In French in use as 'faire une gaffe'. In Dutch change one letter ( f to a ) and 'gaaf' means: spotless, perfect or cool!.
* Anu's first context is coming from the book 'The Killing Season' which contains the opposite of what it suggests. About a man who as an old gaffer abhors killing even the tiniest creature.

What happened to the use of the word "gaff" as a type of sailboat rigging wherein the mainsail is squared off by the use of three spars rather that the usual two. The three spars are the mast, boom and GAFF. This enables the mainsail to be much larger that the three-sided sail.

There is also the British saying "blow the gaff," roughly equivalent to the American "squeal on someone."

You have missed one other meaning for "gaff". In the entertainment community the head of the lighting crew is called the gaffer and when they explain to the crew what to do we say they "gaff the crew". When I saw "gaff" today I was very excited because I am a gaffer and I was a bit disappointed not to see this meaning.

"gaff the crew"

I think that the verb gaff is probably a backformation from gaffer (cf. babysit, burgle, etc.). That being said, I have often wondered if gaffer in its movie electrician meaning was related to gaff 'the hook' or gaffer in its old man or boss (UK) sense. Some movie industry terminology is quite interesting: e.g., gobo, cookie (or cucaloris), vorkapich (for montage sequence), gaffer tape (not to be confused with duct tape), C47 (aka clothes pin).

zmj, you're just the best boy!

best boy

Ta, eta. It was the first Airplane! movie that had a Worst Boy: Adolf Hitler in its credits right after the best boy credit.

I'll plead ignorance, if gaff refers to the electrical, what
does "best boy" refer to in movie production??

The best boy electric and the best boy grip are assistants to the gaffer and the key grip respectively.

"Gaffer" is also in late Middle English/early Modern English a term for "grandfather." And "gammer" is, or was, grandmother

I've always thought that film and television terms would make interesting AWAD topics. Grips, Dollys, Blondes, Reds, hotheads...the terms are numerous. There are also plot techniques used in editng such as the MacGuffin, the montage, B Roll, a split, and much much more. The Fourth wall is another that pops to mind.

I don't understand how one of the quotes referring to a "gaffed quarter" relates to either the noun or the verb of the day. "Gaffed" in this case must mean something like "prepared for a trick or hoax," but that's just a guess. It's not quite consistent with the cited meanings of word.

one of the [noun] senses is 'gimmick or trick'; you can always verb a noun!
-ron o.

the MacGuffin, the montage, B Roll, a split, and much much more. The Fourth wall Okay, Sweetie, I don't understand a one of these; mind explaining?

Don't mind at all Jackie,

The MacGuffin
A plot device used to motivate a story. Sometimes in Miss Marple Mysteries there will be a quick cutaway of a necklace or painting. More often than not the shot was added to lead or insinuate something. Or sometimes it's just a red herring. Wanda, in a fish called Wanda was a MacGuffin.
(not to be confused with an egg MacGuffin)

Montage
An editing technique which as the name suggests is a quick series of shots linked together to give more of an allusion to something like time passing or the old 'life flashing before my eyes trick'.

B roll
To dissolve or mix between Two shots before the advent of computers it was necessary to copy one of the Two shots onto another tape or 'B' Roll. Then you cou play both tapes simultaneously and at the appropriate time dissolve between your 'A' and 'B' rolls.

A Split
refers to a split edit where the video from one shot is used under the audio from another shot there are lots of variations of split editing.

The Fourth wall
Is an imaginary wall Whenever you watch a sitcom like That Seventies Show for instance we, the viewer, are in the place of an imaginary wall looking in.

An editing technique which as the name suggests is a quick series of shots linked together to give more of an allusion to something like time passing or the old 'life flashing before my eyes trick'.

Montage (from the French for 'setup; assembly; editing' < monter 'to mount' < Latin mons, montis, 'mountain') has two meanings in film-making, one from the practical, and American, side and one from the theoretical, and European, one. Slavko Vorkapić (link), mentioned above, was best known for creating Vorkapich sequences, or montage in the American sense of the word. Eisenstein, the Russian director, used the term montage in its French sense of an assemblage of shots into a scene. This sense has continued in anglophone film theory.

Thanks for that! Due to my Anglophonism I'd only heard of Sergei, but your french meaning makes more sense to me. Funnily 'setup; assembly; editing' are also editng terms.

Thank you, I am appreciate. I always read the credits, but never thought of asking before.

Foley artists are my fave.

scrunch that box of corn starch!!

Forgot about them. Thanks for the reminder.
Saw a TV show once on their work: fascinating, I think I have
to agree, they are my favorite as well.

Their motto:

No one goes out whistling the Foley.

what did they call foley artists before they started using mr foley's name as the job title?

When did they start using Mr. Foley's name?

don't know that either.

I did a little research:

If we can believe Wikipedia (and I don't see why not in this case) and if we can draw some conclusions from evidence (and I don't see why not in this case) we can conclude that they didn't call them anything before they started using Jack Foley's name.

Y'all might enjoy this site.

Foley Artists Share Their Secrets (from C5, inc)
Did you know that the sound of a smoldering cigarette is made by pressing a thumb into plain dirt?

I didn't even know cigarettes made sounds.

And I always contributed this to the limits of the technology because in the mechanism of editing, especially before computers, one or the other had to come first: either the video or the audio. In the arc-light 35 mm movie projector, the video is always first and the audio last and are separated by about a foot or so of film: the video also took up the larger portion of the 35 mm film whereas the audio was a very thin strip along the edge near the sprocket -- wasn't it the outside one? It's been 55 years since I worked regularly as a projectionist in the JOY Theatre and sometimes in the GEM.

By the way, the audio corresponding to a particular video frame was actually first, physically, toward the lead end of the film; but they were always coordinated so as to occur simultaneously. But, then, if the projectionist made the bubble too big or too small, the result would be a mismatch between the video and the audio. On the 35 mm projector, there was a small wheel (knob) adjustment that could be made while the film was running, whereas on the 16 mm projector, there was no bubble so that the tracks were usually coordinated.

When I go to the movies today, as infrequently as I do, I still see the change spots in the corner of the video even though most theatres today use large horizontal film decks so as to splice all the film into one continuous whole and use only one camera so there is no need for the projectionist to make a change.

the video also took up the larger portion of the 35 mm film whereas the audio was a very thin strip along the edge near the sprocket -- wasn't it the outside one?

It's on the left (link).