Kuleshov effect

Last updated

The Kuleshov effect is a film editing (montage) effect demonstrated by Russian film-maker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s. It is a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation.

Contents

Specifics

Example clip of a modern Kuleshov sequence, with a man's face intercut with three different shots

Kuleshov edited a short film in which a shot of the expressionless face of Tsarist matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine was alternated with various other shots (a bowl of soup, a girl in a coffin, a woman on a divan). The film was shown to an audience who believed that the expression on Mosjoukine's face was different each time he appeared, depending on whether he was "looking at" the bowl of soup, the girl in the coffin, or the woman on the divan, showing an expression of hunger, grief, or desire, respectively. The footage of Mosjoukine was actually the same shot each time. Vsevolod Pudovkin (who later claimed to have been the co-creator of the experiment) described in 1929 how the audience "raved about the acting ... the heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead child, and noted the lust with which he observed the woman. But we knew that in all three cases the face was exactly the same." [1]

Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings. Kuleshov believed this, along with montage, had to be the basis of cinema as an independent art form. [2] [ incomplete short citation ]

The experiment itself was created by assembling fragments of pre-existing film from the Tsarist film industry, with no new material. Mosjoukine had been the leading romantic "star" of Tsarist cinema, and familiar to the audience.

Kuleshov demonstrated the necessity of considering montage as the basic tool of cinema. In Kuleshov's view, the cinema consists of fragments and the assembly of those fragments, the assembly of elements which in reality are distinct. It is therefore not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination. The raw materials of such an art work need not be original, but are prefabricated elements which can be disassembled and reassembled by the artist into new juxtapositions.

The montage experiments carried out by Kuleshov in the late 1910s and early 1920s formed the theoretical basis of Soviet montage cinema, culminating in the famous films of the late 1920s by directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Dziga Vertov, among others. These films included The Battleship Potemkin , October , Mother , The End of St. Petersburg , and The Man with a Movie Camera .

The effect has also been studied by psychologists and is well-known among modern film-makers. Alfred Hitchcock refers to the effect in his conversations with François Truffaut, using actor James Stewart as the example. [3] [4] In the famous "Definition of Happiness" interview which was part of the CBC Telescope program, Hitchcock also explained in detail many types of editing to Fletcher Markle. [5] The final form, which he calls "pure editing", is explained visually using the Kuleshov effect. In the first version of the example, Hitchcock is squinting, and the audience sees footage of a woman with a baby. The screen then returns to Hitchcock's face, now smiling. In effect, he is a kind old man. In the second example, the woman and baby are replaced with a woman in a bikini, Hitchcock explains: "What is he now? He's a dirty old man."

Research

The Kuleshov effect has been studied by psychologists only in recent years. Prince and Hensley (1992) recreated the original study design but did not find the alleged effect. The study had 137 participants but was a single-trial between-subject experiment, which is prone to noise in the data. [6] Dean Mobbs et al. did a within-subject fMRI study in 2006 and found an effect for negative, positive, or neutral valence. When a neutral face was shown behind a sad scene, it seemed sad; when it was shown behind a happy scene, it seemed happy. [7] In 2016, Daniel Barratt et al. tested 36 participants using 24 film sequences across five emotional conditions (happiness, sadness, hunger, fear, and desire) and a neutral control condition. Again, they showed that neutral faces were rated in accordance with the stimuli material, confirming the 2006 findings of Mobbs et al. [8]

Thus, despite the initial problems in testing the Kuleshov effect experimentally, researchers now agree that the context in which a face is shown has a significant effect on how the face is perceived.

To find out whether the Kuleshov effect can also be induced auditorily, Andreas M. Baranowski and Heiko Hecht intercut different clips of faces with neutral scenes, featuring happy music, sad music, or no music at all. They found that the music significantly influenced participants’ emotional judgments of facial expression. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Hitchcock</span> English film director (1899–1980)

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", he became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo roles in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director, despite five nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François Truffaut</span> French film director (1932–1984)

François Roland Truffaut was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. With a career of more than 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Film editing</span> Creative and technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking

Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film which increasingly involves the use of digital technology. When putting together some sort of video composition, typically, you would need a collection of shots and footages that vary from one another. The act of adjusting the shots you have already taken, and turning them into something new is known as film editing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lev Kuleshov</span> Soviet filmmaker and film theorist

Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Russian and Soviet filmmaker and film theorist, one of the founders of the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School. He was given the title People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1969. He was intimately involved in development of the style of film making known as Soviet montage, especially its psychological underpinning, including the use of editing and the cut to influence the emotions of audience, a principle known as the Kuleshov effect. He also developed the theory of creative geography, which is the use of the action around a cut to connect otherwise disparate settings into a cohesive narrative.

<i>The Last Laugh</i> (1924 film) 1924 film directed by F. W. Murnau

The Last Laugh is a 1924 German silent film directed by German director F. W. Murnau from a screenplay written by Carl Mayer. The film stars Emil Jannings and Maly Delschaft.

A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. According to one set of controversial theories, these movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information between humans, but they also occur in most other mammals and some other animal species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Bazin</span> French film critic (1918–1958)

André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vsevolod Pudovkin</span> Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor

Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage. Pudovkin's masterpieces are often contrasted with those of his contemporary Sergei Eisenstein, but whereas Eisenstein utilized montage to glorify the power of the masses, Pudovkin preferred to concentrate on the courage and resilience of individuals. He was granted the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1948.

