What do common video production terms mean?

• DOP (Director of Photography): the person responsible for the camera and the lighting — the look of the image is their craft.
• Gaffer: the head of the lighting department, who builds the lighting setups the DOP designs.
• Producer: owns budget, schedule, and logistics; your main contact throughout the project.
• Director: owns the creative vision and directs everything happening in front of the camera.

• B-roll: supplementary footage — hands typing, buildings, details — cut over interviews to add visual variety and hide edits.
• Call sheet: the one-page schedule for a shoot day: who is needed where, at what time, with contact details.
• Storyboard: a drawn, frame-by-frame plan of the key shots, agreed before the shoot.
• Treatment: a short document describing the creative approach — tone, style, structure — before a full script exists.
• Coverage: shooting a scene from enough angles that the editor has options in the cut.

• Rough cut: the first full assembly of the film — right structure, unpolished details. Judge the story here, not the colors.
• Fine cut: the refined edit after feedback rounds, close to final timing.
• Picture lock: the point where the edit is frozen and no more timing changes are made — color and sound finishing start here.
• Color grading: adjusting color and contrast shot by shot to create a consistent, cinematic look.
• Sound design: building the audio layer — ambience, effects, mixing — that makes a film feel finished.
• Aspect ratio: the shape of the frame. 16:9 is horizontal (web, YouTube), 9:16 is vertical (Reels, TikTok), 1:1 is square (feeds). Professional productions deliver all three from one shoot.

You do not need to speak fluent film-set to commission a video, but these fifteen terms cover the moments where misunderstandings cost money. Knowing that a rough cut is meant to look unfinished stops you from panicking at the first review. Knowing what picture lock means tells you exactly when structural changes stop being cheap. And knowing the difference between 16:9, 9:16, and 1:1 lets you order every format you need while the crew is still on set — instead of discovering after delivery that your LinkedIn video does not fit Instagram. If a term in a quote or a call is not on this list, ask. Good producers explain jargon willingly; the ones who hide behind it are telling you something too.