Also known as bolt ons. This phrase I first read in a NetFlix review. It refers to a particularly obvious breast augmentation, the kind that no one ever thinks are real, not even for a second. After Market is a automotive term for items that are created by specialty companies to trick out cars. Most of the stuff on a monster truck is after market, hence the obvious relation to certain actresses.

Details about who characters are and why they do the things they do. Often provided by minor characters who have no other purpose in the movie except to provide some key bit of information. Other times it can be provided in flashbacks or voice over narratives.

Bug Eyed Monster. Probably better suited to monsters from 1950's but still a valid name. Most monsters have overly large eyes.

Offering little or no hope. There is a Russian (of course) school of cinema that is named Bleak Cinema and it seems to be comprised of ugly people doing incomprehensible things. Perhaps Doris Wishman was a proponent of this school. That would explain a lot.

A boom mike is a microphone on a long pole. A person will stand off camera and hold this mike over the actors in the scene. In a high budget movie a boom mike even casting a shadow in the scene is enough for a retake. In a really low budget movie, being able to see the person holding the boom mike may not be enough for a retake.

Cannon fodder is a term for the expendable part of your army that you send in first to draw the artillery fire. The idea is to have your enemy waste their best weapon on your worst. In movies, the term refers to characters who have no other purpose but to die on camera, hopefully in violent and interesting ways.

Computer Generated Imagery - exactly like it sounds. Originally not very convincing but very expensive. Lately it has become cheap and even very low budget movies can make extensive use of it. Done correctly this can be very effective. Done poorly, it looks like a video game and not even a good video game.

Broad, very exaggerated acting. Think of a mime. Instead of a look of mild surprise, the actor will gasp, flail about with his hands and his eyes will nearly pop out of his head.

This is the area that is in focus in a shot. A small amount of depth of field can isolate a single person in a crowd or an item on a desk. Typically everything on the screen will be in focus (large depth of field), but occasionally a director will blur out the background (short depth of field) to force attention to a character or item. In most cases depth of field is determined by the lens opening. Deep depth of field is going to require a very small opening on the lens, which means you need a lot of light. This is a major stumbling block for most small budget films.

Literally God out of a machine though I think a better translation would be Machinations of God. The phrases origins seems to be in old novels where the author would get the protagonists into really deep shit, and then have divine intervention save him. Modern variations are when the author or director puts in some hugely improbable event or gives a person or device spectacular new abilities to get out trouble. I'd also include really long odds coincidence as well.

This lets the viewer know where they are. Often these are outside shots frequently with a sign or other indicator. As the scenes change from the bad guy's hideout to the police headquarters, we may get a shot of a building including the "Scotland Yard" sign. Spy flicks have a tendency to use a typewriter font often with sound effects to show exactly where we are like this: Washington, D.C. (imagine a Clack, Clack sound)Date and time may also be included in an establishing shot.

This is the character whose only purpose in the movie is to explain what is going on. These expendable characters often provide important plot details with their last breath or just suddenly show up, explain things and are never heard from again.

Usually the last person left standing in a slasher film. Somehow despite the fact that there are usually lots of people who should be much more likely to survive, this girl defeats the bad guy. Note that final girls have a rather high mortality rate in sequels.

The sound effects guy. Named for Jack Foley, this is the guy that adds the noises like footsteps on stairs, the snapping twig, the whizzing bullets, etc.

When directors can't afford to build a full scale model, they will often create a much smaller model, put it between the camera and the actors and using a lens with a big depth of field film them both at the same time. Careful planning can create a very realistic looking castle for the Templar Knights to ride into. Glass paintings are frequently used in this way as well. These are old school techniques that can be used instead of CGI.

Frames per second. Typically new movies use 24 frames per second. Occasionally a director will shoot at a different frame rate to get a strobe effect. Traditionally old B+W films were shot around 18 fps. The original cameras were hand cranked so frame rate varied by cameraman and the director would also have the cameramen crank at different intensities based on the scene. Newer video cameras routinely shoot at a much higher rate and resolution and have a different look because of it. With 24 fps film someone moving quickly would blur between frames, we have learned to interpret this as normal motion. With some of the newer cameras being able to use 50 or even 60 fps and not blur the motion, you get an entirely different look. It will take a while before this is viewed as normal, right now it looks like a special effect.

