Starpedia

Above-the-line
Ordinarily big-ticket, producer-defined budget costs and related items such as movie stars, producers, director, script, stunt package, and so forth.

Action Genre
The film genre that emphasizes the excitement of action over character development or complex plotting. The action usually involves the hero in a risky pursuit that leads to desperate situations.

Actor
The performer who plays the role of a character.

Animation Genre
The film genre that emphasizes a fascination with cartoon, dreamlike or simulated worlds. Stories are related through 2-D and 3-D artwork, models or puppets; typically with fantasy or adventure as an important element in the plot. Historically, animation has been a subgenre of fantasy but with its own unique graphic format. More recently, however, animated and live-action formats have begun to merge with such visual effects films as "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," "Sin City," "300," "Beowulf" and "Waltz with Bashir." (See fantasy, genre, virtuality, visual effects)

Art House
An Anglo-American motion picture theater that features primarily foreign, studio classics, specialty and non-mainstream independent films; usually emphasizing high-brow or art films.

Auteur Theory
An approach to criticism that regards film as a reflection of its storyteller director’s personal creative vision, as though the director were the principal author or auteur. The notion of an auteur originated among 1950s French critics, most prominently Alexandre Astruc, André Bazin and François Truffaut, as a way of grouping and academically appreciating films based on the oeuvre of prominent creatives who, though working within the restrictions of assigned genres and scripts under Hollywood’s old studio system, nevertheless succeeded in imposing a distinctive sensibility. The intent of these critics was to validate film as an autonomous art form capable of maestro-driven, original film stories in contrast with the stale formulaic adaptations of the French “Tradition of Quality.” Thus, in addition to directors, the original auteur theory also included luminary producers (e.g. Walt Disney, David O. Selznick, Dino De Laurentiis, George Lucas, Jerry Bruckheimer, Scott Rudin), an occasional screenwriter of prominence (e.g. Neil Simon, William Goldman, David Mamet), and even movie star-directors (e.g. Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson). The auteur theory was imported to the U.S. in 1962 by film critic Andrew Sarris and has been used by the DGA ever since in collective bargaining negotiations as a validation for its “creative rights doctrine.” (See creatives, DGA, genre theory, creative unit theory)