Kuleshov Effect

Soviet Film maker, Lev Kuleshov in the early life of film played with a psychology of film through his experiments. He then established the Kuleshov effect. This is an effect which is caused by the viewer when they watch to clips together. Kuleshov found that the brain likes connecting emotions together and putting two images next to each other in an edit the viewer will automatically assign the emotion to the person. The experiment he did was to take a picture of a man with a blank expression then show these three images with the man.

The first of the images was coffin, so the audience see the mans neutral face then see the coffin. The immediate reaction of the audience is to believe that the man is sad that the person is dead, even though he has a blank expression and had no connection to the death.

This is used heavily in films and Hitchcock speaks of it in the below documentary about the study by Kuleshov.