First lets get an understanding of who Lev Kuleshov was. Lev Kuleshov was a Russian director who was born on the 1st of January 1899 in Tambov, Russia. He suffered from bouts of depression and a poor speaking ability, these problems were soon overcome by the fact that he had a strong will, persistence and determination in anything he did. Up till the age of 15 he was home taught by his father who had a degree from Moscow Art College. At 15 his father passed away which caused him and his mother to move to Moscow. When he arrived at Moscow for the next years of education he went to the prestigious Stroganov School where studied art and history. From there he went to the Moscow School of Painting, Architecture and Sculpture focusing on oil painting.
After this he got his first job in the film business as a set designer at the Moscow film studio of Aleksandr Khanzhonkov. During his time working at the studio he had decided that he wanted to work on being a director. His ambition was rewarded when he met Akhramovich-Ashmarin a successful director who introduced him to the American School of Film-Making.
Over the course of his life in the film industry he made many films. But his biggest impact on the world of film was the Kuleshov Effect. Very simply what this means is when a clip of someone is used with several different clips or images then it changes the meaning of the film.
To quote an account where this is used by Lev Kuleshov "one in which a jailed man is shown an open cell door, and one in which a starving man is shown a bowl of soup. Kuleshov switched the shots, so that the starving man saw the open door and the prisoner looked at soup, and there was no noticeable difference." (http://kubrickfilms.tripod.com/id21.html) This is an example where the effect of the films switching does not change the emotional state as they are both exhibiting the same emotion. An example of one that does work was done by Alfred Hitchcock called "Hitchcock love Bikinis" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCAE0t6KwJY)
In this video he also explains how it works. To put an explanation here what it does is uses the recycled clip to show reaction to a certain stimulus. In the Video the first stimulus is a mother holding a baby. To which he smiles at which shows he is a "Kind old man". For the second stimulus he uses a women in a bikini. Because of how the clip still smiles the reaction is that he is a "dirty old man". This is the perfect example of how Kuleshovs Effect works. By changing certain stimuli to a characters expression you change how people perseve that character and his emotion.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI) This video by Charlie Brooker goes into significant detail on how reality tv shows are edited to show different responses. A really good example in the clip is where Charlie Brooker tells a really terrible joke to the other flatmates. With some quick editing you take a recording from elsewhere along the day and use that clip to add a fake reaction to the joke, where as the real one was terrible. Many shows like Big Brother (like the example he uses) do this to help people perseve characters in a certain way. They also use this with alot of audio clips too. For example in the clip he uses the audio from one of the interviews over the top of a scene to show you how they view a character.
Thats my detailed analyse of the Lev Kuleshov Effect.
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