| action acting | The kind of acting seen in action/adventure films. It demands skill in facial reactions and body language, physical strength, and coordination but little subtlety or depth in communicating emotions or thoughts.
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| adaptation | A film based upon a literary work.
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| advancing colors | Colors that, when given high intensity and dark value, seem to advance toward the foreground and make objects seem larger and closer to the camera: red, orange, yellow, and lavender.
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| allegory | A story in which every object, event, and person has an immediately discernible abstract or metaphorical meaning.
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| ambient sounds | Off-screen sounds natural to any film scene's environment, such as telephones ringing in a busy office building or birds chirping in a forest.
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| analogous harmony | The effect created by colors adjacent to each other on the integrated color wheel, such as red, red orange, and orange. Such combinations result in a soft image with little harsh contrast.
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| atmospheric color | Color that is influenced by the various colors and light sources in a color-rich environment.
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| auteur | Literally, the "author" of the film. Auteur film criticism holds that certain directors provide the controlling vision for their films, conceiving the idea for the story, writing the script, producing, directing, and closely supervising most other steps in the filmmaking process.
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| blue-screen process | A special visual effects film technique by which actors who are photographed in front of a blue screen can later be inserted into various movie environments; a kind of matte shot.
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| caricature | The exaggeration or distortion of one or more personality traits; a technique common in cartooning.
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| Cinemascope. | Seewide screen.
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| cinematic point of view. | Seepoint of view, cinematic.
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| cinéma vérité | "The term means 'camera truth' in French and applies to . . . documentary films which strive for immediacy, spontaneity, and authenticity through the use of portable and unobtrusive equipment and the avoidance of any preconceived narrative line or concepts concerning the material. . . . A distinctive technique . . . is the filmmaker questioning and probing those interviewed" (Ira Konigsberg, The Complete Film Dictionary, 2nd ed. [New York: Penguin, 1997], p. 57). See alsodirect cinema.
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| climax | The point at which the complication reaches its maximum tension and the forces in opposition confront each other at a peak of physical or emotional action.
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| close-up | A close shot of a person or object; a close-up of a person generally focuses on the face only.
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| color | A purely human perception of a radiant energy creating a visual quality distinct from light and shade.
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| colorization | The computerized coloring of older black-and-white films for use on television and for sale and rental on videocassette.
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| color palette | A limited number of specific colors used or emphasized throughout a film to subtly communicate various aspects of character and story.
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| color wheel | A standard reference device that artists use to clarify the relationships that exist between primary and secondary hues.
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| commentators | Seeinterpreters.
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| complementary harmony | The effect created by colors directly opposite each other on the integrated color wheel. Such colors react most vividly with each other, as in the case of red and green.
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| complication | The section of a story in which a conflict begins and grows in clarity, intensity, and importance.
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| computer-generated images (CGI) | Visual images that are created exclusively by computer commands rather than by standard live photography or stop-motion animation. This method has been widely used in many types of films, but only during the 1990s did entirely CGI features such as Toy Story and A Bug's Life appear.
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| cool colors | Colors that seem to convey or suggest a cool temperature: blues, greens, and beiges.
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| dailies | Unedited footage of a day's shooting that the director evaluates for possible inclusion in the final version of a film.
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| dead screen | A frame in which there is little or no dramatically or aesthetically interesting visual information. See alsolive screen.
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| dead track | The complete absence of sound on the soundtrack.
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| deep focus | Special lenses allow the camera to focus simultaneously and with equal clarity on objects anywhere from two feet to several hundred feet away.
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| dénouement | A brief period of calm following the climax, in which a state of relative equilibrium returns.
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| desaturated color | A color of lowered intensity or value. A color is desaturated by being made lighter or darker than its normal value.
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| developing or dynamic characters | Characters who are deeply affected by the action of the plot and who undergo some important change in personality, attitude, or outlook on life as a result of the action of the film. See alsostatic characters.
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| digital sound | Vastly improved quality sound reproduction in movie theaters that utilizes processes (such as Dolby and DTS) that convert standard optical sound to binary digital information.
