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Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Joe here, I'm just cutting in before the

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Speaker 1: music with a brief editorial insert it's happened before it

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Speaker 1: happened again. This is one of those episodes that went long.

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Speaker 1: Rob and I originally planned it to be one standalone chat,

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Speaker 1: but it started taking on an unwieldy form while we

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Speaker 1: were recording, so we decided to go ahead and chop

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Speaker 1: it up into two parts. So this is why in

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Speaker 1: a few minutes you might hear me make references to

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Speaker 1: things I'm going to bring up later in the episode,

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Speaker 1: but we actually won't get to them until part two,

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Speaker 1: so apologies for any confusion on that front. As a

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Speaker 1: general outline, we're going to introduce and illustrate our central

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Speaker 1: topic in part one here, and then we'll be going

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Speaker 1: deeper into the weeds of subsequent research in part two. So,

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Speaker 1: without any further delay, I'll now plunge you back into

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Speaker 1: the show. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production

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Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome who Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick,

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Speaker 1: and today we're gonna be talking about a concept known

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Speaker 1: as the Coolest Shop effect. This is an idea from

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Speaker 1: film theory. But I think this will make a really

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Speaker 1: interesting episode because it's first of all, it's at that

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Speaker 1: that weird intersection space, you know, the midnight at the

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Speaker 1: crossroads of of art and science. And then uh, Secondarily,

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Speaker 1: I think it's one of those great observations that is simple,

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Speaker 1: almost obvious in its implications when when you first grasp it,

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Speaker 1: but you the more you think about it, the weirder

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Speaker 1: and more powerful it gets, especially in a historical context. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is an interesting topic and one I have to

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Speaker 1: admit that I don't think i'd ever really absorbed before.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if it ever came up in um

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Speaker 1: any of like the film classes that I took, like

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Speaker 1: in college. Um same here and uh and and at

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Speaker 1: the same time, Yeah, I read about this and then

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Speaker 1: went out and actually watched um um, I watched a

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Speaker 1: film and watched you know, probably a couple of TV

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Speaker 1: shows over the weekend, and so I had it fresh

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Speaker 1: on my mind looking for it. And on one hand,

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Speaker 1: you do see it everywhere, but then you don't, like

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Speaker 1: it's uh, it's this thing that that when you're when

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Speaker 1: you first read about it, it sounds like, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: this is like part of the blueprint of how film works,

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Speaker 1: and that's kind of that's kind of one of the

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Speaker 1: arguments that's made for it, And yet it's not necessarily

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Speaker 1: as a parent as you might expect it to be,

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Speaker 1: but there are some wonderful examples to be to be

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Speaker 1: dwelt upon. Well, the way i'd put it, after having

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Speaker 1: done all the research for this episode, is that I

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Speaker 1: think it is sort of part of the blueprint of

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Speaker 1: how film works, except in the way it's usually explained.

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Speaker 1: It's just a few degrees off. Yeah, yeah, that would

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Speaker 1: I think that would make sense. But I'll explain more

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Speaker 1: about that as as we go on. Another thing that's

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Speaker 1: interesting about this though, is it's something that's originally from

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Speaker 1: the realm of art and esthetic criticism. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: from film theory, but it also has a sort of

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Speaker 1: mixed research history within the fields of experiment mental psychology,

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Speaker 1: and neuroscience. You know, there's some empirical experiments that seem

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Speaker 1: to find evidence of the effect and others do not

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Speaker 1: find it. And I think part of the part of

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Speaker 1: the difference there is how you ask the question and

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Speaker 1: what kind of stimula you use. But it could be

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Speaker 1: interesting to see what the difference is there as well,

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Speaker 1: But I guess we should get straight to explaining what

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Speaker 1: the coolest show of effect allegedly is. So, in the

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Speaker 1: words of the authors of a two thousand six neuroscience

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Speaker 1: paper by mobs at All that I'll refer to later

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Speaker 1: in the episode, the coolest jov effect is the following proposition.

