Film stock in the context of Video frame

Digital cinematography is the process of capturing (recording) a motion picture using digital image sensors rather than through film stock. As digital technology has improved in recent years, this practice has become dominant. Since the 2000s, most movies across the world have been captured as well as distributed digitally.

Many vendors have brought products to market, including traditional film camera vendors like Arri and Panavision, as well as new vendors like Red, Blackmagic, Silicon Imaging, Vision Research and companies which have traditionally focused on consumer and broadcast video equipment, like Sony, GoPro, and Panasonic.

Video production is the process of producing video content. It is the equivalent of filmmaking, but with video recorded either as analog signals on videotape, digitally in video tape or as computer files stored on optical discs, hard drives, SSDs, magnetic tape or memory cards instead of film stock. There are three main stages of video production, pre-production, production and post-production.

A film format is a technical definition of a set of standard characteristics regarding image capture on photographic film for still images or film stock for filmmaking. It can also apply to projected film, either slides or movies. The primary characteristic of a film format is its size and shape.

In the case of motion picture film, the format sometimes includes audio parameters. Other characteristics usually include the film gauge, pulldown method, lens anamorphosis (or lack thereof), and film gate or projector aperture dimensions, all of which need to be defined for photography as well as projection, as they may differ.

In filmmaking, video production, animation, and related fields, a frame is one of the many still images which compose the complete moving picture. The term is derived from the historical development of film stock, in which the sequentially recorded single images look like a framed picture when examined individually.

The term may also be used more generally as a noun or verb to refer to the edges of the image as seen in a camera viewfinder or projected on a screen. Thus, the camera operator can be said to keep a car in frame by panning with it as it speeds past.

A film base is a transparent substrate which acts as a support medium for the photosensitive emulsion that lies atop it. Despite the numerous layers and coatings associated with the emulsion layer, the base generally accounts for the vast majority of the thickness of any given film stock. Since the late 19th century, there have been three major types of film base in use: nitrate (until about 1951), acetate, and polyester.

Digital cinema is the digital technology used within the film industry to distribute or project motion pictures as opposed to the historical use of reels of motion picture film, such as 35 mm film. Whereas film reels have to be shipped to movie theaters, a digital movie can be distributed to cinemas in a number of ways: over the Internet or dedicated satellite links, or by sending hard drives or optical discs such as Blu-ray discs, then projected using a digital video projector instead of a film projector.

Typically, digital movies are shot using digital movie cameras or in animation transferred from a file and are edited using a non-linear editing system (NLE). The NLE is often a video editing application installed in one or more computers that may be networked to access the original footage from a remote server, share or gain access to computing resources for rendering the final video, and allow several editors to work on the same timeline or project.

A digital camera, also called a digicam, is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced since the turn of the 21st century are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film or film stock. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices like smartphones with the same or more capabilities and features of dedicated cameras. High-end, high-definition dedicated cameras are still commonly used by professionals and those who desire to take higher-quality photographs.

Digital cameras and film-based cameras have similar optical systems, typically using a lens with a variable diaphragm to focus light onto an image pickup device. The diaphragm and shutter admit a controlled amount of light to the image, just as with film, but the image pickup device is electronic rather than chemical. However, unlike film cameras, digital cameras can display images on a screen immediately after being recorded, and store and delete images from memory. Many digital cameras can also record moving videos with sound. Some digital cameras can crop and stitch pictures and perform other kinds of image editing.

Plastic film is a thin continuous polymeric material. Thicker plastic material is often called a "sheet". These thin plastic membranes are used to separate areas or volumes, to hold items, to act as barriers, or as printable surfaces.

Plastic films are used in a wide variety of applications. These include: packaging, plastic bags, labels, building construction, landscaping, electrical fabrication, photographic film, film stock for movies, video tape, etc.

Film gauge is a physical property of photographic or motion picture film stock which defines its width. Traditionally, the major movie film gauges are 8 mm, 16 mm, 35 mm, and 65/70 mm (in this case 65 mm for the negative and 70 mm for the release print; the extra five millimeters are reserved for the magnetic soundtrack). There have been other historic gauges in the past, especially in the silent era, most notably 9.5 mm film, as well as a panoply of others ranging from 3 mm to 75 mm.

Larger film gauge is generally associated with higher image quality, higher image detail, greater materials expense, heavier camera equipment, larger and most costly projection equipment, as well as greater bulk and weight for distribution and storage (both interim and archival).

Negative pulldown is the manner in which an image is exposed on a film stock, described by the number of film perforations spanned by an individual frame. It can also describe whether the image captured on the negative is oriented horizontally or vertically. Changing the number of exposed perforations allows a cinematographer to change both the aspect ratio of the image and the size of the area on the film stock that the image occupies (which affects image clarity).

