D

Cinema Glossary

dailies: Immediately processed, rough cuts or first prints of a film for the director to review.

dark horse: Little known, unlikely movie that surprisingly gets nominated for a major award.

day for night shot: A technique for using shots filmed during the daytime to appear as moonlit night shots on the screen, by using different lenses, filters, specialized lighting and under exposure.

deadpan: A comedic device in which the performer assumes an expressionless quality to their face demonstrating no emotion.

decay: The trailing off of a sound.

decoupage: Arrangement of shots.

deep focus shot: Technique that uses lighting, relatively wide angle lenses, and small lens apertures to simultaneously render in sharp focus both close and distant planes in the same shot.

deleted scene: Any scene edited out of the film's final cut.

denoument: Point immediately following the climax when everything come into place or is resolved.

depth of field: Deapth of composition of a shot; foreground, middle ground, and background.

dialect coach: A person who trains actors in diction or the use of accents to suit the character they're playing.

dialogue: Any lines spoken by an actor/actress on screen.

diegesis: The world of the film's story. It includes events that are presumed to have occured and actions and spaces not shown onscreen.

directing the eye: Using light and dark lighting and frame composition to emphasize what is important

direct sound: Recording sound simultaneously with images.

director: Creative artist responsible for complete artistic control of the film. Example: Alfred Hitchcock (pictured), Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, William Wyler, Michael Curtiz, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola.

director's cut: Cut of a film without studio interference; as a director would have liked the film to have been. Example: The director's cut of Ridley Scott's 1982 film "Blade Runner" (pictured).

discovery shot: When the camera pans to an unexpected object or person previously unseen.

dissolve: Editing technique in which the visible image of one shot is gradually replaced or blended with another.

documentary: A non-fiction, narrative film with real people that records an event, person, or place. Examples: Michael Moore's 2004 documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" (pictured) and Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary "Super Size Me".

dolly: A moving shot in which the perspective of the subject and background is changed. Shot occurs from a camera mounted on a hydraulically-powered camera platform pushed on rails.

doppelganger: Reference to the fact that a duplicate or double accompanies every person.

double: A person who takes the spot of another for a stunt or a nude scene.

double exposure: Exposing a single frame twice so that elements of both images are visible in the finished project.

double take: A comedic device in which someone first looks at an object, looks away, and then quickly looks back.

draftsman: Person who creates the plans for set construction.

drive-in theatre: An outdoor movie theatre where the audiences views films from insider their automobiles. Most popular in the 1970s.

dubbing: The act of putting a new soundtrack in a film or adding dialogue after production.

dummy load: A ruined roll of film stock that is used for practice loading.

dystopia: Imagery or dehumanized, bad, dismal, or oppressive place or landscape.