drop frame, n. (drop frām) 1. video production: the type of time-based signifier in editing that compensates for the NTCS (North American) color coding system, which runs at 29.97 frames per second rather than the identified 30, by removing or "dropping" two frames every minute save the tenth. The PAL (European) "colour" system runs at exactly 30 frames per second and thus requires neither drop frame nor non-drop frame distinctions; it's just editing over there.
From the Old English verb dropa, meaning "to traverse the abyss betwixt one's self and ye blessed Earthe," and the Old Norse verb frama or fremja, meaning "Stop your looting, Vikings, and get back on the freakin' boat!"
28 March 2007
This month in The American Interest: Two new books put Steven Spielberg on an undeserved pedestal.
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Lester D. Friedman, Citizen Spielberg (University of Illinois Press, 2006), 361 pp., $24.95.
Warren Buckland, Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster (Continuum, 2006), 242 pp., $19.95
