M
MEGAGENRE. A large, all encompassing, umbrella genre, having no distinct subject matter or style or iconography or formulae. The megagenres of the movies might be thought of as non-fiction (documentary) film, fiction film, animated film, and experimental/underground film.
MINDSCREEN. Bruce Kawin's term for that cinematic narrative technique in which an individual's thought-world become visible on screen. In My Left Foot, for example, Christy Brown's nurse reads his autobiography, and as she reads, the events of the book are enacted.
MISE EN SCÉNE. All those aspects of a movie that pertain to arrangement of an image in a frame.
MOGUL. A major, powerful figure in a major studio during the studio era.
MONTAGE. The rapid juxtaposition of images, cutting from one to another to create an effect. Eisenstein beleived it to be the essence of film art.
MOTIF. An element--incident, device, reference, formula--which recurs frequently in a work or works.
MULTIPLE EXPOSURE. Special effect in which more than one frame of film is exposed at the same time.
MYTHOLOGY. For Barthes, investigation into the acquired connotative meanings of cultural signs in order to divest them of their acquired, taken-for-granted meanings. For example, television, though an object of wonder at the beginning of its history, is now a commonplace; its significance now so caught up in the culture's semiotic system that it is difficult to describe or explain. A mythology of TV would seek to decode it, to make its connotations again fresh and visible.

N
NARRATEE. The specified or unspecified person to whom a narrator is supposedly speaking. May include "the live studio audience" before which a television show was filmed, the perfect listener (the host of a talk show, the anchorman/women to whom reporters tell their tale), or the "laugh track" which represents the audience's idealized response.
NARRATION. When an off-screen, extra-diegetic voice speaks to us in a movie.
NARRATIVE. The fancy word for story telling.
NARRATOLOGY. The systematic multi-media study of narrative--of storytelling and its techniques.
NEO-REALISM. A post-WW II movement in Italian fillmaking, lead by directors DiSica, Rossellini, and Fellini and the writer Zavattini, which sought to tell stories about the ordinary lives of ordinary people, often using non-actors. 
NEW WAVE (NOUVELLE VAGUE). A late1950s/early 1960s movement in French filmmaking led by directors like Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, and Resnais that placed new emphasis on the creative role of the director and made frequent use of on location filming, innovative editing, handheld camerawork.
NICKELODEON. An early (1905-1915) American movie "theatre."
NON-FICTION FILM. Another, perhaps better, name for documentary.
NONSYNCHRONOUS SOUND. Sound that does not have a visible source in the film's diegesis.
NOVELIZATION. Turning a movie screenplay into a novel. The reverse of adaptation as normally conceived.

O
ON LOCATION. Filming in real locales, often using ambient light and sound, instead of in a studio.
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY DEGREE RULE. The unwritten rule in editing that warns against showing a character from opposite camera positions in subsequent images.
 

P
PAN. A slow movement of the camera on an axis from left to right or right to left.
PASTICHE. Describes a work of art made up almost entirely of assembled bits and pieces from other works. (According to Frederic Jamieson, the characteristic form of expression in POSTMODERNISM.)
PERSISTENCE OF VISION. The ability (disability?) of the mind that holds an image on the retina when it is no longer present to the eye. Its existence makes movies possible.
PHOTOGENIC. Although it now means tending to photograph well, it originally meant the magical power of photographic images.
PLOT. The main incidents of a NARRATIVE; the outline of situations and events thought of as distinct from the characters involved in them or the themes illustrated by them.
POINT OF VIEW. The perceptual or conceptual position in terms of which the narrated situations and events are presented.
POINT-OF-VIEW SHOT. A shot in which the action as seen from the general perspective of a character.
POST-SYNCHRONIZATION. Adding sound after filming.
POSTMODERNISM. A cultural style or sensibility, a response to and evolution from modernism, which exhibits--indeed embraces--disunity, superficiality, SELF-REFERENTIALITY, INTERTEXTUALITY, parody, pastiche, recombination, irony, indifference, discontinuity, disrespect, alienation, meaninglessness.
PRODUCER. The  individual/s responsible for the money side of filmmaking. May   manifest itself in various forms, including "executive producer," "producer," etc.
PRODUCTION VALUES.  Refers to the quality (or lack thereof) of the visuals, sound, special effects, etc. of a movie--all those things that are dependent on technology, expertise, and money. 
PROP. Any object--from a gun to a hat to breakable window--needed on a set in a given shot or scene.

