Glossary

The words of the trade.

The terms used on this site that a visitor from outside the trade can read the wrong way, defined plainly. The ones flagged are those where misreading costs something: an expectation let down, two quotes that can no longer be compared, a disagreement later on.

78 terms · 5 sections

Contracts and money

11 terms

The section that matters most. These are the words on which two suppliers are compared and, later, on which disagreements turn.

RushesAt stake: Every frame shot, before editing. A single day of filming produces several hours of footage for a few minutes of delivered film.; Not to be confusedWith the source files of a website, which do become yours on delivery and payment.
Royalty-freeAt stake: Music or an image whose licence has already been paid for and covers the intended use.; Does not meanNeither free of charge nor public domain. A licence has a scope: media, duration, territory. That scope is what counts, not the label.
Transfer of rightsAt stake: The written transfer of the right to use a work, with its limits: which media, which territory, for how long. Two quotes at the same price can transfer very different rights, and that is often where the gap is hiding.
Image rights releaseAt stake: Written consent from everyone recognisable on screen, employees included. It is signed before the shoot. Footage published without it can become a dispute years later.
ScopeAt stake: The list of what the quote covers, and therefore of what it does not. It is the only thing that makes two quotes genuinely comparable: a price on its own tells you nothing.
ExpensesAt stake: Reimbursement of the costs actually incurred by the crew: travel, meals, accommodation. It is not margin, and the amount is itemised on the quote then carried over unchanged to the invoice.
Payment scheduleAt stake: The payment calendar, known before signature. On a video production: 30% before pre-production, 30% at the shoot, 40% on delivery.
Price on applicationAt stake: The price cannot be given in advance because it depends on variables that do not exist yet: duration, rights, distribution, resources deployed. Naming a figure before knowing them would only mean correcting it later.
From (a starting price)At stake: The price of the service in its simplest form, everything included for that form. It rises with complexity, never with costs discovered afterwards.
Non-disclosure agreement (NDA)At stake: A written undertaking not to show or discuss a project. Put it in place before the shoot if your launch has not been announced yet, because it also governs what the studio may later put in its showreel.
Intermittent du spectacle: A technician or performer employed on short contracts under the French employment regime specific to live events and audiovisual work. It is the normal way a French crew is hired, not low-cost subcontracting. The term has no English equivalent and will appear untranslated on a French quote.

Image

27 terms

The densest vocabulary on the site: the Image page alone lists nine blocks of services, and most of those words cannot be guessed.

