Every shot you have ever watched was chosen by someone. How close the camera sits, what light falls where, and what is left outside the frame are not accidents. They steer your attention and your feeling.
Today you learn the camera vocabulary this module expects you to use. You will practise naming techniques on described stills, say what each one does to an audience, then build a Film Vocabulary Recognition Sheet: six techniques, each with a definition in your own words and one real film example.
These are the six terms you will use today. Learn what each one does, not only what it is called. Your Recognition Sheet later will ask for all six.
| Term | What it means for you | Real example |
|---|---|---|
| Close-up. A face or detail fills the frame. | You are forced to read one thing closely. | A character's eyes filling the screen |
| Mise-en-scène. Everything placed in the frame on purpose. | Props, costume and set are part of the meaning. | A birthday table laid for six, with only one person at it |
| Zoom. The frame tightens or widens without the camera moving. | You are pulled in or pushed back on the same moment. | Thumbs and a glowing screen filling the shot |
| Panning. The camera swings left or right from one spot. | The reveal arrives as movement, not a cut. | A slow swing across a cheering crowd to one silent face |
| Lighting. Where light falls, and what it hides. | It steers notice and mood without dialogue. | A torch beam showing only part of a dark room |
| Motif. A repeated image or sound that gathers meaning. | Repetition is a signal, not an accident. | A train whistle returning before every hard choice |
One marked still. Read this description once:
A face fills the whole frame. Rain beads on a jacket collar. Behind her, a bus-stop shelter is a soft blur of orange sodium light. She looks past the camera at something we cannot see.
The close-up leaves you nowhere else to look. The blur strips the street away so only her waiting matters. That is the camera doing work on you.
Four described stills are below, and in the activity.
- The send button. A thumb hovers over a bright send icon. The rest of the phone screen is sharp; the bedroom behind it is a soft blur. The frame holds almost nothing except the thumb and the button.
- The corridor reveal. The camera sits at one end of an empty school corridor and swings slowly from the locked classroom doors on the left across to a single open door on the right, where a chair has been knocked on its side.
- Kitchen before leaving. A small kitchen at dawn. A packed sports bag sits open on a chair. A GAA jersey is folded on the table beside a bus ticket and a half-eaten piece of toast. Nobody is in the room. Cool blue light comes from the window; the overhead bulb is off.
- Half a face. A young man's face is lit from one side only. The left half is bright; the right half falls into deep shadow so his eye almost disappears. He does not speak. The background is black.
This is practice for the terms. The Portfolio piece is the Recognition Sheet in the next step.
Name the shot, name the effect
This is the piece that goes in your Communication Portfolio.
The short sequence in the activity below was written for this lesson to show today's terms working together. Its wide view, pan, zoom into a close-up and split lighting each steer what you notice and feel.
The activity saves your answers as you go. When you are done, press Copy for my portfolio and paste it into your portfolio as m3_l85_film_vocab_AB, with your own initials in place of AB.
Film Vocabulary Recognition Sheet
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