Über editor: J to M

© 2004 Ginny Lowndes

Jump cut
A jump cut is a direction in a script that indicates an interruption to the continuity of time.

Jump the shark
This term was coined to define the precise moment when a good show goes bad. Similarly, in Australia this is also referred to as a Yasmin, after the reality show Yasmin's Getting Married , a television series that was taken off air after four outings.

[ Happy Days. (1974). Writer: G. Marshall]

[ Yasmin's Getting Married , (2006). Channel 10]

Lead role
A lead role is the most important character in a movie, often distinguished by gender.

Legs
Legs is a term that describes whether a project has the potential for longevity or a long run. Any project with ‘legs' has large production potential. Therefore it is more able to attract investment money to it.

Line producer
A line producer is an individual responsible for managing every person and issue during film and television production.

Lined script
Lined script is a copy of the shooting script, with oversight by a script supervisor, during production to indicate, via notations and vertical lines drawn directly onto the script pages, exactly what coverage has been shot.

Literary manager/dramaturge
A literary manager is an individual hired by a writer to promote their career, offer advice on the best steps to take to achieve their desired goal and give advice on the best people to hire to help a writer to maximize their potential. See also, dramaturge.

Lochlear/to lochlear/lochlearing it
This term was coined to describe the precise moment that a bad show became good through the introduction of a guest character who by sheer force of personality, gives energy or oxygen to every other character in the project. Their character turns the show from failure to success. The term was inspired by the actor, Heather Lochlear.

[Heather Lochlear, actor. (1961 - )]

Log line
A log line is a one-line description of the story in the script. Production personnel who receive the script will also ‘log' it using your description. The writer logs the script in their asset register. A log line is very hard to write as it is the marketing line or sales pitch for your script.

Long-form television
Long-form television is also known as Movie of the Week (MOW). It includes made-for- television movies and miniseries. Long-form TV is aired on either free or pay television.

Low comedy
Comic actions based on broad physical humour, scatology, crude punning and the argumentative behaviour of ignorant and lower-class characters is called low comedy. Low comedy can be mixed with high comedy with great effect.

Macguffin
A macguffin is the term used by director, Alfred Hitchcock, to refer to an item, event or piece of knowledge that the characters in a film consider extremely important. The audience either doesn't know or doesn't care about it.

[ Hitchcock, A. Director. (1899-1980)]

Machinema
Machinema manipulates characters from established games, movie trailers and other sources to create a new storyline for them in a different format. The end result is mainly broadcast on the Internet.

Magazine-style television
A magazine-style television program contains stand-alone segments, interviews, commentaries and/or panel discussions and other informational pieces. It is integrated with a unifying device such as a host.

Materials contract
A materials contract is a written agreement for representation by an agency about the sale of a work that the writer has created on their own, in a situation where the writer was not hired to create the work.

Melodrama
Melodrama was originally used in musical theatre. Currently melodrama refers to material that has black and white characters, bravura acting, simplistic dialogue and exceptionally moral conclusions.

Metaphor
Metaphor is a literary term that compares and contrasts the identity of one thing with another in a subtle manner. It communicates a complex idea clearly and succinctly by the use of associative imagery.

Method acting
This type of acting required actors to draw on their life experiences and to use them to create the characters written by a writer into a script. However characters are the writer's invention and are ‘owned' by them not the actor. The oft-heard expression by an actor that ‘my character would not do that' usually gets a response from the writer of ‘it's not your character – it's mine.'

[ Stanislavski, K. Founder, The Method. Acting. (1863-1938)]

Mini-series
A mini-series is a drama written for broadcast in pre-determined segments. A mini-series has a storyline beginning in the first segment of the first episode and concluding in the last episode.

Minimum basic agreement
Minimum basic agreement (MBA) is the fee and basic working conditions for the employment of writers within the entertainment industry as negotiated and set forth by the Australian Writers Guild.

Mise-en-abyme
Mise en abyme is, in film, a dream within a dream – characters do not know whether they are awake or asleep or being ‘placed into infinity' or being ‘placed into the abyss'.

Mise-en-piece
Mise-en-piece is the deconstruction, fragmentation, butchering or ripping apart of a script or screenplay into small pieces or tiny units by an editor for the purposes of story and script editing. This term comes from theatre.

Mise-en-scene
Mise-en-scene is the sum total of all factors that affect the artistic look or feel of a shot or scene.

Monologue
A long unbroken speech, often delivered directly to camera, is called a monologue. When it is used for exposition it can become very boring and is indicative of a poorly structured drama. In theatre, a monologue is more technically referred to as a soliloquy.

Montage
Montage is a rapid succession of shots, through the use of visual editing, which creates the artistic look of a scene. It is written by a writer into the script.

Moral panic/moral entrepreneur
Moral panic is created by the demonising of one group by another for a particular gain. A moral entrepreneur is an individual that has identified an evil, caused a moral panic and come up with the only solution for it. It affects writers and editors in television because moral entrepreneurs often contact the production company of popular programs to ‘push their wheelbarrow' or particular point of view. It is becoming more common for a moral entrepreneur to film their own footage and offer it for little cost to a production company or set up a ‘fake' service that only offers only their point of view and solutions to a problem.

Motherhood statement
A motherhood statement is one that no reasonable person or nationality could disagree with. It is bland, comforting, and usually holds a narrow conservative point of view that few could object to. The same holds true for ‘family values'. See moral panic, moral entrepreneur.

Motion blur
Motion blur is written into a script and indicates that shots of objects move very quickly in the camera's frame, and/or shots with a slow shutter speed that produce a smearing effect, since the object is in a range of positions during a single exposure. Motion blur can be used to great effect to move time.

Motion capture
Motion capture is an animation technique in which the actions of an animated object are derived automatically from the motion of a real-world actor or object.

Motivation/objective
Motivation or objective is the set of behaviours of a character discovered through past or present events that shaped their life during the course of the production.

[Stanislavski, K. Founder, The Method. Acting. (1863-1938)]

Multimedia
Multimedia is the term used for products, mainly software, that may involve the combination of written text, visual imagery, film, and/or music.

Multiplatform
Multiplatform creates multiple versions of a program, where each is designed for a specific platform. Each version maintains the same functions and appearance. It is also the term given to video games released on a range of consoles and handheld equipment.

Musical
A musical is a production whose dramatic story structure includes unrealistic episodes of musical performance and/or dancing.

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