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Speaker 1: It is that quote, the manipulation of context can alter

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Speaker 1: an audiences perception of an actor's facial expressions, thoughts, and feelings. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this is something that is at at the very

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Speaker 1: root of everything. Is is based on theory of mind,

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Speaker 1: that we as humans look at another person and we

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Speaker 1: simulate what's going on in their head, what, what are

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Speaker 1: their thoughts, what are their motivations, what are their intentions, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: Um uh so, yeah, it's theory theory, theory of mind

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Speaker 1: at heart. But it's not just the face. It's also

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Speaker 1: something else. And basically this gets into just an into

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Speaker 1: filmmaking and editing, right. It's the the idea of montage.

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Speaker 1: That's the word that's often used here, but that would

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Speaker 1: probably give us ideas of a very specific technique of like,

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Speaker 1: you know, you're like the training montage and Rocky film

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Speaker 1: or something. You should actually be thinking of montage when

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Speaker 1: we say it in this episode. More broadly, it's not

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Speaker 1: just that. It means the the arrangement of different shots

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Speaker 1: into a sequence through editing. No matter what kind of

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Speaker 1: technique you're using there, If you're taking different shots and

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Speaker 1: putting them into a sequence, that is montage for today's purposes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and again it all comes back to editing. The

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Speaker 1: way the footage is put together, you can basically think

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Speaker 1: of it as like face p O V shot face um.

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Speaker 1: For instance, Alfred Hitchcock described it once as being a

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Speaker 1: situation where okay, again, think of three shots. First shot,

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Speaker 1: he says, his man looking out the window. Shot number

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Speaker 1: three is a man smiling. Now what you put in

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Speaker 1: that second slot, whatever that second shot is that you insert,

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Speaker 1: that changes the context entirely. Now, uh, As we were

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Speaker 1: discussing before we recorded here, this Alfred Hitchcock example, the

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Speaker 1: widely cided is also a little imperfect because if you

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Speaker 1: want to get right down to the like the core theory,

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Speaker 1: it's just it's shot one should be a man looking

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Speaker 1: out a window. Shot number three should just be that

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Speaker 1: man looking out a window, No smile. But it still

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Speaker 1: comes down to what is shot number two, because that

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Speaker 1: changes how you think about that man. In shot three, right,

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Speaker 1: you seem to see something different in the man, even

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Speaker 1: though you could use the exact same footage of him.

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Speaker 1: So the editing context changes what we think we see

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Speaker 1: in a previous or a subsequent shot, even though you're

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Speaker 1: using the exact same shots. So one of the funny

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Speaker 1: in Hitchcock example he uh he talks about this in

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Speaker 1: a famous interview I think he did with maybe it

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Speaker 1: was with the CBC or somebody, but but he was

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Speaker 1: using the example of Okay, in the first uh sequence,

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Speaker 1: imagine that the middle shot that's intercut there is like

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Speaker 1: a mother playing with a baby, and in that case, oh,

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Speaker 1: he's a kindly old grandfather man. And then the second

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Speaker 1: option is that the middle shot is a woman in

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Speaker 1: a bathing suit, in which case he says, then you

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Speaker 1: perceive his smile as being that of a dirty old man.

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Speaker 1: And I guess it kind of helps because it's actually

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Speaker 1: Alfred Hitchcock they use in the visual example. Now we'll

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Speaker 1: come back to more about what this idea is and

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Speaker 1: what it might mean, but maybe first we should just

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Speaker 1: do a little bit of biography on the namesake of

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Speaker 1: this idea. So the cool Ashov effect is named after

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Speaker 1: a guy named Lev Kolashov, who was a Russian filmmaker

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Speaker 1: and film theorist who I think, I don't know, you

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Speaker 1: could say it was like a major force in the

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Speaker 1: history of film theory and and uh and is primarily

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Speaker 1: responsible for popularizing this alleged effect. Yes, Lev Kulashev who

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Speaker 1: lived nine seventy Russian director film theorists who started out

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Speaker 1: in art direction and some acting before moving increasingly into directing,

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Speaker 1: experimental editing and scholarship. He was one of the founders

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Speaker 1: of the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, he introduced the American film concept of montage

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Speaker 1: into Soviet cinema based on examining the works of directors

