Descriptionary

stamp a tap made by the entire foot, instead of just the ball.

step a simple raising and lowering of one foot, with the weight of the body shifted to that foot.

step-clap a step followed by a hand clap, then repeated with the other foot.

time step any of various combinations of shuffles, flaps, and steps.

toe heel tapping with the ball then the heel of one foot, producing two sounds.

toe point tap a tap with the tip of the toes.

FILM

adaptation a screenplay adapted from a novel, biography, or other source.

aleatory technique a film technique in which scenes are not specifically planned and are left to chance.

arc light a powerful set light.

art director the designer in charge of sets, costumes, or both.

artifact a visual defect in a film.

auteur French term for a movie director who "authors" a film by exercising personal artistic vision.

backlighting lighting that originates behind the sub­ject for a silhouetting effect.

back lot a large plot of land owned by a studio for constructing outside sets.

barn doors the louvers or blinders that are adjusted on large set lights to increase or decrease illumination.

best boy on a set, the assistant to the chief electrician.

billing the position and status given to an actor's name in publicity and in a movie's credits. The actor given top billing is usually listed first and often in the largest letters. Equal billing is shared between two or more actors. Diagonal billing is when top actors are listed side by side, with equal height of lettering, but because the name positioned on the left is considered to have higher status, the names are transposed in dif­ferent promotional materials.

biopic a movie based on an actual person's life; a biographical movie.

bit player an actor with a small part or role.

black comedy a comedy in which the humor springs from such dark subjects as death, political incorrect­ness, prejudice, etc.

blacklisting in 1950s America, Senator Joseph McCarthy's formal discrimination against filmmakers who were thought to be communists.

blockbuster in the past, any motion picture that takes in more than $100 million in ticket sales, but increasingly, due to higher ticket prices and infla­tion, a motion picture earning $150 million or more. The term originated with the British military during World War II, after the massive, city-block-levelling bombs they dropped on German cities.

blocking setting up and rehearsing a scene, includ­ing determining where the actors should stand or move, where the cameras should shoot from, and so on.

blooper a muffed line spoken by an actor or a scene that goes awry, cut from a movie but sometimes archived for use on blooper shows.

boffo industry slang for box office hit.

boom a long, mobile arm used to suspend a micro­phone above the action and out of view of the camera.

bootleg an illegally copied and distributed movie, often of poor quality. Also, the underground industry that illegally copies and sells movies.

B picture any second-rate, low-budget movie.

breakdown script a list of actors, props, and equip­ment needed for a scheduled day of shooting.

cameo role a role in which only a brief appearance is made by a major actor.

camp exaggerated homosexuality or other wild behavior, such as actors appearing in drag, used for comedic effect.

card a type of credit optical in which names and titles fade in and out in the same position.

cast all of the actors appearing in a movie.

casting the department headed by a casting director, in charge of auditioning and hiring actors.

casting couch reference to the most notorious loca­tion for a trade of sexual favors for a role in a motion picture, allegedly common in the old days of movie making, but less so today.

casting director the person in charge of auditioning and hiring actors.

cell one of thousands of individual drawings on cel­luloid sheets used in creating animation or cartoons.

changeover cue a dot in the corner of a film's frames to cue the projectionist to start the next reel.

character actor an actor who is natural at playing a certain personality type, such as a crotchety old man or a sex siren, and who in fact may be called to play the same type again and again in other movies. Such actors may be unconvincing in any other role.

Cinemascope a film process invented by 20th Cen­tury Fox in which anamorphic lenses are used to squeeze film scenes onto 35mm film so that they can be unsqueezed and expanded by a theater projector to create an image more than twice as wide as it is high.

cinematographer a motion picture photographer. Also known as the director of photography.

cinematography motion picture photography.

cinematology the study of films.