A Dictionary of Types of Shots, Scene Transitions, and Narrative Devices

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

I was wondering is there anywhere that I could find some sort of dictionary or any other type of book describing the various scene transitions, such as IRIS IN or OUT, JUMP CUT, TIME CUT, and so on, types of shots such as MEDIUM SHOT, TWO SHOT, and narrative devices used in screenplays, such as MONTAGE, SERIES OF SHOTS or various types of sequences (car chases and so on)?

 

Or some sort of really through and detailed filmmaking terms, with included words used in various subfields of this art and craft (editing, cinematography...).

 

Or a dictionary or encyclopedia dedicated to only one of these subfields at a time.

 

There used to exist a nice little piece of software, although it was more like a Web site with a menu along its left margin, called scriptAssist, but now it’s difficult to find even a small trace that it once existed. It used to define some of the things listed above.

[Clint Hulsey]

Not sure this is what you are looking for, but TV Tropes actually has good index pages on this:

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CameraTricks

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutToTheIndex

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ContinuityEditing

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Montages

 

The different pages are good because they have some examples in them (a lot of the links seem to be dead however). Again, it is not really "professional", nor a book, so I don't know if it is what you are looking for. I learned a lot from reading those pages, but I'm an idiot, so...

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

Thank you, Clint! :) That’ll do as a starting point. I managed to find something similar, from a scriptwriter’s point of view:

 

http://www.movieoutline.com/articles/a-glossary-of-screenwriting-terms-and-filmmaking-definitions.html

 

I’ll keep digging, and perhaps some sort of a book on editing, camera direction, visual film analysis will pop up.