50 Fun Facts About Filmmaking

Which sweet topping stood in for blood in the black-and-white shower scene of Hitchcock's Psycho?

Chocolate syrup played the blood, and Hitchcock chose black and white partly to keep the scene from being too gory. The brand usually named is Bosco.

Which breakfast cereal was Hollywood's usual fake snow until It's a Wonderful Life found a quieter mix?

Cornflakes, used untoasted, crunched so loudly underfoot that dialogue had to be re-recorded afterwards. RKO's effects team replaced them with a quiet mix of water, soap flakes and foamite.

Which cinema advertisements got their name because they first ran after the main feature, not before it?

Trailers at first trailed the feature, but audiences often ignored them and left as soon as the film ended. Cinemas moved them ahead of the feature, and the old name stuck.

Which planning tool, a sequence of sketches pinned up in order, was developed at Walt Disney's studio?

Storyboard drawings were first made for a complete film on Disney's 1933 short Three Little Pigs. Walt Disney credited animator Webb Smith with the idea of pinning sketches to a board in sequence.

Which word do directors call out when filming ends, traditionally followed by a party for cast and crew?

Wrap most likely comes from the everyday phrase about wrapping things up. It is sometimes said to stand for 'wind, reel and print', and directors may also announce one for each actor who finishes.

Which hinged device is snapped shut before each take so editors can line up the picture with the sound?

Clapperboard sticks snap shut with a sharp clap that is easy to find on the audio track and to match with the frame where they meet. Their black and white stripes help the camera record that moment clearly.

Which non-speaking performers fill crowd scenes, with some 300,000 used for the funeral in Gandhi?

Extras in that funeral scene numbered over 300,000, a record for any film. On set they are more often called background actors, or simply background.

When a film wins the Academy Award for Best Picture, who actually receives the Oscar statuettes?

The producers collect the award, not the director or the studio. A cap of three per film was introduced in 1999, after five people accepted for Shakespeare in Love.

Which kitchen ingredient is heated with water to make the brittle breakaway glass used in screen fights?

Sugar glass has stood in for the real thing in movies, plays and professional wrestling. It soaks up moisture from the air, so it has to be used soon after it is made or it softens.

Which body-worn camera stabilizer, invented by Garrett Brown, followed Rocky Balboa up the museum steps?

Steadicam was only on its third feature when it shot the jogging scenes and the run up the stairs in Rocky. Stanley Kubrick later had one adapted to film from barely above the floor in The Shining.

Which film crew title, used on sets since the 1920s, belongs to the head electrician who runs the lighting?

Gaffer tape, the strong cloth tape that holds down cables on sets, is thought to be named after the job. The gaffer carries out the lighting plan under the director of photography.

Which oddly named film credit goes to the chief assistant who runs the lighting or rigging crew day to day?

Best boy is the foreman of the department, and a woman doing the job may be called best girl. Nobody is sure how the title arose, and theories about apprentices and ships' crews lack evidence.

Which senior crew member leads the riggers who build camera supports such as cranes and tracks on a film set?

The key grip supervises the set-up of both cameras and lights on American sets, yet union rules stop the team from touching the lamps. In the UK the role works solely with cameras.

Which sound specialist recreates everyday noises like footsteps, using props such as coconut shells for hooves?

The Foley artist is named after Jack Foley, who helped turn Universal's silent musical Show Boat into a sound film. He kept creating effects for films until his death in 1967.

Which crew member, often credited as the DP, is the chief of both the camera and lighting crews on a film?

The cinematographer, or director of photography, creates the visual atmosphere of a production, and several have gone on to direct. Jan de Bont shot Die Hard before directing Speed and Twister.

Which crew member, the editor's representative on set, makes sure props, costumes and dialogue match between takes?

The script supervisor is a department head and acts as a right-hand aide to the director. Their watch on continuity lets the film be compiled smoothly in the editing room.

Which sound crew member holds a microphone on a long pole just outside the frame, a rig nicknamed a fishpole?

