Formats & Exhibition

Aspect RatioGuide
Aspect ratio is the width of the frame relative to its height — 1.33:1 (Academy), 1.85:1 (flat), 2.39:1 (scope), 1.43:1 (IMAX), 16:9 (HDTV); it decides how much space surrounds a character and how a composition breathes.
Frame RateGuide
Frame rate is how many frames are captured or shown per second: 24 fps is the cinema standard, 25/30 fps is broadcast video, and 48–120 fps (HFR) looks hyper-smooth; shooting faster than playback creates slow motion.
IMAXTerm
IMAX is a large-format system of cameras, film (15-perforation 70mm), projection and theaters with huge, tall screens; its native 1.43:1 frame is why films like Dunkirk and Oppenheimer switch ratio in IMAX scenes.
Pilot EpisodeTerm
A pilot episode is the first episode of a proposed series, made to sell the show to a network or platform — it must establish the world, characters, tone and the engine that will generate future episodes.
Film StillTerm
A film still is a single image representing a film — either a frame grab taken from the footage or a production still shot by the set photographer for publicity; stills are the raw material of lookbooks and mood boards.
Captions and SubtitlesTerm
Subtitles are on-screen text translating or transcribing dialogue; captions (closed or open) also describe sounds and music for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. In silent film, 'caption' also meant an intertitle card.
3D FilmTerm
A 3D film is shot or converted as a stereoscopic pair — separate images for the left and right eye — so that, viewed with glasses, the picture gains depth; Avatar and Hugo are key digital-era examples.
Anthology FilmTerm
An anthology film is a feature made of several self-contained segments or short stories, often by different directors, loosely linked by a theme, place or framing device — Paris, je t'aime, Wild Tales, New York Stories.
Bottle EpisodeTerm
A bottle episode is a TV episode confined to existing standing sets and a minimal cast to save money, which often forces an intense, dialogue-driven character study — Breaking Bad's 'Fly' is the textbook case.
CinemaScopeTerm
CinemaScope was 20th Century Fox's anamorphic widescreen system, launched with The Robe (1953): a lens squeezed a wide image onto 35mm film and the projector lens unsqueezed it to about 2.35:1.
LetterboxingTerm
Letterboxing shows a widescreen image on a narrower screen in full by adding black bars above and below; the vertical version, bars on the sides, is pillarboxing.
Pan and ScanTerm
Pan and scan crops a widescreen film to fill a 4:3 TV screen, moving a narrow window across the wide frame shot by shot — losing up to half the composition and sometimes whole characters.
Aspect Ratio ChangeTerm
An aspect ratio change deliberately widens or narrows the frame within a film — to mark a time period, a shift into memory, or a burst of spectacle as with IMAX sequences.

Glossary

15 terms

Blow-Up: A blow-up is an optical (later digital) enlargement of a smaller film format to a larger one — 16mm or Super 16 to 35mm, or 35mm to 70mm prints — so a film shot small can be projected in cinemas.
Change-Over Cue: Change-over cues are small circles flashed in the top-right corner near the end of a reel, telling the projectionist to start the second projector so the switch between reels is seamless; they are nicknamed cigarette burns.
Positive Print: A positive print is film printed from the camera negative so that light, shadow and color appear correctly; the release prints projected in cinemas are positive prints.
Cinerama: Cinerama was a 1950s–60s widescreen process that shot with three synchronized 35mm cameras and projected the three strips side by side onto a deeply curved screen, starting with This Is Cinerama (1952).
High Definition (HD): High definition (HD) is video at 1280×720 or 1920×1080 pixels in a 16:9 frame, replacing standard definition in the 2000s and itself superseded by 2K/4K for cinema.
Open Matte: Open matte is a version of a film shot flat for 1.85:1 (or Super 35) that shows the full negative area, revealing extra picture above and below that was masked off in theaters.
Reel: A reel is a spool of film — traditionally about 1,000 ft of 35mm, roughly 10–11 minutes — so features were counted in reels and projected with changeovers; today 'reel' also means a showreel of someone's work.
Split Reel: A split reel was a single reel of the early silent era carrying two unrelated short films, each too short to fill a reel alone.
U-matic: U-matic is Sony's 3/4-inch videocassette format introduced in 1971, widely used in TV news and editing suites until Betacam took over.
Bumper: A bumper is a short branded clip before or between content — a studio logo sequence before a film, or a channel ident around TV ad breaks.
Intermission: An intermission is a scheduled break in the middle of a long film, often with an intermission card and entr'acte music — standard for roadshow epics, rare today (Tarantino's The Hateful Eight revived it).
Revival House: A revival house (repertory cinema) programs older, classic, cult and restored films in curated series instead of new releases.
Double Feature: A double feature is a program of two films for one ticket, a staple of the studio era (an A picture plus a B movie), grindhouses and drive-ins; a single screening shows one film.
Nickelodeon: A nickelodeon was a small storefront movie theater of the 1900s–1910s in the US that charged five cents for a program of short films, turning cinema into mass entertainment.
Drive-In Theater: Ozoner is trade-press slang for a drive-in theater — an open-air cinema where audiences watch from their parked cars, at its peak in 1950s America.