limiter only stops the peaks.

Four states of the same voice: as recorded, evened out, capped at a ceiling, and squeezed too far.

Pan places a sound left to right. Reverb places it near or far.

Two moves that put sounds in space: across the speakers, and back from the listener.

A level jump is fixed in the mix. Mastering only evens out the whole.

The last stages of an episode: joining the segments, balancing them, and finishing the file to a set loudness.

Cut music on the bar lines, and keep the hook

The parts of a piece of music an editor counts in: its sections, its speed, its catchiest phrase and its repeating units.

On stage, the audience hears one mix and the performers another

The kit and the checks that take a school concert or a staff conference from set-up to the first song.

Podcast production

Eight terms on three plates, from episode to tape sync.

Episodes go up to a host. The RSS feed carries them to every app.

How a series is planned and published: in runs of instalments, each with its written page, through one feed.

The theme frames every episode. Ad slots sit before, inside and after.

The fixed parts of an episode around its content: the signature music, the standard open and close, and the slots for messages.

A tape sync records the guest where they sit, not down the line

Recorded interview audio, and the way to get it at studio quality from a guest who is not in the studio.

Scriptwriting

The words of screenplays, stage plays, audio scripts and the branching scripts behind interactive learning. Screenplay format is strict for a practical reason: one formatted page runs about one minute of screen time, so the page count is the first budget.

Each document tells the same story at a finer grain

Four documents that come before a script, from one sentence to a plan of every scene.

Once a script is locked, changes come as coloured pages, not drafts

The versions a script passes through, from the writer’s drafts to the frozen pages a crew works from.

A draft is written in a room, judged by a reader, fixed and read aloud

The people who write, judge, repair and first hear a script before anyone films it.

Every element has its own indent, so a page runs about a minute

The four parts of every screenplay page, and the rule that turns a page count into running time.

Small marks in the dialogue say where a voice is, and when it waits

Marks inside dialogue: where a voice comes from, where a speech carries on, and where it pauses.

Two notes to the editor: how to leave a scene, and how to share it

The two editing instructions a screenplay may carry, and what each becomes on the timeline.

A play script lists its people, divides its time and calls the lights

The parts of a play script that a screenplay does without: the cast list, the divisions and the directions in italics.

An audio script writes in its sounds; a branching one, its choices

Scripts with a job a screenplay does not have: carrying every sound, or forking at the audience’s choice.

A round trip, fifteen beats, or four parts with no fight

Three templates writers hold a draft against: a journey out and back, a list of beats, and a structure built on a turn rather than a conflict.

Act breaks cut across an episode; its plots run through them

How a series episode is built: a short scene either side, acts divided by turning points, and plots of three sizes woven through.

Each fault takes a job from someone: the viewer, the actor, the director

Three faults that mark a draft at a glance, each one the writer doing someone else’s work.

Foley and post-production sound

Almost nothing heard in a finished film was recorded at the moment it was filmed. Dialogue is cleaned or re-recorded, footsteps and rustles are performed on a Foley stage, and effects are layered from libraries and design. The three theory terms at the end come from Michel Chion’s account of how sound and image fuse (Chion, 1994).

Footsteps, cloth and props, performed again to the picture

The person, the room and the three kinds of sound a Foley session records.

The dialogue edit patches spoilt lines with ADR and wild lines

How speech is rescued after the shoot: recorded again in a studio, recorded on location without the camera, and joined into one clean track.

Effects are built in layers: the place, the crowd, then each event

The layers an effects editor builds under a scene, and where many of them come from.

A designed sound is several stock sounds stacked into one

The stock elements of sound design, and how they are layered into a single moment such as a logo reveal.

From the spotting session to the final mix, and the files it leaves

The stages of post-production sound, the separate tracks it delivers, and the speaker layouts a mix can be made for.

What we hear changes what we think we see

The plain rule that a voice should sound as far away as it looks, and three of Michel Chion’s terms for how sound and picture fuse.

Too literal, too empty, too clean: each gives the soundtrack away

Three faults that give a soundtrack away as something built afterwards, each above its mend.

Performance and voice

The words actors, voice artists and directors use with each other. They are just as useful for coaching a teacher on camera or a speaker on stage.