R
READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM. A school of criticism which argues that the reader/viewer is as responsible for the construction of a text as the author.
REALISM. Any approach to art which holds that art's function is to "hold a mirror up to" the actual world.
REAR-SCREEN PROJECTION. A special effect in which projected images become part of the visual field of a frame (as when we see a road disappearing behind a "moving" car when the car and its occupants are actually sitting stationary on the set.
REMAKE.  Using a film made before as the inspiration for a "new" film.
REVERSE ANGLE SHOT. A shot that shows the action from position exactly the reverse of the previous shot.
REVERSE MOTION. Projecting  film backwards; results in actions "unhappening."
ROUGH CUT. An unfinished, unpolished editing together of film footage that merelyapproximates the finished film.
 

S
SCENE. A discernible segment of narrative usually defined by a specific locale.
SCREENPLAY. The literary text of a film to be shot, including dialogue, shot breakdown, stage directions, etc.
SCREWBALL COMEDY.  A 1930s American movie genre, distinguished by its clever dialogue and strong heroines.
SELECTIVE FOCUS. When different planes of focal depth come in and out of focus selectively. Also called rack focus.
SELF-REFERENTIALITY. The tendency of a work of art to become self-conscious, to call attention to itself--its conventions, structure, signification--as part of its own discourse.
SEMIOTICS. The systematic study of signs and their significance.
SEQUEL. A movie that continues the story of another movie.
SEQUENCE. A discernible segment of narrative containing scenes and marking an identifiable dramatic part of the overall story.
SHOOTING RATIO. The ratio of exposed film to amount of film actually used in a final cut.
SIGNIFIED. The immaterial aspect of a sign; that which the SIGNIFIER represents. May be approached only through the SIGNIFIERS of any given TEXT.
SIGNIFIER. The material aspect--an image, an object, a sound--of a sign. Signifiers tend to take on meaning through opposition to other possible alternative signifiers (i.e., woman/horse) not represented in a given SYNTAGM. According to Saussure, the relationship of the signifier to SIGFNIFIED in language is entirely arbitrary.
SLAPSTICK. Physical, visual comedy.
SLOW MOTION. Shooting at a faster than normal rate of speed so that, when projected, the images will appear slower than in reality.
STORY. 1) What happens to whom in a NARRATIVE, distinct from DISCOURSE; 2) a perceived narrative which implies a general kind of pointedness or teleology, producing in the listener/viewer expectations about patterning and content (Scholes).
SUBGENRE. An identifiable subclass, having its own distinctive subject matter, formulae, style, and iconography, of some clearly defined larger film genre.
SUBJECTIVE CAMERA. A POINT OF VIEW shot in which the camera seems to become the eyes of a character.
SUBTEXT. An underlying, emergent theme in a work or works.
SUBTITLE. Visible words on the screen translating the words being spoken on the soundtrack.
SWISH PAN. A very rapid left to right or right to left movement of the camera on a fixed axis.
SYNCHRONOUS SOUND. Sound which seems to have a source in the images pon screen and in the film's diegesis.
SYNTAGM/SYNTAGMATIC. When the significance of a shot "depends not on the shot compared with other potential shots [PARADIGMATIC], but rather on the shot compared with actual shots that precede or follow it . . ." (Monaco). Describes "what follows what" (Monaco). A unit of actual rather than potential relationship. An "ordering of signs, a rule-governed combination of signs in sequence" (Seiter). The "dimension . . . along which the MESSAGE unfolds" (Guzzetti).

T
TAKE. That which is captured on film in one run of the camera.
TARGET AUDIENCE. The demographic group a studio and its marketers presume will show up for a certain film.
TELEPHOTO LENS. A special lens that enables images shot from afar to appear as up close.
TEXT. Any division of DISCOURSE--a poem, a painting, an advertisement, a music video, a film or  all the films of Sam Peckinpah.
TILT. Movement of the camera up and down on a fixed axis.
TIME-LAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY. A cinematic technique, similar in principle to animation, in which the exposure of "individual frames of film at pre-determined intervals" results in a "compressed visual record of events occurring over long periods of time" when these frames are later projected at normal speed (Katz 1135).
TITLE. Any words (credits, subtitles, etc.) on screen but not part of the image proper.
TRACKING SHOT. A moving camera shot in which the camera (hand-held, on a dolly, etc.) follows along with the action.
TWO SHOT. A shot capable of capturing two individuals talking at least from the waist up.

U
UNDERGROUND/EXPERIMENTAL FILM. Non-theatrical, independent, "art" film, usually of an avant-garde nature.

V
VOICE-OVER. When the voice of one of the characters speaks over the narrative on the sound-track, helping to tell the story.

W
WIDE-ANGLE LENS. A special lens capable of capturing a wider than normal perspective on the horizontal plane.
WIPE. An editing technique in which a horizonal or vertical line or curtain wipes an image off the screen, usually replacing it with a subsequent image which follows behind the line.
 

XYZ
ZOOM. Using a special (zoom) lens in order to move, seemingly from a great distance,  rapidly into or out of an image.