The Teachers' Animation Toolkit

Light Box:
A glass/Perspex-topped box with a powerful light source. Used by 
animators to trace artwork.
LipSync:
The matching of characters’ mouth shapes and movement in time 
with recorded dialogue.
Live action:
This is the kind of fi lm that audiences are most familiar with being 
built around the principles of photography that records staged 
events featuring human beings in ‘real’ locations. We think of live 
action as typically realistic.
Long shot:
This is the largest frame size available. The long shot (or wide 
shot) can be used to establish setting, time of day and a general 
idea of the action unfolding and where characters are in relation 
to one another. In the fi lm Bambi the fi rst shot is a very good 
example of a long shot being used to show you the forest in which 
the fi lm is set. There are countless other useful examples.
Marketing:
This is the process of selling a fi lm, of building an audience 
awareness of the fi lm in terms of its genre and its characters. 
Marketing material (posters, trailers, interviews) makes excellent 
primary source material for encouraging pupils to think about how 
fi lms are produced and how they fi t into the wider culture and 
generate meaning and values.
Mid-shot:
A shot that provides us with more detailed information suggested 
by a long shot often. A mid-shot tends to frame characters from 

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Glossary of Terms
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the waist up so that we can still see their surroundings but their 
expressions are becoming increasingly central to the action and 
emotion and idea of the fi lm.
Mix:
The processes, after fi lming, when the range of sounds recorded 
for the fi lm’s soundtrack are combined with the right emphasis at 
the right moment in the fi lm.
Pan:
When the camera moves, typically, fairly gently and with control, 
from left to right, right to left, either being fi xed to a tripod or being 
handheld. A whip pan is a fast version of the pan.
Pixel(s):
Derived from PICture ELement: The smallest unit of a digital 
image, mainly square in shape, a pixel is one of a multitude 
of squares of coloured light that together form a photographic 
image.
Pre-Production:
The planning stage of a fi lm: scripting, storyboarding, budgeting, 
scheduling, casting, gathering materials and crew etc. The 
more thorough this stage of the process the more successful 
your fi nished fi lm project may be or, at the very least, will have 
the minimum of problems and concerns. As a word of comfort, 
fi lmmaking always involves compromise and problems do arise. 
Filmmaking is a human venture and therefore always open to 
imperfection. The lesson to be learned, perhaps, in how to deal 
as individuals and teams with these moments when things need 
to be fi xed.