B
B-MOVIE. Originally a cheaply made second feature. More generally, any low-budget film with poor production values.
BACKLIGHTING. Lighting an actor or actress from behind, thereby giving the character a sentimental halo effect. Common in early cinema, especially with leading ladies.
BIOPIC. A biographical film, especially those form the 1930s and '40s.

C
CINÉASTE.  Someone deeply involved in the cinema, though not necessaryily an actual filmmaker. Truffaut was a cineaste before he became a director. His fellow cineaste Bazin remained a critic.
CINÉMA VERITÉ.  A documentary style that arose in the 1960s and which emphasized real events captured usally with a handheld camera.
CINEMATIC APPARATUS. Describes not just the cinema-machine but the whole "institution" of the movies, when "'institution' is taken more widely than the habitual notion of the cinema industry to include the 'interior machine' of the psychology of the spectator, 'the social regulation of spectatorial metapsychology,' the industry of the 'mental machinery' of cinema,' cinema as technique of the imaginary" (Stephen Heath). Camera lenses, for example, already inscribe ideology in that they organize a visual field according to laws of perspective.
CINEMATIC CALCULUS.  Eisenstein's dreamed-of exact editing language which would produced Pavlovian predetermined, pre-calculated precise emotions in its spectators.
CINEMATOGRAPHER. The individual responsible for capturing a film's images on film.
CINEPHILE. Literally a lover of film. Not quite a cineaste.
CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD TEXT. The traditional, seamless Hollywood narrative, a system of representation which--according to Colin McCabe--"cannot deal with the real as contradictory" and always "ensures the position of the subject in a relation of dominant specularity."
CLOSURE, NARRATIVE. A conclusion giving the feeling that a narrative or narrative sequence has come to an end and providing it with an ultimate unity and coherence. An end creating in the receiver a feeling of appropriate completion and finality.
CO-OPTATION. The absorption or expropriation of formerly oppositional ideas or practices into the service of IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE. (Godfrey Reggio's 1983 film Koyaanisqatsi, for example, was intended as an indictment of the insanity of modern American culture, but its visual style has now become prominent in contemporary advertising.)
CONNOTATION. The suggestive or associative sense of an expression that extends beyond its literal definition. A second order system of signification which uses the denotation of a sign as its signifier and adds other meanings, other signfiers, often ideological in nature. A picture of Ronald Reagan denoted the actual person but connoted many other things to the electorate; for example, old fashioned values, the return of America to greatness again ("morning in America").
CONTINUITY. The ongoing logic and order of a movie narrative. Since movies are routinely shot out of order, making certain that props, sets, costumes, mise-en-scene, action, etc. are consistent and seem to follow naturally out of one another is a major problem for a film director
CONVENTION. The customary, "conventional" way of doing something in a work of art.
CREDIT SEQUENCE. That segment of a movie's beginning in which the credits appear, either as titles overlaying the action or separately, outside the diegesis.
CROSS-CUTTING. Moving back and forth between two parallel scenes..

D

DEEP-FOCUS. Lighting and photographing a shot in such a way that all focal planes are in focus simultaneously.  For Bazin, Orson Welles' and Greg Toland's democratic use of deep focus in Citizen Kane marked a decisive turn away from Eisenstein's manipulative montage.
DENOTATION. The literal meaning of an expression. The first order of SIGNIFICATION. A photograph of Ronald Reagan denotes (is) Ronald Reagan.
DIEGESIS. The fictional world of the film, the "actual" world of the film's story created by its narrative.
DISCOURSE. 1) How a STORY is told; an aspect of NARRATIVE distinguishable from STORY; the expression plane of narrative as opposed to its content plane; the narrating as opposed to the narrated. 2) Sometimes used as roughly equivalent synonym for text, to refer to any sampling of verbal/non-verbal exchange/conversation singled out for critical study; for example: feminist discourse, academic discourse, sports discourse, cinematic discourse, etc.
DISSOLVE. When an image slowly disappears from the screen, replaced by another subsequent image which is momentarily superimposed upon it.

