WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Kuleshov Effect, Part 1 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:08.239 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:11.119 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:13.200 Time to go into the vault for an older episode 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:17.560 of the show. This one originally published on January two, 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:19.520 and it was part one of our series about the 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:23.479 coolest shov effect and interesting psychological effect having to do 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:27.760 with film editing. Alright, let's jump right in. Hey, everybody, 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:30.319 Joe here, I'm just cutting in before the music with 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:34.760 a brief editorial insert it's happened before it happened again. 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:37.000 This is one of those episodes that went long. Rob 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:39.640 and I originally planned it to be one standalone chat, 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:42.440 but it started taking on an unwieldy form while we 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:45.560 were recording, so we decided to go ahead and chop 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:47.960 it up into two parts. So this is why in 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:50.320 a few minutes you might hear me make references to 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:52.760 things I'm going to bring up later in the episode, 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:55.680 but we actually won't get to them until part two, 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:59.200 So apologies for any confusion on that front. As a 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.200 general outline, and we're going to introduce and illustrate our 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:05.080 central topic in part one here and then we'll be 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:08.360 going deeper into the weeds of subsequent research in part two. 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:11.800 So without any further delay, I'll now plunge you back 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:17.759 into the show. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:27.240 production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:29.320 to Blow Your Mind. And my name is Robert Lamm 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.600 and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be talking 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:37.840 about a concept known as the coolest Shop effect. This 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:41.120 is an idea from film theory. But I think this 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.800 will make a really interesting episode because it's, first of all, 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:47.680 it's at that that weird intersection space, you know, the 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:52.559 midnight at the crossroads of of art and science. And 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.320 then uh, Secondarily, I think it's one of those great 0:01:55.360 --> 0:02:00.280 observations that is simple, almost obvious in its implication, ends 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:03.120 when when you first grasp it, but you the more 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:06.120 you think about it, the weirder and more powerful it gets, 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:10.160 especially in a historical context. Yeah, this is an interesting 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:11.959 topic and one I have to admit that I don't 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.720 think i'd ever really absorbed before. I don't know if 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:16.959 it ever came up in um, any of like the 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:21.440 film classes that I took, like in college. Um, same 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:24.320 here and uh and and at the same time, Yeah, 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:26.800 I read about this and then went out and actually 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:30.280 watched um um, I watched a film and watched you know, 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.560 probably a couple of TV shows over the weekend, and 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:34.600 so I had it fresh on my mind looking for it. 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:37.320 And on one hand, you do see it everywhere, but 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:40.480 then you don't like, it's, uh, it's this thing that 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:42.600 that when you're when you first read about it, it 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:44.320 sounds like, oh, well, this is like part of the 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.560 blueprint of how film works. And that's kind of that's 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:49.400 kind of one of the arguments that's made for it. 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:53.320 And yet it's not necessarily as a parent as you 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:55.400 might expect it to be, but there are some wonderful 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:58.760 examples to be to be dwelt upon. Well, the way 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:00.680 I'd put it, after having done all the research for 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:02.760 this episode, is that I think it is sort of 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:06.160 part of the blueprint of how film works, except in 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:10.200 the way it's usually explained, it's just a few degrees off. Yeah, yeah, 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:12.320 that would I think that would make sense. But I'll 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:14.600 explain more about that as as we go on. Another 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.240 thing that's interesting about this though, is it's something that's 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.400 originally from the realm of art and esthetic criticism. You know, 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.560 it's from film theory, but it also has a sort 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:27.560 of mixed research history within the fields of experimental psychology 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:31.680 and neuroscience. You know, there's some empirical experiments that seem 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.480 to find evidence of the effect and others do not 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.480 find it. And I think part of the part of 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:40.320 the difference there is how you ask the question and 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:42.600 what kind of stimula you use. But it could be 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:44.920 interesting to see what the difference is there as well. 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.160 But I guess we should get straight to explaining what 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:52.400 the coolest Jov effect allegedly is. So, in the words 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.680 of the authors of a two thousand six neuroscience paper 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:57.880 by mobs at All that I'll refer to later in 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:01.640 the episode, the coolest Jov effect is the following proposition. 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:05.680 It is that quote, the manipulation of context can alter 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:12.960 an audiences perception of an actor's facial expressions, thoughts, and feelings. Yeah. Yeah, 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:16.360 And this is something that is at at the very 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.320 root of everything. Is is based on theory of mind, 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:24.560 that we as humans look at another person and we 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:27.720 simulate what's going on in their head, what what are 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:32.159 their thoughts, what are their motivations, what are their intentions, etcetera. 