Glossary of Film Terminology

ECU: Extreme Close-Up - Just a Part of the subject’s face (eg their eyes)or just one detail of an object (eg a door handle rather than the whole door)

CU: Close-Up - Whole face or Whole Subject MS: Medium Shot - Waist up or knees up on a person

LS: Long Shot - Whole body visible from head to toes; details of background clearly visible

ELS: Extreme Long Shot - Person too far away to distinguish facial features; background given priority

ES: Establishing Shot - Generally comes right at the start of a scene; sets the scene by showing where it’s about to take place (eg conversation on a train would be preceded by ES of outside of train travelling along tracks.) Often a LS or ELS

RS: Reaction Shot - (Normally a CU or ECU)

HA: High Angle Shot - (Looking down on something)

LA: Low Angle Shot - (Looking up) AS: Aerial Shot - (IE From a Plane) CS: Crane Shot - (Camera moves Up / Down / Around during shot) Tracking Shot: Whole Camera, mounted on tracks, follows subject

PAN: Camera follows subject by rotating, but remains anchored in same place

POV: Point of View - You see the action as if through the eyes of one of the characters involved in it. The visual equivalent of the 1st person narrative

Intercutting - Splicing bits of different scenes together and passing back and forth between them. can be used to show simultaneous action, or to show thoughts, or in a symbolic way

Jump Cut: Sudden cut from one time and place to another, without any gradual fading or warning.

Montage: Good way of telling lots of story in a very short time; uses lots of snippets of scenes and puts them together in a way that makes sense. Thus, a boring bit of the story like a long and uneventful journey could be shown in a matter of a few seconds - characters getting on a train, outside of train, sun going down, characters asleep, sun coming up, train arriving. Hours and hours of real time expressed in just a few seconds of film time. Can also be used symbolically.