MUSICAL ART WARS

MUSICAL SCORE INFO: Below is a list of music terms and a brief history of music in films to help you implement this WebQuest.

CUE: A short piece of music written and performed in relation to one of a film's scenes or segments.  All the cues together make up the film's score.

LEITMOTIF: A short musical phrase representing and recurring with a character, situation or emotion.  The device derives from 19th-century opera.

SONG SCORE: When songs completely or principally make up a film's musical score.

SPOTTING SESSION: A meeting between the composer, the producer and the director where they decide how and when to use music in the film. Usually the composer does not begin to work until after the spotting session.

SPECIAL EFFECTS INFO: Below
is a list of special effect terminology and the history of special effects in films to help you implement this WebQuest.

SPECIAL EFFECTS (Often abbreviated as SFX, SPFX, or simply FX): Artistic video effects used to enhance a video
production or simulate imagined events for creating drama, enhancing the mood or furthering the
story. Special effects may vary from the limited addition of patterns or
the mixing of several video images together, to sophisticated digital
effects such as picture compression, page flipping and three-dimensional
effects. Special effects are usually created using SEGs.



SEG: (Special Effects Generator): Device designed to generate special
effects. The simplest devices process a single video signal, change its
color, generate sepia tones, invert the picture to a negative, posterize
the image and fade or break up the image into various patterns. More
sophisticated equipment uses several video sources, computer-generated
graphics and sophisticated animation with digital effects.

BLUE-SCREEN PHOTOGRAPHY (also green-screen): Technique of filming a subject in front of a blue- or green-screen; the blue or green background is then removed through optical or digital processes, allowing the subject, or element, to be isolated for compositing with another element. Often characters are filmed with a blue-screen in order to place them in a different scene, or on a miniature set.

CGI (Computer Generated Imagery): Images created with the use of a computer. Also called computer graphics (CG), computer animation, or digital animation.


ANIMATRONICS: Puppets of human, animal, or creature form controlled by an operator manually or remotely via electronic or radio control.

         From even its earliest days, films have used visual magic ("smoke and mirrors") to produce illusions and trick effects that have startled audiences. In fact, the phenomenon of persistence of vision (it was first described to some degree in 1824 by British physician Peter Mark Roget) is the reason why the human eye sees individual frames of a movie as smooth, flowing action when projected.
         The earliest effects were produced within the camera (in-camera effects), such as simple jump-cuts or superimpositions, or were created by using miniatures, back projection, or matte paintings. Optical effects came slightly later, using film, light, shadow, lenses and/or chemical processes to produce the film effects. Film titles, fades, dissolves, wipes, blow ups, skip frames, bluescreen, compositing, double exposures, and zooms/pans are examples of various optical effects. Cel animation, scale modeling, claymation, digital compositing, animatronics, use of prosthetic makeup, morphing, and modern computer-generated or computer graphics imagery (CGI) are just some of the more modern techniques that are widely used for creating incredible special or visual effects.

Retrieved from: http://www.ardenwoodsnd-dvd.com/glossary/glossary_s.html

Retrieved from: http://www.filmsite.org/visualeffects.html

Retrieved from: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/specialfx2/glossary.html