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| direct cinema | "A type of documentary that developed in America during the 1960s and was given this name by filmmaker Albert Maysles to suggest its direct, immediate, and authentic approach to the subject matter. A planned narrative and approach are avoided. . . . Events seem recorded exactly as they happened without rehearsal and with minimal editing. People are allowed to speak without guidance or interruption. . . . The zoom lens focuses directly on subjects, waiting for them to expose themselves. . . . Direct Cinema and cinéma vérité, which developed in France at the same time and employs many of the same techniques and . . . equipment, have been confused . . . , but cinéma vérité is quite distinct, with the filmmaker's voice intruding into the film, interviewing and probing the subject with questions in order to elicit the truth and create the dramatic exposure and situation" (Konigsberg, p. 96).
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| director's cut | A special version of a motion picture that differs from its theatrical-release form. It most often appears on videocassette, laserdisc, or DVD under the personal supervision of its director, whose right of final edit may originally have been superseded by the film's producers or studio.
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| director's interpretive point of view | Seepoint of view, cinematic.
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| dissolve | The gradual merging of the end of one shot with the beginning of the next, produced by superimposing a fade-out onto a fade-in of equal length or by imposing one scene over another.
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| Dolby-Surround Sound | A multitrack stereophonic system for theaters that employs an encoding process to achieve a 360-degree sound field-thus creating the effect of more speakers than are actually present.
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| dramatic acting | Acting that requires emotional and psychological depth, usually involving sustained, intense dialogue without physical action.
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| dramatic point of view | Seepoint of view, literary.
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| editing patterns | Seeinside/out editing; outside/in editing.
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| ensemble acting | A performance by a group of actors whose roles are of equal importance.
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| establishing shot | A beginning shot of a new scene that shows an overall view of the new setting and the relative position of the actors in that setting.
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| exposition | The part of a story that introduces the characters, shows some of their interrelationships, and places them within a believable time and place.
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| expressionism | A dramatic or cinematic technique that attempts to present the inner reality of a character. In film, there is usually a distortion or exaggeration of normal perception to let the audience know that it is experiencing a character's innermost feelings.
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| external conflict | A personal and individual struggle between the central character and another character or between the central character and some nonhuman force such as fate, society, or nature.
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| extrinsic metaphor | Seemetaphor, visual.
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| eye-line shot | A shot that shows us what a character is seeing.
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| fade-out/fade-in | A transitional device in which the last image of one scene fades to black as the first image of the next scene is gradually illuminated.
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| fast motion | The frantic, herky-jerky movement that results when a scene is filmed at less-than-normal speed (24 frames per second) and then projected at normal speed.
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| film noir | "A term coined by French critics to describe a type of film that is characterized by its dark, somber tone and cynical, pessimistic mood. Literally meaning 'dark (or "black") film,' the term . . . was coined to describe those Hollywood films of the 40s and early 50s which portrayed the dark and gloomy underworld of crime and corruption. . . . The film noir characteristically abounds with night scenes, both interior and exterior, with sets that suggest dingy realism, and with lighting that emphasizes deep shadows and accents the mood of fatalism" (Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. [New York: HarperPerennial, 1998], p. 456). Neo-film noir refers to any film made after the mid-1960s that attempts to replicate many of these characteristics.
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| final cut | A film in its finished form. A guarantee of final cut assures the filmmaker or producer that the film will not be tampered with after he or she approves it.
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| first-person point of view | Seepoint of view, literary.
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| fish-eye lens | A special type of extreme wide-angle lens that bends both horizontal and vertical planes and distorts depth relationships.
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| flashback | A filmed sequence that goes back in time to provide expository material-either when it is most dramatically appropriate and powerful or when it most effectively illuminates the theme. See alsoflash-forward.
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| flash cuts | Fragmented bursts of images used to compress action.
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| flash forward | A filmed sequence that moves forward in time-the visual scene jumps from the present into the future.
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| flat characters | Two-dimensional, predictable characters who lack the complexity and unique qualities associated with psychological depth. See alsoround characters.
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| flip frame | A transitional device in which the entire frame seems to flip over to reveal a new scene-an effect very similar to turning a page.
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| foils | Contrasting characters whose behavior, attitudes, opinions, lifestyle, physical appearance, and so on are opposites and thus serve clearly to define their personalities.
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| Foley artist | A film sound technician who is responsible for adding visible sounds (such as walking, fighting, or falling) to enhance a soundtrack after the primary production has been completed.
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| forced perspective | A production design technique that physically distorts certain aspects of the set and diminishes the size of objects and people in the background to create the illusion of greater foreground-to-background distance.
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| form cut | A transition accomplished by framing objects or images of similar contour in two successive shots, so that the first image flows smoothly into the second.