Find what the character wants, and where the want changes

Three tools for preparing a part: the facts the script gives, the want that drives each scene, and the units the scene breaks into.

Casting narrows the field, round by round

The pages, the rounds and the reading on sight that take a performer from a shortlist to a part.

Where you stand decides whether your face is seen

Two ways performers place themselves for the audience or the lens, and the fault of placing yourself at a partner’s expense.

Fix a fault with an adjustment, not a line reading

Two ways a director gives a note between takes, and two faults those notes are often given for.

Record whole reads, then pick up only what went wrong

The room voice is recorded in, and the units a voice session is counted in.

Carry, clarity and pitch are what a voice coach listens for

How far a voice carries, how clearly its words land, and two habits of pitch that change how a statement sounds.

Warm up first, then accept each offer and build on it

How a workshop or rehearsal starts, and the rule that keeps an unscripted scene moving.

Words for analysis

The vocabulary of narrative, film theory, theatre traditions, drama in education and working critics.

Narrative and structure

How a story is built and told, and why the same events can be told in a different order to a different effect.

The story is what happened. The plot is the order you tell it in.

Five ideas about time in a story: the order events happen in, and the order and the gaps in which they are told.

Freytag peaks halfway through. Three acts peak near the end.

The two best-known shapes of a whole story, the event that sets each one moving, and the release at its close.

Tell it in one block and it is a dump. Show it, and leave some unsaid.

How a story gets its background across: all at once, or through action, with some of the meaning left under the lines.

Plant early, pay off late: each device joins two points in time

Four ways an early moment points to a later one: openly, faintly, by obligation, or falsely.

A MacGuffin drives the chain of causes. A hole or a rescue breaks it.

Each scene should cause the next: one device that keeps the chain moving, and two faults that break it.

Who changes, whose voice to doubt, and what keeps coming back

Four threads an audience follows: a person changing, a voice to doubt, a recurring image or tune, and a device borrowed from other stories.

Film theory and criticism

The words critics and theorists use to say how a film makes its meaning: from what is placed in the frame to how the cuts and the camera position the viewer.

Mise-en-scène is what the frame holds. Deep focus keeps all of it sharp.

Two ideas for reading a single shot: everything that was put in front of the lens, and how much of it the lens lets you see clearly.

Put a face beside a shot, and the face takes on the shot’s meaning

The Soviet discovery that a cut is not a join but an argument: two shots together say what neither says alone.

Continuity hides the cut, suture uses it, and the long take refuses it

Three ways a film handles the joins between shots: smooth them away, use them to place the viewer, or go without them.

Four ways to file a film: by maker, by kind, by movement, by look

The labels critics and programmers use to group films, and that briefs borrow when they say what a video should feel like.

A documentary either watches the room or takes part in it

How a documentary speaks: Nichols (2017) names six modes, and two older traditions split on whether the film-maker joins in.

Two checks for representation: whose eyes, and whose conversation

Questions to put to any finished film about who is looking, who is looked at, and who gets to talk.

Viewers forgive a cartoon and trust a person. Almost-human unsettles them.

How willing an audience is to believe, and the dip in comfort that comes just before a figure looks fully human.

Some work points at other work. Some points at itself.

Four ways a work makes meaning out of references: to earlier work, to its own style, or to its own making.

Theatre traditions and forms

The movements and forms of modern theatre, from naturalism and Stanislavski to Brecht, the Absurd and the devised, applied and immersive work of today.

Realism on stage, and the two schools of acting built to serve it

The tradition most screen drama still follows, and the approaches to acting that grew up with it.

The fourth wall runs along the front of the stage, and speech can cross it

The imaginary line between the play and the people watching it, and the kinds of speech that respect it or step through it.

Epic theatre keeps reminding the audience it is watching a play

Brecht’s answer to realism: interrupt the story on purpose, so that the audience judges it instead of sinking into it.

Made by the company, made from real words, or made for a purpose

Three kinds of theatre common in schools and communities, told apart by where the show begins or what it is for.

Immersive work moves the audience. Physical theatre tells it with the body.

Two departures from actors speaking on a stage: shows the audience walks through, and shows told mainly in movement.

