A-List: An actor who's name is so relevant and famous that it has enough power to draw in an audience through that alone. Accompanying Dyre's Star Power theory, where stars are used as marketing tools in order to promote media products.
Arthouse: A movie type with a niche appeal, typically more challenging and obscure films. Arthouse cinemas are small, opposite to a multiplex.
Big 5: The production and distribution companies that release the largest number of films each year and approximately command 80% of the US/Global Box Office.
The current Big 5 are Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Walt Disney, and Columbia.
Blockbuster: The term stems from Anita Elberse's book of the same name, she argues that entertainment conglomerates produce fewer products but spend more on each product to create a larger profit.
Box Office: The place where tickets are sold in the theatre/cinema, a measure of money earns on cinematic release, and reflects a film's success based on revenue and opening statistics.
Certification: The label given to theatrically released content based on audience suitability based on issues such as sex, violence, profanity, or substance abuse. These certifications are government mandatory, but ratings vary between countries.
CGI: An acronym for Computer Generated Imagery, it is the creation of special effects through computer software.
Distribution: The process of distributing or making a film available to view, through theatrical distribution, P(VOD), TV, DVD, or streaming platforms.
Festival Circuit: The cycle of festivals that films appear at throughout the year for promotion and prestige. The Big 5 of film festivals are; Berlin, Toronto, Cannes, Venice, and Sundance.
Franchise: An establishment of a name spanning various products and media texts. Some of the biggest film franchises are; Marvel, Star Wars, Scream, and Halloween.
Gant Rule: A phenomena pointed out by film critic Charles Gant, where a successful mass market film tends to earn 10x the UK box office figures in the US.
Genre: Coined by theorist Rick Altman, and described by Richard Nowell in his book Blood Money as; "a system of communication compromising two components, the label and the corpus. A name is assigned to a number of films because they are considered to share similarities that distinguish them from other films." Essentially, a genre is a set of conventions and signifiers separated into various subgroups followed by filmmakers and distinguished by the audience.
Home Cinema: A home cinema is an at home audio-visual system intended to replicate the cinema experience. These systems are very expensive, and are often unable to replicate the experience due to at home sound systems not converting the intended theatrical system audio. The limit of seats is between 10-30, depending on the region, otherwise it would be classed as a cinema.
Hybridity: The combination of multiple genres in order to increase audience appeal. E.g. romance and comedy (rom-com), zombie movie and rom-com (com-rom-com).
IP: Intellectual Property; existing books, plays, musicals, or stories used by production companies for their films. They can be well known like Working Title's Bridget Jone's Diary (2001), or more obscure like Warp's Submarine (2010).
IMAX: An abbreviation of Image Maximum, IMAX is a technique of widescreen cinema using high-resolution cameras. The image is then approximately 10x larger than a standard film, and is viewed in IMAX theatres which have a tall aspect ratio and steep seating. IMAX technology is typically used by higher budget films as the equipment is expensive and time consuming to use.
Multiplex: A single cinema containing multiple screens that can play different films simultaneously.
(P)VOD: Abbreviation for (Premium) Video On Demand, it is the ability to access a film from a streaming service without being restricted by a broadcasting schedule. PVOD is the release of a film online and in theatres simultaneously, disregarding the release window.
Release Window: The 90 day gap between a film's theatrical release and its release onto DVD or streaming.
SFX: Abbreviation for special effects, they are illusions created through computer softwares in films.
3D/4D: Respectively meaning 3-Dimensional or 4-Dimensional, they are technologies used in filming in order to further immerse the viewer into the film. 3D films using different cameras as the left and right eye, combined together and viewed through 3D glasses. 4D does this as well as adding seat movements, smells, temperatures, and other sensory effects to immerse the viewer.
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