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| freeze frame | An effect, achieved in the laboratory after the film is shot, whereby a frame is reprinted so many times on the film strip that when the film is shown, the motion seems to stop as though frozen. See alsothawed frame.
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| generalized score | A musical score that attempts to capture the overall emotional atmosphere of a sequence and the film as a whole, usually by using rhythmic and emotive variations on only a few recurring motifs or themes. Also called implicit score.
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| genre film | A motion picture (such as a western, a gangster film, a musical, or a film noir) that plays on the expectation of the audience regarding familiar plot structures, characters, setting, and so on. More broadly, the terms genre and subgenre are used to refer to various film types.
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| glancing rhythms | The built-in sense of excitement or boredom created by fast or slow editing. Slow editing simulates the glancing rhythms of a tranquil observer; quick cutting simulates the glancing rhythms of a highly excited observer.
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| glass shot | A cinematic technique that involves photographing live action through a scene painted on glass. In such celebrated films as Gone With the Wind and Ben-Hur,glass shots have been used to integrate characters and stories into landscapes that would have been either impossible or too costly to construct in three-dimensional form. Increasingly, CGI techniques are being used to enhance or replace glass shots in contemporary filmmaking.
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| high-angle shot | A shot made with the camera above eye level, thereby dwarfing the subject and diminishing its importance. See alsolow-angle shot.
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| high-key lighting | Lighting that results in more light areas than shadows; subjects are seen in middle grays and highlights, with little contrast. See alsolow-key lighting.
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| hue | A synonym for color.
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| impersonators | Actors who have the talent to leave their real identity and personality behind and assume the personality and characteristics of a character with whom they may have little in common.
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| implicit score | Seegeneralized score.
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| indirect-subjective point of view | Seepoint of view, cinematic.
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| in medias res | A Latin phrase meaning "in the middle of things" that refers to a method of beginning a story with an exciting incident that, chronologically, occurs after the complication has developed.
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| inside/out editing | A dynamic editing pattern in which the editor takes us suddenly from a line of action that we understand to a close-up of a detail in a new setting. Because this detail is not shown in the context of a setting, we don't know where we are or what is happening. Then, in a series of related shots, the editor backs us off from the close-up to reveal the detail in relationship to its surroundings.
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| internal conflict | A psychological conflict within the central character. The primary struggle is between different aspects of a single personality.
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| interpreters | Actors who play characters that closely resemble themselves in personality and physical appearance and who interpret these parts dramatically without wholly losing their own identity. Also called commentators.
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| intrinsic metaphor | Seemetaphor, visual.
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| invisible sound | Sound emanating from a source not on the screen. See alsovisible sound.
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| irony | A literary, dramatic, and cinematic technique involving the juxtaposition or linking of opposites.
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| jump cut | The elimination of a strip of insignificant or unnecessary action from a continuous shot. The term also refers to a disconcerting joining of two shots that do not match in action and continuity.
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| leitmotif | The repetition of a single phrase or idea by a character until it becomes almost a trademark for that character. In music, the repetition of a single musical theme to announce the reappearance of a certain character.
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| literary point of view | Seepoint of view, literary.
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| live screen | A frame packed with dramatically or aesthetically interesting visual information, usually with some form of motion incorporated into the composition. See alsodead screen.
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| local color | Color seen in isolation from other colors in a totally white environment illuminated by a perfectly white light.
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| long shot | A shot, taken from some distance, that usually shows the subject as well as its surroundings.
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| long take | A continuous film shot that lasts for several minutes. Some directors (following the famous sustained opening movement in Orson Welles's Touch of Evil) have made a kind of game of creating such shots in their films. Notable examples include Martin Scorsese in GoodFellas (and other films), Paul Thomas Anderson in Boogie Nights, Brian De Palma in The Bonfire of the Vanities, and Robert Altman in The Player (in an opening scene that both parodies and competes with Welles's work in Touch of Evil).
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| look of outward regard | An objective shot that shows a character looking off-screen and thereby cues us to wonder what the character is looking at.
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| low-angle shot | A shot made with the camera below eye level, thereby exaggerating the size and importance of the subject. See alsohigh-angle shot.
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| low-key lighting | Lighting that puts most of the set in shadow and uses just a few highlights to define the subject. See alsohigh-key lighting.
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| matte shot | Any special visual effects technique that uses some type of visual mask to allow more than one image to be photographed on a single film frame.