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:36.200 Um uh so, Yeah, it's theory theory, theory of mind 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:38.320 at heart, but it's not just the face. It's also 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:41.640 something else. And basically this gets into just an into 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:45.279 filmmaking and editing. Right, it's the the idea of montage. 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.960 That's the word that's often used here, but that would 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.840 probably give us ideas of a very specific technique of like, 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.080 you know, you're like the training montage and Rocky film 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:57.960 or something. You should actually be thinking of montage when 0:04:57.960 --> 0:04:59.919 we say it in this episode. More broadly, it's not 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.919 just that. It means the the arrangement of different shots 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:08.200 into a sequence through editing. No matter what kind of 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.240 technique you're using there, if you're taking different shots and 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:15.760 putting them into a sequence, that is montage for today's purposes. Yeah, 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.080 and and again it all comes back to editing. The 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.120 way the footage is put together. You can basically think 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:25.520 of it as like face p O V shot face um. 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.640 For instance, Alfred Hitchcock described it once as being a 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:33.200 situation where okay, again, think of three shots. First shot, 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:35.919 he says, his man looking out the window. Shot number 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:39.800 three is a man smiling. Now what you put in 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.919 that second slot, whatever, that second shot is that you 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:47.159 insert that changes the context entirely. Now, uh, as we 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.280 were discussing before we recorded here, this Alfred Hitchcock example, 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.360 the widely cided is also a little imperfect because if 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:55.680 you want to get right down to the like the 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:58.359 core theory, it's just it's Shot one should be a 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.919 man looking out a window. Shot number three should just 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:03.760 be that man looking out a window, no smile. But 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.119 it still comes down to what is shot number two, 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.240 because that changes how you think about that man in 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:12.920 shot three, right, you seem to see something different in 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:15.280 the man, even though you could use the exact same 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:19.360 footage of him. So the editing context changes what we 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.159 think we see in a previous or a subsequent shot, 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.200 even though you're using the exact same shots. So one 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.440 of the funny in Hitchcock's example, he uh, he talks 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:30.680 about this in a famous interview I think he did 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:33.839 with maybe it was with the CBC or somebody, but 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:36.359 but he was using the example of Okay, in the 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:40.640 first sequence, imagine that the middle shot that's intercut there 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.720 is like a mother playing with a baby, and in 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:46.919 that case, oh, he's a kindly old grandfather man. And 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:49.120 then the second option is that the middle shot is 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.440 a woman in a bathing suit, in which case, he says, 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:53.599 then you perceive his smile as being that of a 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.000 dirty old man. And I guess it kind of helps 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.520 because it's actually Alfred Hitchcock they use in the visual example. 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:03.239 Now we'll come back to more about what this idea 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.560 is and what it might mean, but maybe first we 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:09.840 should just do a little bit of biography on the 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:14.520 namesake of this idea. So the Kolashov effect is named 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:18.400 after a guy named Lev Kulashev, who was a Russian 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:22.720 filmmaker and film theorist who I think, I don't know, 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:24.560 you could say it was like a major force in 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:28.480 the history of film theory and uh, and is primarily 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:34.920 responsible for popularizing this alleged effect. Yes, Lev Kulashev, who 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:40.400 lived seventy Russian director film theorist who started out in art, 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:46.040 direction and some acting before moving increasingly into directing, experimental editing, 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.320 and scholarship. He was one of the founders of the 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:52.560 world's first film school, the Moscow Film School. And yeah, 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.800 he introduced the American film concept of montage into Soviet 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.560 cinema based on examining the works of directors such as 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.760 DDA be Griffith, and as David Gilevskie points out in 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:06.800 his book Early Soviet Cinema, he quote played a more 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:09.640 significant part in the development of the Golden Age of 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:14.560 Russian cinema than any other figure with the exception of Eisenstein. 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:19.000 And this would refer to Sergei Eisenstein, another big name 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:22.160 and film a big big name Russian film director of 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:26.080 the time period, theorist of the day who listeners might 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:30.040 know from such films as a Battleship Attempkin from that's 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:34.160 the old baby Stroller down the Stairs movie right now. 