The boom operator's craft dates to early talkies, when director Dorothy Arzner had a microphone rigged onto a fishing rod so that Clara Bow could move freely on the set.

Which title is also given to the first assistant camera, a job said to be noticed only when it goes wrong?

The focus puller keeps the lens sharp as actors move, measuring the distance from the camera to each actor's mark before a take. A great performance may never be repeated, so there is no room for error.

Which film crew member trains and handles animals on set, and may also teach actors to ride horses?

A wrangler's horses are often just background, so they must stay calm around lights, activity and cameras. The same title goes to crew who find and handle special items such as custom cars.

Which performer replaces an actor in dangerous scenes, sometimes because a contract bars the star from risks?

A stunt double is often in less danger than the scene suggests, because harnesses and wires can be digitally removed from the final film. An actor's age or physical condition can also call for one.

Which term names a view that opens a scene by showing where it happens, often using a famous landmark?

The establishing shot was more common in classical Hollywood than it is today. Modern filmmakers often skip it to keep a scene moving, or simply name the place in on-screen text, as Law & Order does.

Which tilted camera shot, a hallmark of German expressionist cinema, is used to make viewers feel uneasy?

The Dutch angle may owe its name to a corruption of Deutsch, the German word for German. Alfred Hitchcock, who worked at Germany's UFA studios early in his career, used it in Strangers on a Train.

A low-angle shot, with the camera below eye level looking up at someone, usually makes that person seem what?

Powerful is the image Christopher Nolan wanted when he filmed the Joker from extremely low angles in The Dark Knight. In Citizen Kane, a whole confrontation after the lost election is shot from below.

Which camera technique shows events through a character's eyes, as the 1947 film Lady in the Lake did throughout?

A POV shot sustained for a whole film was the gimmick of Lady in the Lake, which tried to copy the first-person voice of Raymond Chandler's novel. The technique is also called the subjective camera.

Which basic camera move swivels the camera horizontally from a fixed spot, like a head turning to scan a view?

A pan keeps the camera in one place and swivels it sideways, while the same swivel up or down is a tilt. Done so fast that the picture blurs into streaks, it becomes a whip pan.

Which visual effect, popularized by The Matrix, uses a rig of still cameras to swing around slowed-down action?

Bullet time in The Matrix was created by John Gaeta and Manex Visual Effects. The idea of firing a row of still cameras goes back to Eadweard Muybridge's photographs of a galloping horse.

Which camera effect, devised for Hitchcock's Vertigo, keeps an actor the same size while the background stretches?

A dolly zoom rolls the camera toward or away from an actor while zooming the opposite way. Steven Spielberg used it in Jaws for Chief Brody's realization that there is a shark at the beach.

Which term describes the proportion of an image's width to its height, such as 2.39:1 for widescreen cinema?

Aspect ratio in old Hollywood films was the squarer Academy shape of 1.375:1, fixed after room was made on the film strip for an optical soundtrack.

Which optical artifact did J. J. Abrams add on purpose to Star Trek by aiming off-camera lights into the camera?

Lens flare streaks fill Star Trek and Super 8 because Abrams wanted a look that felt unique, though he later conceded it was overdone in places. In Easy Rider, by contrast, the flares were accidental.

Filming at a faster frame rate than playback, once done by overcranking a hand-turned camera, creates which effect?

Slow motion was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger in the early 20th century. Cranking a camera slower than normal does the opposite and speeds the action up.

Which editing technique strings short shots together to compress time, as in a boxer's training sequence?

Montage is simply the French word for editing. Hollywood's training version began in sports films and spread to stories about fighting, flying jets and even public speaking in The King's Speech.

Which jarring edit, popularized by Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, removes footage from one continuous shot?

A jump cut makes the action seem to leap forward in time. Editors normally avoid the effect by moving the camera far enough between consecutive shots that the join feels seamless.

Which edit joins two similar-looking shots, like the bone that becomes a satellite in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

The match cut in 2001 swaps a prehistoric tool for a far more advanced one. The film never identifies the satellite, but the novel makes it an orbital weapon platform, echoing the bone's use as a weapon.

