motion picture
nounA work made of many still images shown in rapid succession, producing the impression of continuous movement.
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Cinema A recorded sequence of still images (frames) presented rapidly enough that a viewer perceives smooth, continuous motion rather than separate pictures.
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A single such work considered as an artifact — a movie — with a running time, authorship, and form. a silent motion picture
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Perception The impression of movement depends on how the visual system integrates rapid successive images. It was long attributed to “persistence of vision,” but is now explained through apparent-motion perception.
Branches
- frame A single still image in a film strip or digital video stream; the basic unit of the moving image, from which a motion picture is built by rapid succession.
- frame rate The number of frames shown per unit of time, given in frames per second (fps), which governs how smoothly motion is rendered and how strongly a projected or displayed image flickers.
- shutter The mechanism that controls how long each frame is exposed to light and blocks the light while the film advances or a sensor reads out. Its open interval, together with the frame rate, sets both exposure and the amount of motion blur recorded in each frame.
- aspect ratio The ratio of an image's width to its height. In the moving image it fixes the shape of the frame, and is written either as a ratio normalized to a height of 1 (such as 1.85:1) or as two whole numbers (such as 16:9).
- shot The basic unit of a film: a single uninterrupted run of the camera from the start to the stop of recording, and, in the finished work, an unbroken strip of images bounded by two cuts.
- scene A unit of dramatic action unified by continuity of time and place, built from one or more shots. In the structure of a film it is the intermediate level between the individual shot and the larger sequence.
- sequence A series of related scenes that together form a larger, self-contained segment of a film's structure, occupying the level above the scene and below the complete work.
A motion picture is not, physically, a moving image at all: it is a rapid succession of still images that the visual system fuses into apparent motion. The individual images are frames; the rate at which they are shown is the frame rate, and the interval during which each is visible is set by the shutter.
The popular explanation — persistence of vision, the brief lingering of an image on the retina — accounts for why the screen does not appear to flicker, but not for why successive frames read as continuous movement. The perception of movement is better explained by apparent motion (the phi phenomenon and beta movement), effects of the visual system rather than the eye alone. From this single fact — that motion is an inference from stillness — the whole grammar of shots, cuts, and time in cinema follows.
See also
Sources
- Oxford English Dictionary, “motion picture, n.”
- Anderson & Anderson, “The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited,” Journal of Film and Video (1993)
Last revised: September 18, 2026