E
ESTABLISHING SHOT. An opening shot of a film or a film sequence intended to reveal (often with the use of titles) thee local in which the film or film sequence will take place.

F
FADE-IN. When the screen goes from dark to light, gradually revealing an image.
FADE-OUT. When the screen goes from light to dark, gradually obscuring an image.
FEMME FATALE. A strong female character who proves to be lethal to the careers and or lives of the men who beccome involved with her. A common element in the film noir formula.
FILM GENRE. The deep structure, the "grammar," from which individual GENRE FILMS draw (Schatz).
FILM NOIR. A "genre," first identified by the French, which emerged during and after the Second World War in America. Characterized by pessmism, visual and moral darkness, an obsession with crime, and extensive use of voice-over.
FINAL CUT. The final editing of a film for release. Though most Class A directors retain final cut privileges on their films, sometimes a studio or a prominent star may have final say.
FLASH FORWARD.  Jumping ahead to event which will happen in the diegesis' future tense..
FLASHBACK.  Jumping backward in time to an event that transpired before the movie's actual diegesis.
FORMULA. A customary, prefabricated, conventional style of plot/imagery/setting, etc. routinely/conventionally followed by an author/artist. Most genre films follow formulae.
FRAME. The border of a single exposed image.
FRAME TALE. Any story which is told within another story, with the story's narrator remaining in the outer frame. Examples: Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Princess Bride or Little Big Man.
FREEZE FRAME. When a single frame is held on screen for a discernible amount of time(achieved by repeating multiple copies of the same image). Example: the last shot of 400 Blows.

G
GENRE. An identifable type or form of film: screwball comedy, western, hardboiled detective, horror, sci-fi, etc., with its own distinct subject matter, formulae, iconography, and style.
GENRE FILM. The individual instance--a surface manifestation, roughly equivalent to a speech act ("parole")--drawing on, but capable of departing from or modifying, a deeper structure of a FILM GENRE (Schatz).
 

H
HAND-HELD CAMERA. A camera held by a cameraman (not on a tripod or a dolly), creating a moving, jumpy, easily identifiable visual style. Highly prized in cinema verite.
HIGH-ANGLE SHOT. Shot from above. Usually makes that which is seen seem vulnerable, even in great danger.
HOMAGE.  A spoof, "send-up" of another work of art, usually done in admiration of the original rather than for purposes of ridicule.

I

ICONOGRAPHY. Patterns, continuous over time, of visual imagery or symbols, of recurrent objects and figures, representative of a particular institution, system, genre. A given religion, for example, has its own iconography, but so too does, say, a Western film.
IDEOLOGY. A relatively coherent system of values, beliefs, or ideas shared by a social group and often taken for granted as natural or inherently true.
INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING. Filmmaking that works outside the studio system.
INTERTEXTUALITY. The tendency--typical of POSTMODERNISM--of TEXTS not merely to allude to other texts but to depend upon the similarities, differences, and contrasts between texts in order to establish their own SIGNIFICATION.
IRIS. An opening or closing circle which either reveals or occludes the images in a frame. An iris-in can serve as a kind of faux close-up calling the viewer's attention to a single aspect of a complex or larger image. by A now largely quaint editing technie.
 

J
JUMP-CUT. A very rapid cut from one image to another, usually startling the viewer..

K
KULESHOV EFFECT. The tendency, discovered by the Russian film theorist Lev Kuleshov, of the viewer to back-read images shown in montage, thereby creating metaphoric meanings. Shown a picture of a man followed by a picture of a baby, the viewer retro-reads the man's face as showing fatherly love; if the same face is followed by an image of a bowl of soup, the man will be understood to be hungry.

L
LONG SHOT.  A capturing of an image from a great distance, one that reveals architectural or landscape detail. .
LONG TAKE. A substantial segment of film (a scene or even a sequence) captured in a single run of the camera. Bazin advocated it as a democratic alternative to Eisensteinian montage.
LOW-ANGLE SHOT. Shot from below, with the camera looking up at a person, a building, etc. Always makes that which is seen seem significantly more powerful or larger.