Fixed types, a speaking group, a loop: three ways past realism

Older and stranger traditions that still turn up in character work, musicals and school drama.

Drama in education

Techniques drama teachers use to explore a text, an issue or a dilemma. They transfer well to workshops and professional learning (Neelands & Goode, 2015).

The teacher steps into the story. The class becomes the experts.

Three ways of running a drama that lasts more than one lesson, led from inside the fiction rather than from the front of the room.

Four short techniques, each a shape for the room

Short techniques that fit inside any lesson or workshop, told apart by where people stand and who speaks.

One collects what the group knows. One lets the audience step in.

Two ways to make a group’s thinking visible: a figure on paper that collects what is known, and a scene the audience can step into.

The critic’s working vocabulary

The words of reviews and notes sessions. Most are judgements, so most can be challenged, and the useful response to any of them is “where, exactly?”

Verdicts on how a work builds: slowly, to a peak, to an ending it set up

Words for the shape of a work across its running time, and for the moments that stand out from it.

Verdicts on performers: where the skill is, and where the eye goes

Words reviewers use for people on screen or stage, each a judgement about attention and connection.

Words that sell a project before anyone has seen it

Pitch and marketing words: what a project is built around, how short its premise is, and how it will look.

Verdicts on time: where a work lurches, drags or fills

Three complaints about a finished work’s running time. Each is a judgement, so each needs a timecode before it can be acted on.

Verdicts on style, each worth answering with “where, exactly?”

Four judgements on how a finished work speaks and looks. They sound final, but each one points at a moment that can be found and discussed.

Too little and too much are two ends of one scale

The two commonest verdicts on a performance, and they point in opposite directions.

Commonly confused pairs

Moves that look alike to a viewer but are made in different ways, such as a zoom and a dolly.

On camera and in the edit

Pairs a viewer can barely tell apart on screen, which are shot or cut in different ways and cost different amounts.

Only one move in each pair takes the camera anywhere

Three pairs from Camera movement (B2), each a change of lens or a turn on the spot set beside a move of the whole camera.

Stage left is the performer’s left, and a lectern is not a podium

Two pairs that go wrong on the day of an event: a direction that flips with the point of view, and two words for what stands at the front.

On the timeline, each pair differs by one clip or one cut

Three pairs from Editing and transitions (B4), drawn as an editor sees them: clips on tracks.

Structure, then timing, then correction, then the look

Two sequences from post-production: the three stages of an edit, and the two passes of colour work that follow picture lock.

The bigger number is not always the one that matters

Two pairs of technical settings that sit side by side in a brief or a camera menu and control different things.

Who the words on screen are for, and who can hear the sound

Two pairs about what the audience hears and reads: text for those who cannot hear or do not know the language, and sound from inside or outside the scene.

Pairs from the stage and the studio

The same word meaning different things in the camera, the mixing desk and the theatre, and the same thing called by different names in Britain and America.

Same word, different department: ask which one is meant

Two words that the camera, sound and delivery teams each use for something different.

A cue is called, a score is composed, a mix is balanced

Three pairs from the stage and from Music, sound design and podcast production (B13), where one word covers several jobs.

Stage, classroom drama and the edit share ideas under different names

Three pairs where theatre, drama in education and film use the same idea, or the same break, under different names.

Pairs from the script and the sound stage

Documents that sound interchangeable and are not, and the sound jobs that replace each other in post-production.

Each document is longer and more detailed than the one before

Two sequences of script documents, from the one-line pitch to the page a crew shoots from.

One word, two trades: check who is speaking before you answer

Three words that mean one thing on set or in rehearsal and another on the page or in the green room.

Sound performed to the picture, or laid over it

Two pairs from Foley and post-production sound (B15): effects made to match the picture or taken from a library, and speech fitted to lips or recorded for no lips at all.

Most of these defects cannot be fixed afterwards

Forty-four named defects, from the script to the stage, each checked at the moment it can still be prevented. Clipped audio stays clipped and a blown sky stays white.

Five minutes with headphones saves a day in the edit

None of these checks needs technical knowledge to make, and each of them is cheap at the moment it is listed and expensive at any later one. That is the logic of the checklist: the defects of film and sound are mostly prevented, not repaired.

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.