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| metaphor, visual | A brief comparison that helps us understand or perceive one image better because of its similarity to another image, usually achieved through the editorial juxtaposition of two images in two successive shots. Two types of visual metaphors are commonly used in films:
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| extrinsic | A metaphor that has no place within the context of the scene itself but is imposed artificially into the scene by the director.
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| intrinsic | A metaphor found within the natural context of the scene itself.
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| Mickey Mousing | The exact, calculated dovetailing of music and action that precisely matches the rhythm of the music with the natural rhythms of the objects moving on the screen.
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| microcosm | Meaning "the world in little," a special type of isolated, self-contained setting in which the human activity is actually representative of human behavior or the human condition in the world as a whole.
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| mise-en-scène | "A French term meaning 'putting into the scene' that was originally used to describe the staging of a theater director, the way he or she arranged all the visual components on the stage. The term has become fashionable in film criticism and has taken on new meanings and connotations from its filmic context. Mise-en-scène, in discussions of film, refers to the composition of the individual frame-the relation of objects, people, and masses; the interplay of light and dark; the pattern of color; the camera's position and angle of view-as well as the movement within the frame" (Konigsberg, p. 240). "Andre Bazin, and subsequently other theoreticians and critics, have used [the term] to describe a style of film directing basically distinct from that known as montage. Whereas montage derives its meaning from the relationship between one frame to the next through editing, mise-en-scène emphasizes the content of the individual frame. Its proponents see montage as disruptive to the psychological unity of man with his environment and cite such films as Orson Welles's Citizen Kane with its deep-focus compositions . . . as examples to support their argument. The schism between mise-en-scène and montage is deeper in theory than in practice; most filmmakers employ both in directing their films" (Katz, p. 956). See alsomontage.
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| monochromatic harmony | The effect created by variations in the value and intensity of a single color.
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| montage | A series of images and sounds that derive their meaning from complex internal relationships to form a kind of visual poem in miniature. "The term . . . as it is generally understood today is associated with the work and theory of [Russian filmmaker] Sergei Eisenstein, in which it came to represent the rhetorical arrangement of shots in juxtaposition so that the clash between two adjoining images suggests a third, independent entity and creates a whole new meaning. Eisenstein's ideas of montage were inspired by the editing techniques of [pioneer American filmmaker] D. W. Griffith" (Katz, p. 965). See alsomise-en-scène.
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| motifs | Images, patterns, or ideas that are repeated throughout the film and are variations or aspects of the film's theme.
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| muted color | Seedesaturated color.
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| name typing | The use of names possessing appropriate qualities of sound, meaning, or connotation to help describe a character.
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| objective camera | A camera that views the action as a remote spectator. See alsopoint of view, cinematic, objective.
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| objective point of view | Seepoint of view, cinematic.
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| omniscient-narrator point of view | Seepoint of view, literary.
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| opticals | Effects created in the lab during the printing of the film. The primary image is superimposed on another image, and the two are composited onto one strip of film by an optical printer. Modern optical printers are guided by computer, affording precise matching of a tremendous number of different images.
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| outside/in editing | The traditional editing pattern in which the editor begins with an establishing shot of the new setting-to help the audience get its bearings-and then follows with shots that gradually take us farther into the setting. Only after we are completely familiar with our surroundings does the editor focus our attention on details.
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| painterly effects | The effects created by filmmakers who are consciously trying to imitate certain looks achieved by painters.
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| Panavision | Seewide screen.
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| panning | Moving the camera's line of sight in a horizontal plane to the right and left.
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| panning and scanning | A technique used to transfer films shot in wide screen to a format that will fill a traditional television screen. The lateral movement of the reproducing camera that allows this process to occur also generally ruins the original composition and pacing created by directors and cinematographers.
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| parallel cuts | Shots that quickly alternate back and forth between two actions taking place at separate locations, creating the impression that the two actions are occurring simultaneously and will possibly converge.
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| period piece | A film that takes place not in the present but in some earlier period of history.
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| personality actors | Actors whose primary talent is to be themselves. Although personality actors generally possess some dynamic and magnetic mass appeal, they are incapable of assuming any variety in the roles they play, for they cannot project sincerity and naturalness when they attempt to move outside their own basic personality.
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| Peter-and-the-Wolfing | Musical scoring in which certain musical instruments represent and signal the presence of certain characters.
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| point of view, cinematic | Essentially, there are four points of view that may be employed in a film:
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| director's interpretive | Using the special techniques of the medium, the director manipulates us so that we see the action or the character in the way the director interprets them.