Event filmingAt stake: Filming an event that is taking place anyway: a concert, a conference, a show, a ceremony. Reality is recorded, not staged.; Not to be confusedWith a shoot, where everything is staged for the camera. That distinction is what separates a one-day job from a project running several weeks.
Pre-production: Everything decided before the first day of filming: script, budget, location scouting, casting, contracts, permits, schedule. This is the phase in which a project is won or lost.
Post-production: Everything that comes after the shoot: editing, colour grading, sound, graphics. Often longer than the shoot itself, and that is normal.
Editing: The choice of the shots kept and the order they are placed in. This is where the film takes its shape, its rhythm and its final length.
Colour grading: Work on colour and light, shot by shot, after the edit. It is what gives a film its unity and its visual signature, and the most visible mark of a carefully made production.
Sound mixing: The balance between voices, music and atmospheres, so that everything stays audible on a phone as well as in a screening room.
Sound design: The creation of sounds that were not recorded on set: atmospheres, effects, textures. A shot without it feels strangely empty.
Motion design: Animated graphics: text, figures, logos and diagrams that move. Used to explain or to dress a film, without a camera.
VFX: Visual effects added after the shoot: removing something in the way, extending a set, faking an element. Usually invisible when they are done well.
Compositing: Assembling several images into one, so that the added layer passes for something that was filmed.
B-roll: The cutaway shots that cover what is being said: the gesture, the place, the detail, the machine. As opposed to the main shot, the one of the person speaking.
Aftermovie: The short film cut together after an event, to tell its story and to prepare the next edition.
Showreel: The short edit of a studio's best excerpts, which serves as its calling card.
Multicam: Filming with several synchronised cameras, cut together afterwards. Essential whenever the take cannot be done again: a concert, a speech, a ceremony.
Storyboard: The film drawn frame by frame before it is shot. Used to approve framing and sequencing before a crew is hired, and therefore before money is spent.
Location scouting: Visiting the locations before the shoot: light, noise, access, power, permits. It is what stops you discovering the problem on the day, when the whole crew is already being paid.
Production logistics (régie): The housekeeping of a shoot: transport, meals, accommodation, permits, equipment logistics.; On a French quoteThe French word régie covers three different trades — this one, the advertising sales house, and the technical control room of an event. If it appears as a line on a quote, ask which one is meant.
FPV drone: A drone flown in immersion, goggles on, capable of fast continuous moves that a conventional drone cannot perform. Different aircraft, different pilot, different budget.
Time-lapse and hyperlapse: Two ways of speeding up time: time-lapse from a fixed point, hyperlapse while moving. Used to show a building site, a day, a crowd.
High-speed slow motion: Filming at a high frame rate, played back slowly without losing smoothness. It needs a great deal of light, which is planned on the shoot and cannot be added afterwards.
Brand content: Content produced by a brand that tells a story other than its own: a craft, a place, a life. The brand is the producer, not the subject.
Corporate film: The film that presents what a company does, who it speaks to and how it works. Often a company's first film, and the one that serves the longest.
UGC: User Generated Content: content created by users.; What it actually means todayIn advertising practice it mostly refers to content shot by paid creators, in the style of a user video. It is a format, not proof of authenticity.
DOOH: Digital Out Of Home: advertising on digital screens in public space — stations, shopping centres, street furniture. The display network imposes its formats and durations, which has to be planned from the shoot onwards.
Upscaling: Enlarging an image or a video to a higher resolution. A model reconstructs the missing detail: the result is plausible, it is not what was filmed. Useful on archive material, not a substitute for shooting properly.
Sync and retake: Two workshop words. A retake is a take done again: a missed shot is replayed, or a detail changed, without reshooting the whole sequence. Sync is the alignment of picture and sound, in particular lip movement when a voice is replaced or translated.
Channel branding: The recurring graphic elements of a channel or a series of videos: title sequence, lower thirds, transitions, end card. It is what makes a series recognisable within three seconds.

Web

24 terms

The most technical vocabulary on the site, and the one where confusion costs the most. Seven of these entries define the difference between two or three words rather than a single word: that is where the misunderstanding sits, not in the term taken alone.

