Movies Slang, Jargon, and New Words from Double-Tongued Dictionary

Citations in the Category Movies

Movies, films, Hollywood, Bollywood, scripts, screenwriting, development, studios, independent studios, film schools, etc. You can also see entries assigned to this category.

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audio puppeteering n. To that end Mr. Stanton enlisted the man who created the grammar of the “Star Wars” robot R2D2, the veteran sound designer Ben Burtt. Mr. Stanton wrote a conventional script—“Hi, I’m Wall-E”—and Mr. Burtt essentially translated the dialogue into robot, something he calls “audio puppeteering.” [English Entertainment Movies Jargon] [full cite] (Jun. 22, 2008)

avar n. Designing cars for computer animation is not designing for the real world, but it has similarities. To orchestrate the motion, Pixar used a shared platform, a system not unlike a real carmaker’s. The film’s cars have a common software “chassis,” a “universal rig” of 100 animation controls known as avars. Suspensions are customized: the 50’s cars are looser and bouncier. [English Movies Technology] [full cite] (May. 20, 2006)

bake-off n. Studios frequently stage “bake-offs,” calling in up to 10 writers for a single rewrite job. Each writer offers his or her take on the property, meaning extensive fleshing out of the material—for free. [English Entertainment Movies Television] [full cite] (Feb. 12, 2008)

be daredeviled v. phr. During the last negotiation for the Independent Production Agreement, in 2001, 20th Century Fox claimed the studio canceled plans to shoot the Ben Affleck action flick Daredevil in Montreal and relocated it to Hollywood. “It created a big turmoil, and what we found out later was that that production never intended on leaving Los Angeles,” Waddell said. “We have a term for what they’re doing now: It’s called ‘being daredeviled.’” [English Entertainment Movies New or Nonce] [full cite] (Feb. 7, 2007)

bigature n. There are going to be a mess of miniatures. We coined that phrase “bigatures” on Lord of the Rings and this is going to outdo them all. The miniature we’re doing for Miraz’s castle is 24 scale, village, and exterior location at 100th scale and both miniatures are bigger than this tent. They are colossal things. [English Movies New or Nonce] [full cite] (Sep. 5, 2007)

block booking n. As Ladd explained in Blockbuster, Star Wars got into the theaters because of a now illegal practice called “block booking,” which involved studios essentially holding a big movie hostage in exchange for theaters agreeing to play one of the studio’s smaller films. Fox told theater owners if they wanted “The Other Side of Midnight,” a potboiler based on the Sidney Sheldon bestseller, they had to show this little movie “Star Wars” too. [English Movies Jargon] [full cite] (Aug. 14, 2008)

Blockbuster edit n. Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, along with other of the nations largest retailers, won’t sell anything with an NC-17 (or anything that is unrated), and if they don’t stock your movie you may as well not bothered to have made it. Inevitably, the film gets cut to what the industry calls a “Blockbuster edit.” [English Movies Jargon] [full cite] (Dec. 8, 2006)

bondage rigger n. They were filming an update for the site Men In Pain. It would feature two players billed as Wild Bill and Claire Adams. Adams, who is 25, gave up on a philosophy degree to become a bondage rigger. (Last year, she tied up the actor Peter Sarsgaard for a bondage-themed spread in Vanity Fair.) She wore a fishnet top and a miniature barbell through each nipple. [English Entertainment Movies Sex & Sexuality] [full cite] (Apr. 29, 2007)

cammer n. Cammers are specialized warez members who record first-run movies with concealed camcorders and then place them on Internet servers after removing data that could be traced. [English Media Movies Technology] [full cite] (Aug. 5, 2005)

cinema jazz n. The same goes for moving pictures, whether it’s the grainy old educational clips or the handcrafted abstract strips with which the trio create, and in fact improvise to a degree, a luminous collage of loops and layers, entirely by way of creaky old 16mm projectors.…While they do perform with projectors in cinemas, Wet Gate regard themselves as much a music project as anything. Their loops are chosen with rhythmic and tonal qualities in mind, and the three aren’t uncomfortable with the neologism “cinema jazz.” [English Movies Music New or Nonce] [full cite] (Oct. 9, 2006)

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