Research - The Kuleshov Effect

The Kuleshov Effect

The Kuleshov effect was discovered by Lev Kuleshov who was a Soviet filmmaker.

This is one of the techniques discovered through juxtaposition. His experiments and research led to him finding out that depending on how a certain shot is taken; the audience are able to attach a specific meaning or emotion to it. So in a way, it's what the audience stereotypes the actions to be.

To test his theory of how the audience viewing psychology; he carried out an experiment which used a picture of a man whose expressionless, a girl in a coffin, a bowl of soup and a pretty woman on the coach. The results of the experiment said that the audience saw the man being sad (picture with the girl in the coffin), the man was hungry (picture with the bowl of soup) and the man was lustful (picture with the pretty woman on the coach).

Even though the man showed no expression in the scene before each picture; the audience was still able to come up with a different emotion for each of the different 2-sequence footage.

Our group can apply this effect onto our trailer through the use of a hidden priest followed by a shot of the weapon. The audience will be able to tell that the person is a killer straightaway with the link of the two scenes. Another way this effect can be applied to our trailer is with a shot of the detective walking over to an area then another scene of a close-up of the hand of her picking up the piece of evidence. Straightaway, the audience will think that she's the jealous type or she's the convict possibly (the guilty party) with these 2-shots.