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:36.960 One thing I do remember from actual film classes that 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.200 I took in college was that a lot of early 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:43.560 Soviet cinema does make use of the montage, more in 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:47.200 the sense of the specific film technique where you're like 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:50.199 taking a bunch of different images and and putting them 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:52.880 together to suggest a kind of, uh, a kind of 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.240 sequence or progression, more like the training montage. But the 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:58.840 main example I remember there is a movie we watched 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.200 by or TV called The Man with the Movie Camera, 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:05.319 which is basically the whole movie is just a montage 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:10.000 of of you know, Russian public life by the way, 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.280 if anyone out there wants to hear us talk even 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:14.480 more about silent film. We did an episode of Weird 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:17.280 How Cinema UM at some point in the last year 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.000 where we did like a silent film double feature where 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.959 we we picked out just a couple maybe three different 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.840 silent films and talked about what was neat about them 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:27.960 and just talked about sort of the the challenges to 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:31.920 the modern viewer that that silent film poses, but also 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.000 the rewards of watching them. So what one of the 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.960 main things Kolashov was doing here was that he was 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.840 he wasn't even um even even shooting new footage in 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:47.600 these experiments. UH, he was taking pre existing footage silent 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:52.720 film footage usually um Czarist era silent film, and re 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.319 cutting them to to see what could be done with 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:00.000 this montage feature like how how to arrange the uh 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:04.719 the footage to get different, um you know, emotional results. 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:06.920 And a lot of it was based again and looking 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.120 at what was going on and what seemed to be 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:12.960 working in uh in in in Western film, in American 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.840 film specifically again like the work of d. W. Griffith, 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:20.760 and UH just in general. Kulashofice was it was somewhat 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:25.400 controversial at times, apparently in in these uh, these experiments, 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:28.719 you know, he's looking at American models, Western models, So 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:31.559 he was accused by Communist Party members at times of 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:35.400 appealing to Western ideas and forms too much. And he's 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:38.520 also apparently been accused of living it up during tough 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:42.560 times in Russia and destroying archives silent era films during 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:47.320 this editing work, which again the work that wasn't really 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.800 based that so much in shooting new footage and experimenting 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.360 with how you might added them together, but taking pre 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:57.640 existing footage from the archive and adding it together. Now, 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:01.520 as a director, Kulashov is apparently and I'm speaking largely 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.120 of a director that I really didn't know anything about before, 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:08.640 so me neither. But he's apparently best known for ninety 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.680 four's The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.760 of the Bolsheviks. He also adapted the works of Jack 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.800 London and Oh Henry, but especially for this show, we 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.320 should really highlight that he also made a death Ray 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.920 spy thriller. I thought this was really interesting. Somehow, I 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.640 guess this never came up when we did our invention 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.280 episodes on the Death Ray or if it did, I've 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:33.760 forgotten about it because this seemed new to me. But 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.920 it fits right in there, because if you haven't heard 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.600 our episodes of the Invention podcast on the death Ray, 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:42.000 those were some of my favorites that we did, especially 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:44.520 because we got to talk about an invention that never 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:50.079 really existed and yet was the subject of a popular fervor. 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.840 You know that, like people were really excited about death 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:56.640 rays for the nineteen twenties and that just there was 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.040 never any such thing. Yeah, yeah, the invention it's of 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:02.120 never existed, but you had kind of a global death 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:05.800 ray fever going on, and this is so it's right 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.319 smack dab in the middle of it. A film titled 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:13.319 lut Smirty or the Death Ray. Galepsi describes it as 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:18.400 quote a relatively violent film about international espionage. So I 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:20.920 had to look in. I looked at footage the available 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.520 footage that I could find out. It wasn't wasn't super 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:27.040 great to watch, but there's some impressive stills that The 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:29.880 plot is spot on for what you might expect from 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:32.079 a Soviet death ray movie at the time period. We 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:36.520 follow a socialist revolutionary who has to flee an unnamed 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:41.280 fascist capitalist country, the socialist revolutionary has to flee to 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.000 the Soviet Union, and once there he is introduced to 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:48.760 the new technology of the death ray, which can explode 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.960 gunpowder at a distance, which is a key detail because 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:55.080 that's exactly, uh that the sort of thing that was 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:57.559 part of the death ray fever that we discussed in 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:00.200 the Invention episode. That's right. So the brief top line 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.599 on that is that, uh, basically a lot of this 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:06.760 death ray fever came from reaction to the horrors of 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:10.400 long range bombing aerial bombing in World War One, and 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:13.800 people wanted the idea of something that could shoot bombers 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.280 out of the sky from a great distance before they 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.800 got to your cities, and the death ray filled in 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:23.839 that gap exactly. So basically, the evil spy follows them 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:27.240 and steals the death ray technology so that they can 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:30.320 use it to suppress labor strikes. But don't worry, the 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.240 labor strikers