In film, a shot is a continuous strip of motion picture film, created of a series of frames, that runs for an uninterrupted period of time. It generally portrays a subject, though a blank screen can also be considered a shot. Shots are filmed with a single camera and are of variable duration. Shots are compared to words with each frame being a letter and scenes being sentences. Film refers to the celluloid media on which movies are printed. ... In film, video production, animation, and related fields, a frame is one of the many still images which compose the complete moving picture. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together. ... A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... In TV and movies a scene is a part of the action in a single location. ... In linguistics, a sentence is a unit of language, characterised in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. ...

Cutting between shots taken at different times by different cameras is known as film editing, and is one of the central arts of filmmaking. Film editing, also called montage, is the connecting of one or more shots together in a sequence. ...

The length of shots is an important consideration that can greatly affect a film. When used they can have an effect of making a scene seem far more realistic, as this is how people normally see the world. Due to the rapidity of cuts in most western movies longer shots can make a scene seem more relaxed and slower placed.

Ending a shot can also be used to conceal special effect tricks. Audiences come to be aware of these tricks and for maximum effect many directors use continuous shots to enhance an effect. For instance in Terminator 2: Judgment Day James Cameron used mirrors and an identical twin so that Arnold Schwarzenegger could act and then have his head opened in one shot. Lasers were used in the 2005 Classical Spectacular concert Special effects (abbreviated SPFX or SFX) are used in the film, television, and entertainment industry to visualize scenes that cannot be achieved by normal means, such as space travel. ... Continuity editing is the predominant style of film editing practiced by most Hollywood editors. ... Terminator 2: Judgment Day (commonly abbreviated T2) is a 1991 movie directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Robert Patrick. ... James Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a three-time Academy Award winning Canadian film director noted for his action/science fiction films, which are often extremely successful financially. ... Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian bodybuilder, actor, and United States Republican politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of California. ...

Despite these benefits long shots, which are known as slow cutting, are difficult to do as any error would force the filmmaker to restart from scratch. They are thus only occasionally used. Films famous for their long cuts including Alfred Hitchcock's Rope that only cuts at the end of each reel, and does so surreptitiously so that it seems as the whole film is one take. A film that was actually a single take is the recent Russian Ark. Slow cutting is a film editing technique which uses shots of long duration. ... A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting at least several minutes. ... Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was a British film director and producer, a master of the suspense thriller genre. ... Rope (1948) is an Alfred Hitchcock film notable for appearing to be one continuous shot. ... This movie film reel has film wrapped around it. ... DVD cover Russian Ark (Русский ковчег) is a 2002 movie by Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov in which an unnamed and unseen (by the audience) narrator, voiced by the director, wanders through the Winter Palace (now the Russian State Hermitage Museum) in St. ...

Conversely many short shots, known as fast cutting, can be used to make a scene seem more energetic or dramatic. Scenes of violence, such as the famous shower scene in Psycho use rapid cuts. One film famous for using a huge number of short cuts is Requiem for a Dream. Short cuts also have the disadvantage of being time consuming and expensive taking many hours to set up and require careful coordination to gain maximum effect, and if used without precision, rapid cutting can become disorienting. Fast cutting is a film editing technique which refers to several consecutive shots of a brief duration (e. ... This article is about the novel and the movies based on it. ... Requiem for a Dream is a 1978 novel by Hubert Selby, Jr. ...

See also

• Movie montage
• slow cutting
• fast cutting
• long take