Post 16

The Kuleshov Effect

In the dawn of the 20th century, cinema was a new art form, comprising many techniques that hadn’t been developed. And the ones that had had not been studied to the needed extension. The elements of editing were among them. Filmmakers knew that you could cut and splice the film strip, but they didn’t thoroughly comprehend the purposes of doing so.

Lev Kuleshov, a Soviet filmmaker, was among the first to dissect the effects of juxtaposition. Through his experiments and research, Kuleshov discovered that depending on how shots are assembled the audience will attach a specific meaning or emotion to it.

In his experiment, Kuleshov cut an actor with shots of three different subjects: a hot plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, and a pretty woman lying in a couch. The footage of the actor was the same expressionless gaze. Yet the audience raved his performance, saying first he looked hungry, then sad, then lustful.

From the video demonstration of the Kuleshov effect in use, the character can be split into two contrasting perspectives. For example, the man is seen to be smiling at a bowl of soup - then he is seen to be smiling at a child in a coffin. This use of the Kuleshov effect is most common - that contrasts the different personalities. The experiment outlined that the audience subconiously create a link that the man must be hungry (looking at soup), grieving (looking at coffin) or sexually aroused (looking at a woman.) The results from this experiment connote the fact that the audience subconcious thought process is able to create links with one focus and another by using film. 

The video above features the Kuleshov effect being put into use in films. The narrator briefly explained what the Kuleshov effect is and outlined the experiments that Lev Kuleshov conducted using film at the beginning of the 20th Century. However, the narrator cuts a video of a man smiling and looking at the baby. The audience make a subconcious judgement that the man is a caring individual and likes children. Then, the narrator cuts the same video of the man smiling - however this time the editor has cut a video of strippers etc. at a club. The inference (of the man) that the audiences subconious make is that he is a 'sexual deviant.' This modern day comparison and re-evaluation supports that the Kuleshov effect is still valid in the editing process.