steal the death ray technology back and use 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:37.120 it to blow up their oppressors bomber aircraft which is 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:41.560 about to be used against the strikers. This almost makes 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.240 me want to compile and watch a list of all 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.120 the death ray movies of the nineteen twentys. Just put 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:51.200 them all together and see see what kind of picture emerges. Yeah, yeah, 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:54.080 or and I'm curious, like, what is the best death 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:56.680 ray movie? I'm I'm assuming the best death ray movies 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:00.719 came later. Um came in the way of films such 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:09.080 as this, Thank thank Okay, Well, so that's love kol 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.200 Ashov and I wanted to get a little bit into 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.240 the background of this idea of the cool Ashov effect 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.839 by consulting his own words. So I found a book 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:21.200 called cool a Shov on Film Writings. This was published 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.200 by the University of California Press in nineteen seventy four. 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.680 I'm not positive. I think this might be a reprint 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:32.119 of some earlier writings of Kola Shovs, but the context 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:34.800 is um. I was consulting an early section of this 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:39.600 book where he's discussing a series of investigations he and 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.440 his colleagues carried out in the late nineteen teens and 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:45.880 into the twenties, essentially to try to figure out how 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.800 film actually works. That they were asking questions like how 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.320 do audiences make meaning out of the images they see 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.720 over the course of a film? Which is a great question, 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.760 and it is something that early filmmakers really had to 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:02.080 fe guar out. We we can take a lot of 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:06.600 film meaning making for granted these days, because uh, you know, 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.880 film techniques are so well honed these days that they're 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.640 often invisible to us. You know, you you if you 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:17.240 watch a professionally made movie, you will you will not 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:19.880 even notice the fact that, say, all of the eye 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.680 lines and it have been aligned correctly so that when 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:24.960 a character looks at something and then it cuts to 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:28.239 that thing, it's lined up so that it's not confusing. 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:30.600 But that's like a technique that had to be learned, 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:32.680 and there are tons of things like that. They're just 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.000 invisible to us now, as as a lot of good 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.400 filmmaking techniques are I mean ideally, I guess, well, I 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:40.440 mean there are different ideas of this, but you know, 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:43.320 a common view I think among a lot of filmmakers 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.200 is that techniques should not call attention to themselves, but 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.400 instead should disappear and allow you to just become totally 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:51.960 absorbed in the narrative to help bring about the raw 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:56.160 experience quality of modern cinema. Yeah. Yeah, and that's I mean, 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:59.240 that's something I like to stick to. I mean, unless 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:05.200 the film is so uh poor. It's a execution that 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:07.720 you can't help but but notice it, you know, well 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.320 when yeah, And certainly there's plenty of examples of that. 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.760 But so Kolashav and colleagues are trying to investigate how 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:17.320 does film work? What what are the techniques that that 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:20.600 cause an audience to think or feel a certain way? 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:24.640 And so famously Kolashov feels that he has achieved a 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:28.040 breakthrough when he starts to discover the power of montage 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:31.320 or editing. He starts to think of editing as a 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:35.160 sort of master key behind the power of cinema, and 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.320 he believes that montage has a power greater than simply 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.960 showing you a series of moving images in sequence so 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.080 that you think, well, one follows the other. Instead, he 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.400 comes to think that by ordering shots in a sequence, 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:53.320 you actually change the meaning of the shots themselves, or 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.040 change the perception of what is contained in the shots. 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.240 And there's a memorable example that Kolashov describes in the book. 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.840 I'll just read it directly. He says, I saw this 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:07.520 scene I think in a film by Razumni, a priest's 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.639 house with a portrait of Nicholas, the second hanging on 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:13.800 the wall that though that would be the czar right uh, 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:16.639 the village is taken over by the Red Army. The 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:20.040 frightened priest turns the portrait over, and on the reverse 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:23.720 side of the portrait is the smiling face of Lenin. However, 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:27.080 this is a familiar portrait, a portrait in which Lenin 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:30.439 is not smiling. But that spot in the film was 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:33.639 so funny, and it was so uproariously received by the 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:38.320 public that I, myself scrutinizing the portrait several times, saw 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:43.200 the portrait of Lenin as smiling. Especially intrigued by this, 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:46.280 I obtained the portrait that was used and saw that 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.359 the expression on the face in the portrait was serious. 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.600 The montage was so edited that we involuntarily imbued a 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:58.560 serious face with a changed expression characteristic of that playful moment. 