Filmmaking

Steven Spielberg (standing) with Chandran Rutnam in Sri Lanka, during the production of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (released 1984)

Sound recordist Curtis Choy (left) on location for Dim Sum: a Little Bit of Heart, an indie film by director Wayne Wang (center) on Clement Street in the Richmond District of San Francisco, California 1983

Spede Pasanen, a Finnish film director and producer, had a long, strained relationship with Finnish Film Foundation, a government-financed film-funding organisation which continuously refused to fund his movies, so many of his works are independent films.

Process by which a motion picture is produced.

- Filmmaking

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Film director

A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision.

The film director gives last minute direction to the cast and crew, while filming a historical drama on location in London.

American director Steven Spielberg with Sri Lankan filmmaker Chandran Rutnam in Sri Lanka

The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design and all the creative aspects of filmmaking.

Film

Work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images.

Animated GIF of Prof. Stampfer's Stroboscopische Scheibe No. X (Trentsensky & Vieweg 1833)

An animated GIF of a photographic sequence shot by Eadweard Muybridge in 1878. His chronophotographic works can be regarded as very short movies that were recorded before there was a proper way to replay the material in motion.

A frame from Roundhay Garden Scene, the world's earliest surviving film produced using a motion picture camera, by Louis Le Prince, 1888

A famous shot from Georges Méliès Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902), an early narrative film and also an early science fiction film.

Salah Zulfikar, one of the most popular actors in the golden age of Egyptian Cinema

This 16 mm spring-wound Bolex "H16" Reflex camera is a popular entry level camera used in film schools.

Founded in 1912, the Babelsberg Studio near Berlin was the first large-scale film studio in the world, and the forerunner to Hollywood. It still produces global blockbusters every year.

The Lumière Brothers, who were among the first filmmakers

Salah Zulfikar and Faten Hamama in the premiere of Bain Al-Atlal ("Among the Ruins") in Cairo, 1959

An animated image of a horse, made using eight pictures.

An animation of the retouched Sallie Garner card from The Horse in Motion series (1878–1879) by Muybridge. His chronophotographic works can be regarded as very short movies that were recorded before there was a proper way to replay the material in motion.

The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it.

Green-light

To give permission to proceed with a project.

Traffic lights display green to indicate "go ahead".

In the context of the film and television industries, to green-light something is to formally approve its production finance and to commit to this financing, thereby allowing the project to proceed from the development phase to pre-production and principal photography.

Casting (performing arts)

Pre-production process for selecting a certain type of actor, dancer, singer, or extra for a particular role or part in a script, screenplay, or teleplay.

Casting call for black cats, Los Angeles, 1961. The studio was seeking cats for the Roger Corman film Tales of Terror.

However, within a given television production a casting panel can consist of a television producer, or within film production a casting panel could contain a film producer, film director, and/or choreographer.

Screenplay

Written work by screenwriters for a film, television show, or video game .

Screenplay for the 1974 film The Godfather Part II, written by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, held at the National Museum of Cinema in Italy

Movie industry revolutionary Thomas H. Ince, a screenwriter himself, invented movie production by introducing an "assembly line" system of filmmaking that utilized far more detailed written materials, clearly dedicated to "separating conception from execution".

Film genre

Stylistic or thematic category for motion pictures based on similarities either in the narrative elements, aesthetic approach, or the emotional response to the film.

Western films are those "set in the American West that embod[y] the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier." Pictured: Clint Eastwood in the Spaghetti Western film A Fistful of Dollars (1964).

War film or anti-war movie: Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930

A film's genre will influence the use of filmmaking styles and techniques, such as the use of flashbacks and low-key lighting in film noir; tight framing in horror films; or fonts that look like rough-hewn logs for the titles of Western films.

Independent film

Filmmakers Stéphane Brizé (second from the right) and Rodrigo Moreno (second from the left) at a screening of The Measure of a Man in Buenos Aires in 2019.

Wes Anderson, a widely renowned indie film auteur.

An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, in some cases, distributed by major companies).