The most common negative pulldowns for 35 mm film are 4-perf and 3-perf, the latter of which is usually used in conjunction with Super 35. 2-perf, used in Techniscope in the 1960s, is enjoying a slight resurgence due to the birth of digital intermediate techniques eliminating the need for optical lab work. Vertical pulldown is overwhelmingly the dominant axis of motion in cinematography, although horizontal pulldown is used in IMAX, VistaVision, and in 35 mm consumer and professional still cameras.

Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film which increasingly involves the use of digital technology. When putting together some sort of video composition, typically, one would need a collection of shots and footages that vary from one another. The act of adjusting the shots someone has already taken, and turning them into something new is known as film editing.

The film editor works with raw footage, selecting shots and combining them into sequences which create a finished motion picture. Film editing is described as an art or skill, the only art that is unique to cinema, separating filmmaking from other art forms that preceded it, although there are close parallels to the editing process in other art forms such as poetry and novel writing. Film editing is an extremely important tool when attempting to intrigue a viewer. When done properly, a film's editing can captivate a viewer and fly completely under the radar. Because of this, film editing has been given the name "the invisible art."

A movie camera (also known as a film camera and cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either onto film stock or an image sensor, in order to produce a moving image to display on a screen. In contrast to the still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images by way of an intermittent mechanism or by electronic means; each image is a frame of film or video. The frames are projected through a movie projector or a video projector at a specific frame rate (number of frames per second) to show the moving picture. When projected at a high enough frame rate (24 frames per second or more), the persistence of vision allows the eyes and brain of the viewer to merge the separate frames into a continuous moving picture.

A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos, as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film. Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other purposes.

Video cameras are used primarily in two modes. The first, characteristic of much early broadcasting, is live television, where the camera feeds real time images directly to a screen for immediate observation. A few cameras still serve live television production, but most live connections are for security, military/tactical, and industrial operations where surreptitious or remote viewing is required. In the second mode the images are recorded to a storage device for archiving or further processing; for many years, videotape was the primary format used for this purpose, but was gradually supplanted by optical disc, hard disk, and then flash memory. Recorded video is used in television production, and more often surveillance and monitoring tasks in which unattended recording of a situation is required for later analysis.

A digital movie camera for digital cinematography is a motion picture camera that captures footage digitally rather than physical film, known as film stock. Different digital movie cameras output a variety of different acquisition formats. Cameras designed for domestic use have also been used for low-budget independent productions.

Since the 2000s, digital movie cameras have become the dominant type of camera in the motion picture industry, replacing movie cameras that shoot on film.

The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the recording of a film, television production, music video or other live-action piece. The cinematographer is the chief of the camera and light crews working on such projects. They would normally be responsible for making artistic and technical decisions related to the image and for selecting the camera, film stock, lenses, filters, etc. Furthermore the cinematographer is commonly involved with the color grading to shape the final look of a film. The study and practice of this field are referred to as cinematography.

The cinematographer is a subordinate of the director, tasked with capturing a scene in accordance with the director's vision. Relations between the cinematographer and director vary. In some instances, the director will allow the cinematographer complete independence, while in others, the director allows little to none, even going so far as to specify exact camera placement and lens selection. Such a level of involvement is less common when the director and cinematographer have become comfortable with each other. The director will typically convey to the cinematographer what is wanted from a scene visually and allow the cinematographer latitude in achieving that effect.

Videography involves capturing moving images on electronic media (such as: videotape, direct to disk recording, or solid state storage), and can include streaming media. It encompasses both video production and post-production methods. Historically videography was considered the video counterpart to cinematography, which involved recording moving images on film stock. However, with the advent of digital video recording in the late 20th century, the distinction between the two has become less clear as both use similar intermediary mechanisms. Today, any video work can be referred to as videography, while commercial motion picture production is typically termed cinematography.

A videographer works in the field of videography and video production. News broadcasting heavily relies on live television, where videographers are involved in electronic news gathering (ENG) of local news stories.

Film perforations, also known as perfs and sprocket holes, are the holes placed in the film stock during manufacturing and used for transporting (by sprockets and claws) and steadying (by pin registration) the film. Films may have different types of perforations depending on film gauge, film format, and intended usage. Perforations are also used as a standard measuring reference within certain camera systems to refer to the size of the frame.

Some formats are referred to in terms of the ratio "perforations per frame/gauge size" to provide an easy way of denoting size. For instance, 35mm Academy is also known as 4 perf-35mm; VistaVision is 8 perf-35mm; the long-time standard Todd-AO 70 mm film is 5 perf-70mm; and IMAX is 15 perf-70mm. This description does not indicate whether the film transport is horizontal or vertical, but uncertainty is precluded because there are currently no horizontal systems using the same number of perforations on the same gauge as a vertical one.