Which Star Wars scene transition, inspired by Akira Kurosawa, pushes one shot off the screen with the next?

The wipe also comes in novelty shapes: a clock version sweeps round the frame like the hands of a clock, and a star-shaped one is meant to add a sense of something special.

Which editing technique alternates between actions happening at once, as Christopher Nolan does in Inception?

Cross-cutting goes back at least to The Great Train Robbery in 1903, and D. W. Griffith became its most famous practitioner. It remains a dependable way to add suspense.

Which filmmaking guideline keeps the camera on one side of an imaginary line between two characters in a scene?

The 180-degree rule keeps one character always on the right of the frame and the other on the left. Moving the camera over the axis is called crossing the line, and it may disorient the viewer.

Which editing phenomenon was shown by pairing one shot of an actor's blank face with soup, a coffin and a woman?

The Kuleshov effect had audiences praising the actor's hunger, grief and desire, although the footage of his face was identical each time. Lev Kuleshov took it as proof of the power of editing.

Which abbreviation covers actors re-recording dialogue in a booth after filming, once known as looping?

ADR stands for automated dialogue replacement, and it rescues scenes where on-set microphones picked up noise such as strong wind or passing traffic. A supervising sound editor decides which lines get redone.

Which stock sound effect, recorded for the 1951 film Distant Drums, recurs in Star Wars and Indiana Jones?

The Wilhelm scream was first voiced for a soldier dragged underwater by an alligator. It is named after Private Wilhelm, who is shot with an arrow in the 1953 Western The Charge at Feather River.

Which term, borrowed from narrative theory, describes film music that the characters themselves can hear?

Diegetic music, also called source music, belongs to the world of the story. The Public Enemy of 1931 used nothing else, doing without any background score.

Which term, popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, names an object that drives a plot but matters little in itself?

MacGuffin was coined by the English screenwriter Angus MacPhail. Silent serial star Pearl White had her own word for the coins, diamonds and film rolls that everyone chased: the weenie.

Raw, unedited footage screened for a director the day after shooting is called dailies or which other name?

Rushes are named for the speed at which the film prints were developed, and the word is usual in the UK, India and Canada. Digital cameras now make the footage available moments after a take.

Which small explosive device bursts a hidden blood packet on an actor's costume to fake a gunshot wound?

The squib was simulating gunfire hits on screen as early as the 1943 war film Bataan. Costumes rigged with them are known as dead-character costumes.

Which cocktail gives its name to the final shot of a film crew's working day, a nod to the drink waiting afterwards?

The Martini shot is the last one of the production day. The one before it is called the Abby Singer, after an assistant director known for announcing that there was this shot and one more.

Which fake name, coined by the Directors Guild of America, was credited when a director disowned a finished film?

Alan Smithee was created for the film Death of a Gunfighter, released in 1969. Directors could use it only after proving to a guild panel that they had been denied creative control.

Which movement, founded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, made directors take vows of chastity?

Dogme 95 set rules that put story, acting and theme ahead of elaborate special effects and technology. Vinterberg said the two founders wrote the manifesto and its vows in 45 minutes.

François Truffaut's Oscar-winning film about a troubled movie shoot is named after which trick for faking darkness?

Day for night means filming in daylight and underexposing or darkening the image, usually with a blue tint. The French call the trick the American night, the original title of Truffaut's 1973 film.

Which type of lens squeezes a wide image onto standard film, the method Fox bought to create CinemaScope?

Anamorphic optics were developed by Henri Chrétien during the First World War to give tank crews a wide-angle viewer. Twentieth Century-Fox bought the rights to the technique in 1952.

Which nickname, borrowed from sewage-collecting trucks, do film crews give to the portable toilets on location?

The honeywagon on American shoots is often a truck that adds a row of small dressing rooms for actors. The name is thought to refer to the honey-colored liquid emptied from the tanks.

Which French term covers everything placed before the camera, from sets and props to costumes, actors and lighting?

Mise-en-scène comes from the theatre and means placing on stage. The critic André Bazin used it for a style that favors choreographed movement within a scene over editing.