Filmmaker's Dream Blog

So you're taking film courses or interested in film and you can't exactly remember some key facts dealing with filmmaking. Look no further! Filmmaker's Cheat Sheet is here! Check out some of these key facts that may help you out on a test or two.

1. Standard frame rate for film? : 24 fps  and for PAL it's 24.97 fps (25)
2. Original film format? : 35mm 
3. What do F-Stops do? : Measure the opening of the iris. The smaller the number the more light can enter.
4. Neutral Density Filters (ND): Cut down the overall brightness and keep your film from being overexposed.
5. Fundamental elements in film: Time, Motion, Light, Color, and Space
6. Lenses: Telephoto Lens= Magnify, Normal= mimics the human eye, Wide-Angle= used to establish a long shot.
7. Camera Movements= Pan, Tilt, Track, Dolly, Crane 
8. Creating an anamorphic effect is done by involving two lenses.
9. 3 axis of film = X (horizontal) Y( Vertical) Z ( Depth of Field)
10. 3D effects are done by Stereovision using two lenses at once. 
11. 3 Point lighting includes= Key, Fill, and Back light
12. Leit Motiv= Recurring image or scene.
13. Jumpcut= an object jumps from one screen corner to the opposite side of the screen during a cut.
14. Parallelism= Extends contrast by inter-cutting the scenes.
15. Synchronism= Involves cutting between events happening at the same time. Examples include flashback scenes, or when the hero rescues the damsel in distress before she is ran over by the fast approaching train.
16. Kuleshov= The Russian theorist filmmaker who discovered the aesthetic effect of using a montage.
17. POV= (Point of View) refers to the camera's simulating the index vector of a particular person or subject on screen. Basically taking the angle from the subject's eyes. 
18. 3200 vs 5400= Daylight (blue) vs. Tungsten(orange) expressed in Kelvin degrees.
19. Three domains of Audio= Speech  (narration and dialogue), Sound FX, and Music
20. Spotting= to decided on the placement of sound effects and music in a production.
21. Audio Pickup Patterns= Omnidirectional ( one source) Bidirectional ( two audio sources) Unidirectional ( Cardioid)
22. Elements of sound
1. Pitch: The relative highness and lowness of a sound measured against an agreed upon scale. The pitch of a tone is perceived and measured by its frequency. Frequency is measured by Hertz. If a tone vibrates 100 times per second. The frequency is expressed as 100Hz. The normal human frequency range for hearing is 20-20,000 Hz.
2. Timbre: The tone quality or tone color of a sound. The timbre of a sound tells us whether the sound comes from an organ or piano. 
3. Duration: How long the sound is heard.
4. Loudness (Dynamics, Amplitude, and Sound Pressure): A sound's apparent strength as we perceive it. The loudness of a sound is measured in decibels ( dB) The default dB for audio should be set at -12.
5. Attack-Decay: The part of dynamics and duration of a sound. Attack means how fast a sound reached a certain level of loudness.  Decay means how fast a sound becomes inaudible, The period during which a sound remains at its maximum loudness is called the sustain level. 
23.  HD aspect ratio: 16:9
24. Undercrank= fast motion ( less frames) Overcrank= slow motion (more frames)
25.  Interlaced = Interlaced scan-based images use techniques developed for Cathode Ray Tube (CRT)-based TV monitor displays, made up of 576 visible horizontal lines across a standard TV screen. This gives a flickering effect. Progressive= Progressive scanning, as opposed to interlaced, scans the entire picture line by line every sixteenth of a second. In other words, captured images are not split into separate fields like in interlaced scanning.