Audience positioning: The relationship between the audience and the media product. How the media tries to determine the response of an audience to its products

Auteur: A film-maker, usually a writer/director, with a 'recognisable, strong personal style

Backlighting: Lighting placed behind a subject to create a silhouette

Boom: A moveable arm that holds a microphone over actors’ heads during filming

Cinéma vérité: A style of film-making that stresses unbiased realism and often contains unedited sequences

Continuity: Ensuring that each shot in a film or TV program has details that match

Cut: (1) The instruction to stop the camera and the action in front of the camera (2) The process of editing a film or shortening a scene

Cutaway: A brief shot that interrupts the continuity of the main action of a film, often used to depict related matter or indicate concurrent action

Diagetic sound: Sound that belongs naturally with what can be seen in the picture

Diffusion: The reduction of the harshness or intensity of light achieved by using a screen, glass filter or smoke

Director’s cut: The director’s version of a film, which usually includes scenes cut from the original

Dissolve: The gradual transformation of one scene to the next by overlapping a fade- out with a fade in

Dolly Shot: A moving shot that uses a wheeled camera platform known as a dolly

Domestic rights: The rights to distribute a film in North America or another originating country where specified

Establishing shot: The first shot of a scene showing a wide shot of the location in which the action takes place

Jump Cut: A cut made in the middle of a continuous shot rather than between shots, creating discontinuity in time and drawing attention to the film itself instead of its content

Laveliers: Small omnidirectional microphones usually attached to an actor’s chest

Master shot: A continuous take that covers the entire set or all of the action in a scene