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Speaker 1: such as D. W. Griffith. And as David Gillepski points

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Speaker 1: out in his book Early Soviet Cinema, he quote played

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Speaker 1: a more significant part in the development of the Golden

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Speaker 1: Age of Russian cinema than any other figure with the

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Speaker 1: exception of Eisenstein. And this would referred to Sergei Eisenstein,

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Speaker 1: another big name and film a big big name Russian

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Speaker 1: film director of the time. Period theorist of the day

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Speaker 1: who listeners might know from such films as a Battleship

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Speaker 1: Potempkin from that's the old baby Stroller Down the Stairs

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Speaker 1: movie right now. One thing I do remember from actual

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Speaker 1: film classes that I took in college was that a

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Speaker 1: lot of early Soviet cinema does make use of the montage,

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Speaker 1: more in the sense of the specific film technique where

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Speaker 1: you're like taking a bunch of different images and and

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Speaker 1: putting them together to suggest a kind of, uh, a

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Speaker 1: kind of sequence or progression, more like the training montage.

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Speaker 1: But the main example I remember there is a movie

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Speaker 1: we watched by Vertav called The Man with the Movie Camera,

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Speaker 1: which is basically the whole movie is just a montage

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Speaker 1: of of you know, Russian public life. By the way,

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Speaker 1: if anyone out there wants to hear us talk even

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Speaker 1: more about silent film, we did an episode of Weird

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Speaker 1: How Cinema UM at some point in the last year

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Speaker 1: where we did like a silent film double feature where

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Speaker 1: we we picked out just a couple, maybe three different

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Speaker 1: silent films and talked about what was neat about them,

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Speaker 1: and just talked about sort of the challenges to the

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Speaker 1: modern viewer that that silent film poses, but also the

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Speaker 1: rewards of watching them. So what one of the main

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Speaker 1: things Kolosov was doing here was that he was he

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Speaker 1: wasn't even uh even even shooting new footage in these experiments. Uh,

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Speaker 1: he was taking pre existing footage, silent film footage usually

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Speaker 1: um Czarist era silent film, and re cutting them to

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Speaker 1: to see what could be done with this montage feature

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Speaker 1: like how how to arrange the footage to get different,

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Speaker 1: um you know, emotional results. And a lot of it

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Speaker 1: was based again in looking at what was going on

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Speaker 1: and what seemed to be working in uh in in

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Speaker 1: in Western film, in American film specifically, again like the

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Speaker 1: work of d. W. Griffith, and uh just in general

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Speaker 1: Koulish office was it was somewhat controversial at times, apparently

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Speaker 1: in in these uh these experiments, you know, he's looking

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Speaker 1: at American models, Western models, So he was accused by

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Speaker 1: Communist Party members at times of appealing to Western ideas

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Speaker 1: and forms too much. And he's also apparently been accused

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Speaker 1: of living it up during tough times in Russia and

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Speaker 1: destroying archive silent era films during this editing work, which,

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Speaker 1: again the work that wasn't really based that so much

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Speaker 1: in shooting new footage and experimenting with how you might

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Speaker 1: added them together, but taking pre existing footage from the

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Speaker 1: archive and adding it together. Now as a director, Kulashov

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Speaker 1: is apparently and I'm speaking largely of a director that

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Speaker 1: I really didn't know anything about before, so neither, but

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Speaker 1: he's apparently best known for 's The Extraordinary Adventures of

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Speaker 1: Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks. He also

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Speaker 1: adapted the works of Jack London and Oh Henry, but

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Speaker 1: especially for this show, we should really highlight that he

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Speaker 1: also made a death ray spy thriller. I thought this

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Speaker 1: was really interesting somehow. I guess this never came up

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Speaker 1: when we did our Invention episodes on the death ray,

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Speaker 1: or if it did, I've forgotten about it, because this

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Speaker 1: seemed new to me. But it fits right in there,

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Speaker 1: because if you haven't heard our episodes of the Invention

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Speaker 1: podcast on the death Ray, those were some of my

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Speaker 1: favorites that we did, especially because we got to talk

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Speaker 1: about an invention that never really existed and yet was

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Speaker 1: the subject of a popular fervor, you know that, Like

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Speaker 1: people were really excited about death rays for the nineteen twenties,

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Speaker 1: and that just there was never any such thing. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the invention itself never existed, but you had kind of

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Speaker 1: a global death ray fever going on. And this is

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Speaker 1: so it's right smack dab in the middle of it,

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Speaker 1: a film titled lut Smirty or the Death Ray. Galetski

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Speaker 1: describes it as quote a relatively violent film about international espionage.

