The Kuleshov Experiment

Before editing was perfected, movies were a lot like plays. You had the camera stagnant in one location and the actors, (usually with ridiculous over-the-top acting) on the opposite side with a stage-like confined space. The camera was limited to the extended long shot and couldn’t guide the audience view to specific objects or people. However, G.W Griffith with his film ‘Way Down East’ started the concept of fragmentation. Meaning that there were close-ups, and medium shots that were later weaved together to create meaning. The most important result out of this experimentation was the concept of Montage editing.
What is montage editing? You see it all the time now in movies and you probably don’t even notice it. Here's the prime example; Its when you get a shot of someone’s face, and then a shot of the object they are looking at separately. These two shots weave together to make you understand that the person you saw in the first shot, is looking at what you saw in the second shot. After Griffith first began experimenting with shots and montage editing, the Russians took his innovated concept and created more complex theories; concentrating highly on fragmentation, stressing meaning through juxtaposition. Their motto? NO SINGLE SHOT TELLS A STORY.



The Kuleshov effect was one of those experiments that came out of the Russian film growth of the early 20th century. Kuleshov took footage of a person with a completely blank expression and interweaved it with shots of other things in between. The first object was a bowl of soup, the second was a dead body and finally, the third was of two children playing. With these three different objects meshed into the same shot of the blank face, the audience believed that the expression on the actor’s face was different each time he appeared, depending on what objects he was shown to be “looking at”. Although the Kuleshov film was lost, I have made a short movie which tries to mimic what he did.

Out of this concept, came one of the most famous and referenced scenes in cinematic history; the sequence at the Odessa steps out of the movie Battleship Potempkin. Take a look at the way no single shot gives any full story. It extended moments, making everything more dramatic.