Blog #6

This weeks topic is on the subject of the Kuleshov Effect. A form of montage in film making that uses juxtaposed images to suggest emotion onto an otherwise emotionless actors face. The effect was developed by early 20th century Russian film maker Lev Kuleshov. The idea behind the effect is to show an actor or actress close up in front of the camera with a completely emotionless expression on their face. The camera then cuts to things like a bowl of soup or a dead body, due to the "mash up" of these images the human brain then fills in the gaps, the bowl of soup makes one believe the actor must be hungry, or the dead body must mean the actor is experiencing great sorrow. In fact when shown to audiences they actually felt the actor was displaying a different face and emotion for every different image shown. The effect plays on the basic human need to make sense of sensory input, this natural correlation plays directly into the technique. The short film explaining the effect seems indeed to be poking fun at the nature of human psychology, using a sort of humor to outline their points. The actress watching the actor and seeing it cut to a number of images causes her to humorously fall in love with the actor, possibly satirizing some contemporary films use of superficial metaphors to convey a "deep" message. In the end they even refer to her love for him as a love of montage itself.

I think the technique is an interesting innovation of early film making, a play on human psychology that can be used to convey a point or message. It seems that it is an easily over used or indeed improperly used technique that can seem contrived and pointless, but used wisely and responsibly can be a powerful film making device. The nature of the human brain is really what allows Hollywood to exist, the conveyance of a message with images is something that people have been doing for much longer than there has been film, and indeed the invention of the film camera has been a huge leap in man's potential to convey those images, and if done responsibly can further the artistic creativity and narrative abilities of any individual film.