Curious About the English Term

[Tim Wilson]

[walter biscardi] “MOS – Man on the Street interview”

MOS is also a term from film production. It means picture only, no sync sound, but what the letters stand for is a hilariously long list of wildly divergent possibilities.

The top candidate in my mind has always been “motor only sync,” but a legend attributes it to any number of directors (I’ve heard Germans Lang and Lubitsch and Austrians von Stroheim and Wilder among others) saying that they wanted to shoot “Mit out Sprechen” and “mid out sound.”

The English term for “man on street” is “vox pop” (for vox populi)…so, to the point elsewhere, there are fewer standard terms than you might think. 🙂

[Joseph W. bourke]

And I think that differentiates it well from the OTS, which is the news broadcasting Over The Shoulder Slide, which, of course, I know as a Reaction Shot. Yipes! It’s a wonder anything gets done – but part of my job as Art Director was indoctrinating the new graphics people as to the terminology in our facility. It wasn’t even standard with some of the terms the kids were coming out of school with, which would depend on their teachers’ experience, and the text books they used.

Another good one, which seems to be a standard, is the Mortise Shot, which refers to boxed video (in various sizes, crops, and positions) which is inset, like a picture in picture. We never called it that at our facility, but we didn’t have TDs, so it was only important that the Director new what shot he wanted. There was a two box (mostly for reporter on location), a three box, and sometimes even a four box (used mostly during political coverage.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com