Showcase siteAt stake: A site that presents an activity and leads people to contact you. A handful of pages, content you edit yourself, no online selling.
Landing pageAt stake: A single page built for one action: sign up, book, buy. It supports a campaign and lives as long as the campaign does.; Not to be confusedIt does not replace a site. A landing page on its own leaves a prospect with no answer the moment they want to know more.
One-page siteAt stake: A whole site held on a single page, browsed by scrolling. It presents everything, unlike a landing page, which pushes towards one action.
Redesign, takeover, migrationAt stake: Three different services, regularly requested one for another. A redesign redraws and rewrites. A takeover keeps the existing site and picks up its maintenance. A migration moves the site to another technology or another host, with the content unchanged.
CMS: Content Management System: the interface that lets you change your text and images without touching code, and without coming back to us.
Headless CMS: A CMS whose editing interface is separate from the site on display, the two linked by an API. The same content can then feed the website, an app and a screen without being retyped.
UX and UI: Two distinct crafts. UX is the journey: what the person is looking for, and whether they find it. UI is what the screens look like. A site can be beautiful and unusable; the reverse exists too.
Wireframe: The plan of a page in grey, without colour or imagery, used to agree what it contains and in what order before it is designed. Correcting a wireframe costs an hour; correcting a finished design costs ten.
Responsive and mobile-first: Responsive: the site adapts to every screen size. Mobile-first: it is designed for the phone first, then widened. As most visits arrive from mobile, this is not a finishing detail.
Domain name, hosting, DNSAt stake: Three things regularly confused. The domain name is the address, evrox.fr, rented by the year. Hosting is where the site is stored. DNS connects the two.; The point that mattersThe domain name must be registered in your name, not your supplier's. That is what lets you leave without losing anything.
SSL and HTTPS: The encryption between visitor and site, shown by the padlock in the address bar. Without it browsers display a warning and search ranking suffers.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization: everything that makes a site findable in search engines. Structure, speed, content, inbound links.
GEO: Generative Engine Optimization: the same intent, for generative engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. They cite sources instead of listing links, so they favour pages that are structured, dated and attributable to someone.
Link building: Obtaining links from other sites to yours. It is a signal of authority for search engines, and the area most exposed to practices that end up penalising the site they were meant to help.
Structured data (schema.org): Markup invisible to the visitor that tells a machine what a page is: an article, a price, a video, a company. It is what produces rich results in Google, and what generative engines read.
Core Web Vitals: The three experience measurements Google has settled on: how long the largest visible element takes to appear, how quickly the page responds to interaction, and how stable it stays while loading.
Accessibility, WCAG, RGAAAt stake: Designing a site that can be used with a keyboard, works with screen readers and has sufficient contrast. WCAG is the international standard; the RGAA is its French implementation.; The point that mattersIt is no longer just good practice: since June 2025 the obligation has extended to many private companies.
API: The doorway through which two pieces of software talk to each other: your site and your CRM, your shop and your stock system, your calendar and your booking form.
Webhook: The reverse of an API you query: it is the tool announcing something by itself when it happens, instead of waiting to be asked. An order paid, a form submitted.
Uptime and monitoring: Uptime: the percentage of time the site actually answers. Monitoring: the watch that warns us before you are the one who notices.
Penetration test (pentest): An authorised, controlled attack on your own site, carried out to find the holes before someone else does. The word sounds alarming; the exercise is defensive.
DDoS: A saturation attack: the site is drowned under a volume of requests until it stops answering. Nothing is stolen, everything is unavailable.
Web application firewall (WAF): A filter placed in front of the site, blocking malicious requests before they reach it.
Stack: The set of technologies chosen for a project. It is picked according to the intended lifespan, the expected load and the skills available to maintain it — never according to the fashion of the moment.

Events

7 terms

Trade vocabulary applied to clients who, for a wedding or an opening, are organising this once in their lives.

On-the-day coordinationAt stake: Being on site on the day of the event: welcoming suppliers, holding the schedule, handling the unexpected, from start to finish.; Not to be confusedWith full organisation, which begins months earlier. On-the-day coordination is the shortest service in this area, and the one whose entry price is published.
Reverse planning: A schedule built backwards, starting from the date of the event and working back to today. It is what immediately reveals the deadlines that have already passed.
Scenography: The organisation of space and of the guests' journey: what you see on entering, where you move, where you stop. Decoration is what is placed there afterwards.
Art direction: The visual decisions that give the event its unity: colours, materials, typefaces, light. Decided in advance, not adjusted on site.
Signage: Everything that guides guests: signs, maps, floor markings, table plan, names. Invisible when it is good, noticed immediately when it is missing.
Technical control (régie technique): The desk from which sound, light and video are run during the event, and the team stationed there. Distinct from the régie of a shoot, which is housekeeping.
Food and wine pairing: The considered match of a dish and a wine, built with the caterer before the event. It is work done on the menu, not a last-minute choice at the bar.

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The words of the trade.

Contracts and money

Image

Web

Social

Events

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