People who are interested in film studies might have come across a lot of editing techniques and effects. Have you heard about the Kuleshov effect? You might not know this name; however, you have seen this technique several times. Let us see what the Kuleshov effect is.
The Kuleshov Effect, which was developed in the 1910s and 1920s by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, is an important principle of editing and montage theory as well as an essential principle of film theory as a whole. The Kuleshov effect is the idea that two shots together have a greater impact than one shot alone. It explores how viewers can infer more meaning from the interaction of two related pictures than they can from a single static image.
Kuleshov was enthralled by the ability of film editors to influence viewers’ emotions. He asked what differentiated cinema from other mediums? and he thought that the arrangement of the materials was the reason. Kuleshov experimented while lecturing at the Moscow Film School to show how a viewer’s evaluation of a character’s facial expression might be changed by the juxtaposition with a second image. He combined a close-up of the expressionless actor Ivan Mosjoukine from Tsarist silent film with three different shots, including a woman sleeping on a sofa, a dead kid in a casket and a bowl of soup. Kuleshov then screened the three short films for three different groups and asked them to decipher what the man was thinking.
The audience derived different meanings for each composition. They perceived his facial expression as a response to the other image, which allowed them to derive a different interpretation from his behaviour based on the context. The audience thought the man looked sad when he saw the photo of the dead child. Next, the audience interpreted the man’s expression as hunger, when a plate of soup was shown. Audiences also assumed the man was lustful when the image of the woman on a sofa was shown.
According to Kuleshov’s theory, this must be the essential building block of film and cinematic editing as an independent form of art. Thus, the Kuleshov effect developed and it is still in use today.
Following the experiment by Kuleshov, Director Alfred Hitchcock adapted the Kuleshov Effect into his idea of pure cinema which included three shots:
1. Close-up shot
2. Point-of-view-shot
3. Reaction shot
Hitchcock’s decision to include the reaction in the shot further explains to the audience how the character is reacting to what they have just seen.
Hitchcock discussed his ideas on the cinematic story in a 1964 interview for the programme Telescope, concluding with an illustration of pure cinema: Think about Hitchcock squinting in a close-up shot next to a woman holding a baby in a point-of-view shot. Up until the reaction shot, which reveals a change in his expression to a smile, his thoughts towards this mother and child are unclear. The audience concludes that he is a sympathetic and caring individual. However, if Hitchcock were to be seen examining a lady wearing a bikini instead, the audience would begin to view him as a pervert. You can see examples of this technique by watching scenes from some Hitchcock cinema classics like Rear Window or Psycho.
Steven Spielberg’s films attempt to show how these shot juxtapositions can rapidly and cinematically connect several scenes in terms of emotion and theme. He is renowned for utilising point-of-view (POV) shots, in particular, to further engross viewers in a film’s setting. In movies like E.T., Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones, he also experimented with a point-of-thought technique to better link spectators with both the visuals they see on screen and, even more so, with how the actors in the scenes are truly experiencing.
Today, the Kuleshov Effect serves as a reminder to editors and filmmakers that how an actor’s face is interpreted depends on the context in which it appears. Therefore, editing involves carefully choosing the shots and perspectives that will influence how the audience perceives the story rather than just assembling shots to convey one.