Audacities

Plain English

Nobody is born knowing this vocabulary, and the people who use it to make you feel behind are usually the ones taking something from you. Here is the whole language on one page, with nothing attached to it.

B-roll: Everything that is not the main action. Cutaways, details, hands working, the street outside, the light through a window. It is what lets an editor cut around a line that did not land, hide the jump between two takes, and give a scene somewhere to breathe. Productions that skip it find out in the edit, which is the one place the problem cannot be fixed cheaply.
Coverage: Shooting the same moment from enough angles and sizes that the scene can actually be assembled. Wide, mid, close, and the reverse. A day that gets beautiful footage with no coverage produces an unfinishable edit.
Bokeh: Pronounced boh-keh. The quality of the out-of-focus part of the picture — the way background lights melt into soft round orbs. It comes from the lens, not from software: a wide aperture, a longer lens, and distance between the subject and whatever is behind them. It is most of what people mean when they say something looks cinematic.
Field of view: How much of the world the lens takes in. A wide lens, meaning a small number like 21mm, sees a lot and makes a room feel large, but it stretches anything near the edge of frame. A long lens like 85mm or 100mm sees a narrow slice, compresses distance so backgrounds feel close, and isolates a face. Choosing the number is choosing how the audience feels about the space.
Effects, practical and visual: Practical effects happen in front of the camera on the day — rain towers, smoke, sparks, breakaway glass, a car rig. Visual effects are added afterwards in post. Practical usually looks better and is often cheaper than people expect, because the light behaves correctly without anyone having to simulate it. The best work mixes both and does not announce which is which.
Grade: The colour pass at the end of post, where every shot is balanced so the film looks like one film rather than a collection of days. It is also where the mood is set. Shooting everything on the same camera system exists largely to make this step possible.
Call sheet: The document issued the night before a shoot day telling everyone where to be, at what time, in what order. If you are on it, you are working.
Above and below the line: Above the line is the creative leadership and the principal cast. Below the line is everyone and everything else that makes the day happen. It is a budgeting distinction, not a statement about who matters.
Scale: The union minimum for a day's work. What a production can pay above it depends on the budget agreement it shoots under, and on what you have been paid before.
Quote: What you were last paid for comparable work. It becomes the number your next job negotiates from, which is why taking a very low fee has a cost beyond that one job.
Taft-Hartley: The route by which a non-union performer is legally hired onto a union production. It is normal, it happens constantly, and not being in a union does not disqualify you from being cast.
Recording: The actual audio file — this take, this performance. Also called the master. If you paid for the session or made it yourself, you almost certainly own it.
Song: The written thing underneath the recording: the melody and the words. Separate property, with separate money attached. Ten recordings of the same song are ten recordings and one song.
One-stop: When the same person controls both the recording and the song, so one signature clears everything. It makes you dramatically easier to hire.
Split sheet: A single page saying who wrote what percentage, signed by everyone in the room on the day. Without it, the friendly conversation about splits becomes an argument three years later when there is money involved.
Sync licence: Permission to put a song with picture. Short for synchronization — the music syncs to the film.
Master use licence: Permission to use your specific recording of it. A production needs both this and the sync licence, which is why one-stop artists get picked.
Cue sheet: The form a producer files after a show airs, listing every piece of music in it, who wrote it, how long it played and how it was used. It is what tells ASCAP and BMI to pay you. No cue sheet, no payment, no matter how many people watched. We file them.
Performing rights organization: ASCAP or BMI in the United States. They collect money when your song is performed in public and pay it to the writers. Joining is free.
ISRC: A twelve-character serial number for one specific recording. Your distributor assigns one when you release. It is how streaming plays get matched back to you.
Exclusive and non-exclusive: Exclusive means only one company can license that track and you cannot place it elsewhere. Ours is non-exclusive. Be careful signing anything that is not.
Work for hire: You are paid to create something and the company owns it outright. Standard for scoring a film. Fine when the fee is right and you know that is the deal going in.