a cut in which two shots joined are linked by visual, aural, or metaphorical parallelism. For example, at the end of North by Northwest, Cary Grant pulls Eva Marie Saint up the cliff of Mt. Rushmore; then match cut to Grant pulling her up to a bunk in the train.

a contemporary movement, mainly in avant-garde cinema, which celebrates the physical fact of film, camera, light, projector, and in which the materials of art are in fact its main subject matter.

a type of process shot in which different areas of the image (usually actors and setting) are photographed separately and combined in laboratory work.

Alfred Hitchcock's term for the device or plot element that catches the viewer's attention or drives the logic of the plot, but often turns out to be insignificant or is to be ignored after it has served its purpose. Examples are mistaken identity at the beginning of North by Northwest and the entire Janet Leigh subplot of Psycho.

See medium close up