QCAA Film TV & New Media flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Diegetic sound

Sound whose source exists within the story world, such as a character's footsteps, dialogue or a radio playing in the scene, so characters could plausibly hear it.

Non-diegetic sound

Sound added from outside the story world, such as a musical score or narrator's voice-over, which characters cannot hear and which addresses the audience directly.

Mise-en-scène

Everything placed within the frame and staged for the camera: set, props, costume, lighting, colour, composition and actor blocking, analysed as one designed system.

180-degree rule

A continuity convention keeping the camera on one side of an imaginary line between characters so screen direction and spatial relationships stay consistent across shots.

Dutch tilt

A camera angle where the horizon is deliberately slanted, producing unease, instability or disorientation and often signalling psychological disturbance or threat.

Match cut

An edit joining two shots through visual or aural similarity, such as a matching shape or movement, creating continuity of idea across a spatial or temporal jump.

Sound bridge

Audio that carries across a visual cut, linking two scenes and smoothing the transition by overlapping sound from one sequence into the next.

Shot-reverse-shot

An editing pattern alternating between two facing characters, typically in conversation, using matched eyelines and framing to construct coherent conversational space.

Foldback branching

An interactive narrative structure where choice paths diverge then reconverge to shared story nodes, limiting combinatorial explosion while preserving a sense of agency.

Transmedia storytelling

A narrative distributed across multiple platforms, each entry contributing distinct material that expands the story world rather than merely repeating it.

Participatory culture

A media environment where audiences act as producers through remix, fan fiction, memes and commentary, blurring the boundary between consumer and creator.

Procedural rhetoric

The persuasive argument made through a system's rules and mechanics rather than its words, common in games and interactive documentaries.

Web series

A short-form episodic series made for online distribution, typically running several minutes per episode with serialised hooks and platform-native framing.

Agency in interactive text

The user's meaningful capacity to make choices that visibly affect outcomes, distinct from mere interaction such as clicking to advance a fixed narrative.

Vertical video

A 9:16 portrait frame native to mobile social platforms, which reshapes composition, shot size and text placement compared with horizontal formats.

Presence in VR

The felt sense of being physically located inside a virtual environment, supported by spatial sound, first-person embodiment and responsive head-tracked imagery.

Three-point lighting

A standard set-up using key light for modelling, fill light to soften shadow, and back light to separate subject from background.

180-degree shutter rule

A guideline setting shutter speed at twice the frame rate, such as 1/48 second at 24 fps, to produce natural motion blur.

3-2-1 backup rule

A data-safety practice keeping three copies of footage on two different storage media with one copy stored off-site, protecting against drive failure or loss.

Rough cut

An early edit assembling selected takes in story order to test structure and performance before refining rhythm, sound and visual effects.

LUT

A lookup table mapping colour values, used on set as a viewing transform or in post to apply a consistent grade to log footage.

Log footage

A flat, low-contrast recording profile that preserves highlight and shadow detail for later grading, appearing washed out before a transform is applied.

Shot list

A pre-production document enumerating each planned shot with size, angle, movement, location and notes, guiding efficient capture on the day.

Director role

The creative lead interpreting the script, guiding performance, framing and tone, and maintaining coherence of the production's overall vision.

Preferred reading

The meaning a text's structure most readily invites, produced by its codes and mode of address positioning the audience toward a particular interpretation.

Oppositional reading

An interpretation in which an audience rejects the text's preferred meaning and reads it against its intended framing, often from a different social position.

Auteur reading

An analytical approach identifying a director's recurring stylistic and thematic signatures across works and treating them as authored creative expression.

Genre iconography

The recurring visual and aural symbols associated with a genre, such as shadows and rain in noir, which cue audience expectation and can be repeated or subverted.

Mode of address

The way a text speaks to its audience, through tone, direct address, narration or framing, revealing who it assumes the viewer to be.

Public service broadcaster

A broadcaster funded publicly or by licence rather than advertising alone, mandated to serve national identity, diversity and educational or democratic purposes.

Media concentration

The consolidation of ownership across production and distribution, reducing the number of independent voices and shaping which content is commissioned.

Format localisation

Adapting a globally licensed program format to local casting, language, humour and cultural reference so it resonates with a specific national audience.