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| indirect-subjective | A viewpoint that brings us close to the action and increases our involvement. It provides us with the feeling and sense of immediacy of participating in the action without showing the action through a participant's eyes.
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| objective | The viewpoint of a sideline observer, which suggests an emotional distance between camera and subject. The camera seems simply to be recording, as straightforwardly as possible, the characters and the actions of the story.
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| subjective | The viewpoint of a character participating in the action. See alsopoint of view, literary.
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| point of view, literary | There are five viewpoints employed in literature:
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| dramatic or objective | A viewpoint wherein we are not conscious of a narrator, for the author does not comment on the action but simply describes the scene, telling us what happens and what the characters say, so we get a feeling of being there, observing the scene as we would in a play.
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| first person | An eyewitness gives a firsthand account of what happened as well as his or her response to it.
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| omniscient narrator, third person | An all-seeing, all-knowing narrator, capable of reading the thoughts of all the characters and capable of being in several places at once if need be, tells the story.
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| stream of consciousness or interior monologue | A third-person narrative that seems to incorporate the first-person form, although the participant in the action is not consciously telling the story. It is a unique inner view, as though a microphone and movie camera in the character's mind were recording every thought, image, and impression that passes through, without the conscious acts of organization, selectivity, or narration.
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| third-person selective or limited | The narrator is omniscient except for the fact that his or her powers of mind reading are limited to or at least focused on a single character, who becomes the central figure through whom we view the action.
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| point-of-view character | A film character with whom we emotionally or intellectually identify and through whom we experience the film. Voice-over narration, editing, and camera position may be employed for this effect.
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| rack focus | Changing the focus setting on the camera during a continuous shot so that audience attention is directed deeper and deeper into the frame as viewers follow the plane of clearest focus. The technique can also be reversed so that the plane of clearest focus moves closer and closer to the camera.
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| reaction shot | A shot that shows a character reacting rather than acting. The reaction shot is usually a close-up of the emotional reaction registered on the face of the person most affected by the dialogue or action.
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| receding colors | Colors that seem to recede into the background, making objects appear smaller and more distant from the camera: green, pale blue, and beige.
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| Rembrandt effect | The use of a subtle, light-diffusing filter to soften focus slightly and subdue the colors so that the whole film has the quality of a Rembrandt painting.
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| rough-grain film stock | Film stock that produces a rough, grainy-textured image with harsh contrasts between blacks and whites and almost no subtle differences in contrast. See alsosmooth-grain film stock.
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| round characters | Unique, individualistic characters who have some degree of complexity and ambiguity and who cannot easily be categorized. Also called three-dimensional characters. See alsoflat characters.
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| rushes | Seedailies.
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| saturated color | A strong, unadulterated, pure color. A saturated red cannot be made any redder.
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| scene | A series of shots joined so that they communicate a unified action taking place at one time and place.
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| sequence | A series of scenes joined in such a way that they constitute a significant part of a film's dramatic structure, like an act in a play.
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| setting | The time and place in which the film's story takes place, including all of the complex factors that come packaged with a given time and place: climate, terrain, population density, social structures and economic factors, customs, moral attitudes, and codes of behavior.
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| shade | Any color darker than its normal value. Maroon is a shade of red.
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| shot | A strip of film produced by a single continuous running of the camera. After the editing and printing processes, a shot becomes the segment of film between cuts or optical transitions.
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| Skycam | A small, computerized, remote-controlled camera that flies on wires at speeds of up to twenty miles per hour and can go practically anywhere that cables can be strung.
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| slow motion | The effect of slowed action created by exposing frames in the camera at greater-than-normal speed and then projecting that footage at normal speed (24 frames per second).
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| smooth-grain film stock | Film stock capable of reproducing an image that is extremely smooth or slick, registering a wide range of subtle differences between light and dark, and creating fine tones, artistic shadows, and contrasts. See alsorough-grain film stock.
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| soft focus | A slight blurring of focus for effect.
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| sound link | A bridge between scenes or sequences created through the use of similar or identical sounds in both.
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| standard screen | A screen whose width is 1.33 times its height.
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| star system | An approach to filmmaking that capitalizes on the mass appeal of certain actors to increase the likelihood that a film will be a financial success.
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| static characters | Characters who remain essentially the same throughout the film, either because the action does not have an important effect on their lives or because they are insensitive to the meaning of the action. See alsodeveloping or dynamic characters.
