Filmmaker

How to spell filmmaker

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce filmmaker

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does filmmaker mean?

1. nounA person who produces or directs films or motion pictures.

Filmmaker in a sentence

• The independent filmmaker shot the documentary on a tiny budget.

• As a filmmaker she spent years editing footage in a small studio.

Where does filmmaker come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound of 'film' and 'maker', but both halves have deep roots. 'Film' comes from the Old English 'filmen', which meant a thin skin or membrane, the same idea behind the caul that can cover a newborn; the word kept that sense of a thin coating for centuries. When light-sensitive chemicals were spread in a thin layer on flexible strips in the late nineteenth century, that thin coating was naturally called 'film', and the word soon stood for the moving pictures recorded on it. 'Maker' descends from the Old English verb 'macian', 'to make or shape', plus the agent ending '-er' that names the doer of an action. Joined together as 'filmmaker', the compound emerged in the twentieth century alongside the cinema industry. The spelling trap is purely mechanical: 'film' ends in M and 'maker' begins with M, so the seam carries a doubled M that writers often drop.

How the word is built

• film (thin coating, hence a motion picture)
• make (to produce)
• -er (one who does)