Articles Index

Crowdfunding - A Definition of Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding refers to funding documentaries or other independent film projects by appealing to the public for donations.

Film Noir - Definition of Film Noir

Film Noir is a term used to describe a particular genre of cinema.

Shortlist or Shortlisted

With regard to the Oscars, this term is used to indicate that a documentary has been selected to be among the titles that will be considered for nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Observational Mode

Emphasizing the documentary filmmaker's engagement in observing the subject's daily life and circumstances and documentinf them with an unobtrusive camera.

Cinema Vérité - Direct Cinema

French, meaning "film truth." A term applied to documentary films in which there is a truthful live encounter between the filmmaker who is shooting the film and the film's subject(s).

Masked Interview

An interview in which the filmmaker as interviewer is both off-camera and unheard.

Interrotron

A device that functions simultanously as a camera and TelePrompTer-like projector, to capture an interview subject's close up responses to questions posed during interviews.

Compilation Film

A documentary film that is comprised entirely of archival footage.

Auto-Ethnicity

An ethnographically informed work made by members of ethnic communities that are the subjects of Western ethnography.

Long Take

A songle continuous shot of unusually long duration which eliminates the need to edit the scene.

Participatory Mode

Emphasis on the interaction between filmmaker and subject.

Perspective

In documentary filmmaking, perspective is the selection and arrangement of sounds and images to tacitly convey or imply the filmmaker’s point of view about a subject.

Poetic Mode

The formal structural organization of a film that emphasizes visual associations and impressionistic descriptive passages, tonal and rhythmic qualities and de-emphasizes strictly linear or logical sequencing.

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomophism, unusual in documentary films, attibutes human traits and characteristics to animals.

Voice of Authority

Someone whom we see and/or hear whose purpose it is to represent the point of view of the film.

Voice Over

A off-camera voice that comments about the images on film.

Shot

A single uninterrupted moving image that's recorded with a static or mobile camera.

Realism

Emphasis on the subject's state of mind and psychological outlook.

Performative Mode

The emphasis of the filmmaker’s subjective attitude or personal engagement with a subject to evoke audience reaction.

Intertitle

Text that appears periodically on screen to provide information such as the date, the time, the location or to identify a person shown on screen.

Framing

The organization of the shot’s contents with respect to its outer borders.

Expository Documentary

A nonfiction film that emphasizes verbal commentary and argumentative logic.

Ethnographic Films

Actuality films featuring native peoples.

Authenticity

The belief that the world represented on screen is as it really is and has not been modified.

Commentary

A narrative voice in the documentary film that articulates an explicit argument.