cinematography

The art of filming a movie is cinematography. The cinematography in your first documentary might not be amazing — next time, get a real movie camera instead of filming on your smartphone.

Every year, one film wins an Academy Award for cinematography — this usually goes to a movie with gorgeous, sweeping camera shots. There's a lot that goes into cinematography, beyond simply filming the action with a camera: cinematographers carefully plan out shots, including how they're lit, the camera angles, focus, and depth of field. Cinematography comes from the now-obsolete cinematograph, "device for projecting a series of photographs in rapid succession so as to produce the illusion of movement."