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Speaker 1: So I had to look in. I looked at footage

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Speaker 1: the available footage that I could find out. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: wasn't super great to watch, but there's some impressive stills.

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Speaker 1: The plot is spot on for what you might expect

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Speaker 1: from a Soviet death ray movie at the time period.

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Speaker 1: We follow a socialist revolutionary who has to flee an

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Speaker 1: unnamed fascist capitalist country. The socialist revolutionary has to flee

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Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union, and once there he is introduced

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Speaker 1: to the new technology of the death ray, which can

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Speaker 1: explode gunpowder at a distance, which is a key detail

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Speaker 1: because that's exactly, uh, the sort of thing that was

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Speaker 1: part of the death ray fever that we discussed in

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Speaker 1: the Invention episode. That's right. So the brief top line

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Speaker 1: on that is that, uh, basically a lot of this

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Speaker 1: death ray fever came from reaction to the horrors of

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Speaker 1: long range bombing aerial bombing in World War One, and

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Speaker 1: people wanted the idea of something that could shoot bombers

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Speaker 1: out of the sky from a great distance before they

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Speaker 1: got to your cities, and the death ray filled in

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Speaker 1: that gap exactly. So basically, the evil spy follows him

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Speaker 1: and steals the death ray technology so that they can

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Speaker 1: use it to suppress labor strikes. But don't worry, the

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Speaker 1: labor strikers steal the death ray technology back and use

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Speaker 1: it to blow up their oppressors bomber aircraft which is

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Speaker 1: about to be used against the strikers. This almost makes

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Speaker 1: me want to compile and watch a list of all

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Speaker 1: the death ray movies of the nineteen twenties. Just put

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Speaker 1: them all together and see see what kind of picture emerges. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: or and I'm curious, like, what is the best death

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Speaker 1: ray movie? I'm I'm assuming the best death ray movies

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Speaker 1: came later, um came in the wake of films such

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Speaker 1: as this Thank Okay, Well, so that's love kool a

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Speaker 1: Shov and I wanted to get a little bit into

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Speaker 1: the background of this idea of the Coolershov effect by

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Speaker 1: consulting his own words. So I found a book called

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Speaker 1: cool a shov on Film Writings. This was published by

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Speaker 1: the University of California Press in nineteen seventy four. I'm

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Speaker 1: not positive. I think this might a reprint of some

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Speaker 1: earlier writings of Cooler Jobs, but the context is um

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Speaker 1: I was consulting an early section of this book where

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Speaker 1: he's discussing a series of investigations he and his colleagues

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Speaker 1: carried out in the late nineteen teens and into the twenties,

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Speaker 1: essentially to try to figure out how film actually works.

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Speaker 1: That they were asking questions like how do audiences make

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Speaker 1: meaning out of the images they see over the course

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Speaker 1: of a film, Which is a great question and it

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Speaker 1: is something that early filmmakers really had to figure out.

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Speaker 1: We we can take a lot of film meaning making

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Speaker 1: for granted these days, because uh, you know, film techniques

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Speaker 1: are so well honed these days that they're often invisible

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Speaker 1: to us. You know, you you, if you watch a

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Speaker 1: professionally made movie, you will you will not even notice

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Speaker 1: the fact that, say, all of the eye lines and

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Speaker 1: it have been aligned correctly so that when a character

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Speaker 1: looks at something and then it cuts to that thing,

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Speaker 1: it's lined up so that it's not confusing, but that's

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Speaker 1: like a technique that had to be learned, and there

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Speaker 1: are tons of things like that. They're just invisible to