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:01.840 In other words, the work of the actor was altered 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.320 by means of montage. In this way, montage had a 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:09.040 colossal influence on the effect of the material. It became 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:12.280 apparent that it was possible to change the actor's work, 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:16.679 his movements, his very behavior in either one direction or 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:20.560 the other through montage. I thought this was a great example, 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.080 because I haven't seen the film in question. But but 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:27.639 I can understand exactly the effect he's describing here with 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.879 this portrait of Lenin because of the tone of the scene. 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.439 The context makes it darkly comedic, like it's funny, but 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.440 it's also threatening, that a serious or neutral face could 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:42.600 be perceived as having a kind of wicked grin. M. Yeah, 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:47.120 you know, this reminds me just in general, of any 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:48.560 time you have kind of a a kind of a portrait 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:51.280 he had a painting or a photograph. Um, I guess that. 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.560 You know, just in general outside of film, it can 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:58.360 seem to take on different dimensions based on what you 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:02.280 are doing or what your mindset is. If you're sort 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.600 of imagining that the that the subject of the painting 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:08.040 or picture can see you, or you're leaning into that 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:14.159 sort of interpretation, like why is Vigo the Carpathian staring 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:16.600 in there like that? Is he? Is he proud? Is 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.520 he angry at me? Is he smiling? Oh? That makes 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:22.560 me wonder did they when the film Ghostbusters too, did 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.000 they have multiple paintings of Vigo with slightly different expressions 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:29.280 on his face or did they just use one portrait 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:31.520 and and rely on the cool a shov effect? For 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.399 I read emotions into it. I wish I thought of 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.439 this earlier. Well, anyway, so we're about to get to 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:42.160 the description of the main alleged experiment that establishes the 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:44.560 this that we're about to get into canonical cool Ashov 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:49.879 effect territory. So, following this realization about the power of 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.760 editing or montage to change what is perceived within the 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:57.879 shot itself, there's this famous story about an experiment cool 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:00.600 a Shov supposedly carried out to put the idea to 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.639 the test. And I want to flag at the beginning 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:07.159 here that multiple sources I have read raised questions about 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.880 whether this test ever actually took place in the way 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:13.560 it is described. Um, but I'd say it doesn't especially matter, 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.000 because we're going to be just using this story to 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:18.480 illustrate an idea. Then we can look at other tests 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:22.280 later not to provide evidential force that it must be, 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.880 as Kolashev says, So whether or not this event actually 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.520 took place exactly like this, this is how it's described 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.520 in a book called How Movies Work by Bruce Kawen. 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:37.000 This was University of California Press. Kawen writes as follows 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:41.400 about Kolashev's experiment. He found some old footage of a 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:46.879 pre revolutionary actor named Yvonne mujukin a single long take, 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:50.440 probably a makeup test, in which the face showed an 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:55.800 unvarying neutral expression. Kulashev then cut three different shots into 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:58.800 this take, one of a child playing with a toy, 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.239 one of a bowl of soup, and one of an 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:05.600 old woman in a coffin the sequence when as follows 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:13.960 face child face, soup face, woman face. When he showed 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:16.280 this short film to an audience, although this may be 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.639 a bit of cinematic folklore, they remarked what a great 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:23.560 actor Masukan was. They enjoyed the subtle way he expressed 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:27.640 affectionate delight at the child's playing, hunger for soup, and 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:30.160 grief at the death of the woman whom they assumed 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.560 was his mother. The Masoukan experiment, as it has since 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:36.399 been called, had a permanent impact on the theory of 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:40.199 screen acting. It showed that audiences will read shots in 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.400 terms of each other, and therefore that a film actor 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:47.399 who ought ideally to under act could allow the montage 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:50.360 to suggest some of his or her emotions and thoughts. 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.959 The point for our immediate purposes, however, is simply that 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:58.159 the impression of continuity is often generated by the audience. 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:02.359 Now will come with some additional history of research to 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:06.879 build upon this later, But Kulashov used this alleged experiment 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:10.200 in support of his broader theory of how film worked, 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:12.760 one of the main points of which was that the 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:16.840 soul of a film was in the editing process, and 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:19.679 that the edit of the film actually had more power 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:24.160 over the film's effect than the contents of any individual shot. 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:27.199 I think another way of phrasing this is that the 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.719 way you edit your footage together is ultimately more important 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:34.520 than what an actor does while the cameras rolling, because 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:37.760 the meaning of an actor's performance can be totally changed 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:42.280 by the editing context. And in fact, Kolashov allegedly carried 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:45.280 out a couple of other experiments along these lines that 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:50.320 are known sometimes as creative geography and creative anatomy. Creative 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:55.240