Green screening came of age with video tape. By using a bright unusual color, video processing can fill in the green color with some other image. Often used when the characters are fighting monsters. Originally they used a blue hue as the drop color, but way too often an actor (or television news reporter) would have blue in their shirt and the background would bleed through.

Often abbreviated as IITS. When something dumb beyond belief happens, you can only assume that the motivation of the actors was that it was in the script. As an example, a guard is supposed to be watching a door, but completely ignores the window behind him, including the sound of it unlatching and opening, and lets the hero or bad guy sneak up on him.

Actually malicious computer code designed to make something bad happen when certain conditions are met. For example, a programmer might program a logic bomb to delete data if he is fired. For a movie, a logic bomb would be something that makes so little sense it blows away your suspension of belief and reality rears its ugly head. In just about every Bond film, the bad guy will have James just where he wants him and then not kill him. Logically the thing to do is to shoot him, walk over to the corpse and shoot him again, twice. Instead the villain just leaves him somewhere to die.

Frequently in movies car will explode way out of proportion to the amount and type of fuel they carry. Occasionally they will even explode when falling off a cliff before they have a chance to hit anything. My theory is that the driver, not being content with a rabbit's foot or a four-leaf clover, has brought along a stick of Dynamite for good luck.

Monster vision is a point of view shot from the monster. Literally seeing through its eyes. It is usually distorted and frequently broken up like a honeycomb and the color is often skewed to mimic different frequencies of light.

This is a pocket that is much bigger on the inside than on the outside. Ginger on Gilligan's Island had luggage with an N Space Pocket which is how she was able to have at least one different dress for each episode. The hero is wearing tight blue jeans and a wind breaker? No problem. N Space is a great place to keep weapons and ammo. Caught in the wilderness with only a small emergency kit? If it has an N Space Pocket, you've probably got tents, sleeping bags, pots and pans. Of course the one thing people routinely leave out of N Space Pockets are working radios, batteries for the radios, or GPS devices.

In the cartoon, Pepe would just jog along easily keeping up with Penelope Pussycat who would just be a blur. In a movie when the bad guy is good shape but the star is a fat slob (think any of the later Steven Seagal movies), there will be a foot chase scene where the hero manages to keep up usually by creative editing.

The cheap seats are way in the back of the theater. In this case the actors motions are greatly exaggerated. Putting on a hat becomes a production that even the people in the last row think is over done.

It is bright and shiny, but still stinks. Usually a high budget film that never fulfills its potential. Could be a movie that looks good, is well paced, but after you watch you think, well, that was stupid.

This is when an actress ends up wearing a sheet or towel in a way that is completely unnatural and is only meant to cover up certain body parts. For example, a couple having sex and the sheet has wrapped itself around their nether regions so securely that no amount of vigorous motion dislodges it.This may be done by the director for rating reasons or the actress may insist on it.

If there is a small plane in a movie, we will watch it land despite the fact that this will almost never be important to the plot. Watching a large plane land will normally help set the location, frequently Hong Kong or LAX as both of these airports are very distinctive. But a small plane often lands on some little chunk of asphalt in the middle of nowhere.

Not sure if Lyz over at "And you call yourself a Scientist" actually coined this phrase but she uses it enough. It refers to those cats that seemed to always jump out at people walking down dark hallways in horror movies. I've had cats all my life and never had one do this to me. Though if one did, it would have become my favorite cat of all time.

Usually done by moving clay models a tiny bit, shooting a frame of film, moving the model and shooting another frame of film. Ray Harryhausen is generally considered to be the master of the art. The Sinbad movies make frequent use of this technique but then so did Gumby and the California Raisins.

I believe I have seen this used by someone other than myself. This is when the director only shoots head and shoulder shots of his actors. When the final film is put together, you end up with very static looking conversations, kind of like watching a puppet show. In most cases this is just lazy or inept filmmaking.

Quite literally a filmed tourist's journal. During the early days of movie making simply taking a camera someplace and filming the locals was enough to base a movie on and National Geographic continues this tradition. Frequently directors will insist on "filming on location" and then pick an exotic location which allows them to combine business (film making) with pleasure (vacation). European sex films are among the worst offenders. The various Emmanuelles have had sex in just about every country on the planet.