Creative geography, or artificial landscape, is a film editing technique invented by the early Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov sometime around the 1920s. It is a subset of montage, in which multiple segments shot at various locations and/or times are edited together such that they appear to all occur in a continuous place at a continuous time. Creative geography is used constantly in film and television, for instance when a character walks through the front door of a house shown from the outside, to emerge into a sound stage of the house's interior.

A film school is an educational institution dedicated to teaching aspects of filmmaking, including such subjects as film production, film theory, digital media production, and screenwriting. Film history courses and hands-on technical training are usually incorporated into most film school curricula. Technical training may include instruction in the use and operation of cameras, lighting equipment, film or video editing equipment and software, and other relevant equipment. Film schools may also include courses and training in such subjects as television production, broadcasting, audio engineering, and animation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivan Mosjoukine</span> Russian actor (1889-1939)

Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin, usually billed using the French transliteration Ivan Mosjoukine, was a Russian silent film actor.

<i>Mother</i> (1926 film) 1926 film by Vsevolod Pudovkin

Mother is a 1926 Soviet drama film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin. It depicts the radicalization of a mother, during the Russian Revolution of 1905, after her husband is killed and her son is imprisoned. Based on the 1906 novel The Mother by Maxim Gorky, it is the first installment in Pudovkin's "revolutionary trilogy", alongside The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm Over Asia (1928).

In film, a match cut is a cut from one shot to another in which the composition of the two shots are matched by the action or subject and subject matter. For example, in a duel a shot can go from a long shot on both contestants via a cut to a medium closeup shot of one of the duellists. The cut matches the two shots and is consistent with the logic of the action. This is a standard practice in film-making, to produce a seamless reality-effect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soviet montage theory</span> A theory of film that developed in Soviet Russia

Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing. It is the principal contribution of Soviet film theorists to global cinema, and brought formalism to bear on filmmaking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boris Barnet</span> Soviet film director, screenwriter

Boris Vasilyevich Barnet was a Soviet film director, actor and screenwriter of British heritage. He directed 27 films between 1927 and 1963. Barnet was awarded the title Merited Artist of the Russian Federation in 1935, and Merited Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1951.

<i>The Great Consoler</i> 1933 film

The Great Consoler is a 1933 Soviet drama film directed by Lev Kuleshov and starring Konstantin Khokhlov. The film is based on the facts from the biography of the American writer O. Henry and on his two novels.

<i>The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks</i> 1924 film by Lev Kuleshov

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks is a 1924 Soviet silent comedy film directed by Lev Kuleshov. Kuleshov considered the film a "verification" of his theories around editing and montage, and he drew inspiration from American cinema, which he found more engaging than Russian cinema.

The Deserter is a 1933 Soviet drama film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin. It was his first sound picture.

<i>Rain</i> (1929 film) 1929 film

Rain is a 1929 Dutch short documentary film directed by Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens. It premiered on 14 December 1929, in the Amsterdam Filmliga's theater, De Uitkijk.

Hyperkino is a standardized system of referencing and annotating films on digital carriers – attaching related content and analysis to individual frames. The name of the method, Hyperkino, is based on the intertwining of the concepts of textual criticism and hypertext.

References

  1. ↑ Vsevolod Pudovkin (1974). "Naturshchik vmesto aktera". Sobranie Sochinenii. Moscow. 1: 184.
  2. ↑ M Russel. "The Kuleshov Effect and the Death of the Auteurism". Forum.
  3. ↑ Thomas Leitch, Leland Poague (2011). Leitch, Thomas; Poague, Leland (eds.). A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock. John Wiley & Sons. p. 60. doi:10.1002/9781444397321. ISBN   9781444397321.
  4. ↑ Truffaut, Francois (1983). "11". Hitchcock/Truffaut . Simon and Schuster. p. 216. ISBN   9780671604295.
  5. ↑ "Hitchcock Explains the Kuleshov Effect to Fletcher Markle. 1964". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21.
  6. ↑ Stephen Prince; Wayne E. Hensley (1992). "The Kuleshov effect: Recreating the classic experiment". Cinema Journal . 31 (2): 59–75. doi:10.2307/1225144. JSTOR   1225144.
  7. ↑ Dean Mobbs; Nikolaus Weiskopf; Hakwan C. Lau; Eric Featherstone; Ray J. Dolan; Chris D. Frith (2006-08-14). "The Kuleshov Effect: The influence of contextual framing on emotional attributions". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience . 1 (2): 95–106. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsl014 . PMC   1810228 . PMID   17339967.
  8. ↑ Daniel Barratt; Anna Cabak Rédei; Åse Innes-Ker; Joost van de Weijer (2016-04-06). "Does the Kuleshov effect really exist? Revisiting a classic film experiment on facial expressions and emotional contexts". Perception . 45 (8): 847–874. doi:10.1177/0301006616638595. PMID   27056181. S2CID   206513110.
  9. ↑ Andreas M Baranowski; Heiko Hecht (2017). "The auditory Kuleshov effect: Multisensory integration in movie editing". Perception . 43 (10): 1061–1070. doi:10.1177/0301006616682754. PMID   27923940. S2CID   36187687.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.