Warm cards
Pale green or blue “white cards” made to give your image a warmer look when you white-balance your camera on them instead of a pure white card.
Watts
A unit used to measure electricity. Typical household light bulbs are 40 to 150 watts. Professional film lights are typically 250 to 2000 watts or more.
White balance
A video camera function that adjusts your image to correct variations in color temperature. So white appears white on video.
White cards
A special pure white card used as a reference to set a camera’s white-balance function to adjust for the lighting conditions on location. Pure white sheets of paper or crisp white T-shirts are a common substitute for white cards in the field.
Wild sound
The natural sound of a room or environment that is recorded to help you smooth out audio problems and recreate the original background noise and sound quality of the location during post-production.
Windjammer
This fuzzy faux fur covering goes over a zeppelin to dramatically help block wind noise when shooting outside. Also affectionately known as a “dead cat.”
Wrap out
When everything is packed up and put back in place at the end of a shoot.
XLR
The most common high-quality sound cables/connectors used for professional sound applications. The connectors are three-pronged (male) or three-holed (female).
Zebra stripes
Zebra stripes are vibrating diagonal stripes that are superimposed on the overexposed parts of the image on a viewfinder or LCD screen to help you judge proper exposure. Zebra stripes are not recorded to tape.
Zeppelin
A blimp-like microphone housing designed to shield boom mics from wind noise.
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Recording a subject giving you verbal permission to use their image in your project. This is a runner-up when you can’t get a written release right then. These do not offer the legal protection of a signed talent release, but some verification is always better than none.
GLOSSARY
Verbal release