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| Steadicam | A portable, one-person camera with a built-in gyroscope that prevents any sudden jerkiness and provides a smooth, rock-steady image.
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| stereotypes | Characters who fit into preconceived patterns of behavior common to or representative of a large number of people (at least a large number of fictional people), allowing the director to economize greatly in treating them.
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| stills | Photographs in which the image itself does not move. A sense of movement is imparted to the images by the camera zooming in or out or simply moving over their surface.
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| stock characters | Minor characters whose actions are completely predictable or typical of their job or profession.
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| stop-motion animation | A variation on drawn-animation techniques that uses puppets or other three-dimensional objects. To give the appearance of life on film when projected at the normal 24-frames-per-second speed, subjects are moved minimally between shots as they are being photographed.
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| stream of consciousness | Seepoint of view, literary.
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| subjective camera | A camera that views the scene from the visual or emotional point of view of a participant in the action. See alsopoint of view, cinematic, subjective.
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| subjective point of view | Seepoint of view, cinematic.
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| subtitling | The method of providing visible words at the bottom of frames to translate the dialogue of films from one language into another. See alsovoice dubbing.
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| surrealism | A dramatic or cinematic technique that uses fantastic imagery in an attempt to portray the workings of the subconscious. Surrealistic images have an oddly dreamlike or unreal quality.
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| symbol | A literal element (such as an object, name, or gesture) in art, literature, and film that also stands for an abstract idea. This representation is established by triggering previously associated areas in the mind of the perceiver.
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| tableau | A technique, used in melodrama, in which actors held dramatic postures for a few seconds before the curtain fell in order to etch the scene in the audience's memory.
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| take | Variations of the same shot. In the cutting room, the editor assembles the film from the best take of each shot.
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| telephoto lens | A lens that, like a telescope, draws objects closer but also diminishes the illusion of depth.
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| thawed frame | An effect opposite to that of a freeze frame-the scene begins with a frozen image that thaws and comes to life.
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| theme | The central concern around which a literary work or film is structured, its unifying focus. In film, theme can be broken down into five categories: plot, emotional effect or mood, character, style or texture, and ideas.
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| third-person limited point of view | Seepoint of view, literary.
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| three-dimensional characters | Seeround characters.
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| tilting | Moving the camera's line of sight in a vertical plane, up and down.
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| time-lapse photography | An extreme form of fast motion in which a single frame is exposed at regular intervals (from a second to an hour or even longer) and then projected at normal speed (24 frames per second), thus compressing an action that usually takes hours or weeks into a few seconds on the screen.
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| tint | Any color lighter than its normal value. Pink is a tint of red.
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| tinting | The chemical coloring of film stock before the image is printed on it. When printed, the white portions of the image retain the color of the tint, resulting in an image composed of two colors-black and the color of the tint.
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| toning | Adding dyes to the film emulsion so that the lines and tones of the image itself are colored.
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| traveling music | Music that is employed almost as a formula to give the impression of various means of transportation.
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| triad harmony | The effect created by the use of three colors equidistant from each other on the color wheel, such as the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.
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| typecasting | The tendency of major studios and some directors to lock certain actors into a narrow range of almost identical roles.
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| value | The proportion of light or dark present in a given color.
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| visible sound | Sound that would naturally and realistically emanate from the images on the screen. See alsoinvisible sound.
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| voice dubbing | The replacement of the dialogue soundtrack in a foreign language with an English-language soundtrack. Voices in English are recorded to correspond to the mouth and lip movements of the foreign actors. See alsosubtitling.
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| voice-over narration | A voice off-screen that conveys necessary background information or fills in gaps for continuity.
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| warm colors | Colors that seem to convey or suggest a warm temperature: red, orange, yellow, and lavender.
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| wide-angle lens | A lens that takes in a broad area and increases the illusion of depth but sometimes distorts the edges of the image.
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| wide screen | Known by many trade names such as Cinemascope, Panavision, and Vistavision, a screen whose width varies from 1.66 to 1.85 to 2.35 to 2.55 times its height (as compared with the standard 1.33 times).
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| wipe | A transitional device in which a new image is separated from the previous image by means of a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line that moves across the screen to wipe the old image away.
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| zoom lens | A complex series of lenses that keep the image constantly in focus and, by magnifying the subject, give the camera the apparent power to vary movement toward or away from the subject without requiring any movement of the camera.
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