Some Basic Film Terms

So today's blog post is going to be a little section about what I've learned in regards to basic visual terms in film. I'll go over some simple shot types and camera movements. So here's the lowdown kiddies:

• First we have the shot. A shot is basically everything you see within the frame from when the camera starts rolling to when it ends or "cuts". Every scene you've witnessed in a movie or show is constructed of a number of these. Types of shots include:
• Long Shot- This is a shot that includes a large visual area in the frame like a landscape, large crowd, or basically a wide space. Basic setting and characters can be established with this kind of shot.
• Medium Shot- This is a shot that's smaller than the long shot. A Medium Shot usually displays a subject from the waist up, a la medium since you see half of the subject in the frame.
• Close-Up Shot- This is a shot reserved for a close up view of an important object or a subject's face. This shot type is very intimate when used to hone in on a character's face. It's used to display how a character feels in a significant moment as the camera focuses on their facial expressions.
• Extreme Long Shot- Basically a Long Shot but covers a much larger space. Good example would be when Mount Doom is shown at the end of the second LOTR film as Sam and Frodo look on.The shot is especially huge and you can see how far the characters are from their destination.
• Wide Shot- This i where a subject's whole body is visible. It can also be considered a long shot in a way since you may be watching a scene where a character's whole body is visible but there's a large space visible as well.
• Now for camera movements. 
• Pan- This is when the camera moves horizontally on the screen as it goes from either left to right or right to left. Usually used to guide the viewers eye or follow something.
• Track- Like pan but the camera is placed on a dolly to move across the screen. You can tell the difference between this and a pan because when a camera tracks it stays on the same camera plane from the beginning to the end of a shot. 
• Tilt- This is when the camera moves up or down. Its very notable in scenes where a character looks down or something is hovering above the frame as the camera either moves up or down to move the viewers eye to it. 
• Crane- Literally a crane shot is when the camera is placed on a crane and is usually lifting up and away from an area in a shot. It gives an above view of what's going on in a shot.
• Handheld- Just as it says, this camera movement is more unstable than the others and looks as if the scene is being shot from a handheld camera, which it usually is.

And that's all for now! Hope you enjoyed this little lesson.