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Speaker 1: us now, as as a lot of good filmmaking techniques are,

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Speaker 1: I mean ideally, I guess, uh well, I mean there

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Speaker 1: are different ideas of this, but you know, a common

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Speaker 1: view I think among a lot of filmmakers is that

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Speaker 1: techniques should not call attention to themselves, but instead should

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Speaker 1: disappear and allow you to just become totally absorbed in

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Speaker 1: the narrative to help bring about the raw experience quality

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Speaker 1: of modern cinema. Yeah, yeah, and that's I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: something I like to stick to. I mean, unless the

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Speaker 1: film is so poor it's a execution that you can't

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Speaker 1: help but but notice it, you know, well when Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and certainly there's plenty of examples of that. But so

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Speaker 1: cool A Chav and colleagues are trying to investigate how

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Speaker 1: does film work? What what are the techniques that that

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Speaker 1: cause an audience to think or feel a certain way?

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Speaker 1: And so famously, Kolashaw feels that he has achieved a

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Speaker 1: breakthrough when he starts to discover the power hour of

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Speaker 1: montage or editing. He starts to think of editing as

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Speaker 1: a sort of master key behind the power of cinema,

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Speaker 1: and he believes that montage has a power greater than

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Speaker 1: simply showing you a series of moving images in sequence

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Speaker 1: so that you think, well, one follows the other. Instead,

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Speaker 1: he comes to think that by ordering shots in a sequence,

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Speaker 1: you actually change the meaning of the shots themselves, or

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Speaker 1: change the perception of what is contained in the shots.

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Speaker 1: And there's a memorable example that Kolashov describes in the book.

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Speaker 1: I'll just read it directly. He says, I saw this

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Speaker 1: scene I think in a film by Rezumni, a priest's

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Speaker 1: house with a portrait of Nicholas the second hanging on

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Speaker 1: the wall, that that would be the czar right uh,

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Speaker 1: the village is taken over by the Red Army. The

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Speaker 1: frightened priest turns the portrait over and on the reverse

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Speaker 1: side of the portrait is the smiling face of Lenin. However,

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Speaker 1: this is a familiar portrait, a portrait in which Lennon

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Speaker 1: is not smiling. But that spot in the film was

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Speaker 1: so funny and it was so uproariously received by the

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Speaker 1: public that I myself scrutinizing the portrait several times saw

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Speaker 1: the portrait of Lenin as smiling. Especially intrigued by this,

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Speaker 1: I obtained the portrait that was used and saw that

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Speaker 1: the expression on the face in the portrait was serious.

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Speaker 1: The montage was so edited that we involuntarily imbued a

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Speaker 1: serious face with a changed expression characteristic of that playful moment.

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Speaker 1: In other words, the work of the actor was altered

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Speaker 1: by means of montage. In this way, montage had a

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Speaker 1: colossal influence on the effect of the material. It became

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Speaker 1: apparent that it was possible to change the actor's work,

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Speaker 1: his movement, his very behavior in either one direction or

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Speaker 1: the other through montage. I thought this was a great

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Speaker 1: example because I haven't seen the film in question, but

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Speaker 1: but I can understand exactly the effect he's describing he

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Speaker 1: or with this portrait of Lenin because of the tone

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Speaker 1: of the scene. The context makes it darkly comedic, like

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Speaker 1: it's funny, but it's also threatening. That a serious or

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Speaker 1: neutral face could be perceived as having a kind of

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Speaker 1: wicked grin. Mm hmm, yeah, you know that this reminds me,

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Speaker 1: just in general, of any time you have kind of

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Speaker 1: kind of a portrait. He had a painting or a photograph. Um,

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Speaker 1: I guess that. You know, just in general, outside of film,

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Speaker 1: it can seem to take on different dimensions based on

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Speaker 1: what you are doing or what your mindset is. If

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Speaker 1: you're sort of imagining that the that the subject of

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Speaker 1: the painting or picture can see you, or you're leaning

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Speaker 1: into that sort of interpretation, like why is Vigo the

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Speaker 1: Carpathian staring in there like that? Is he? Is he proud?

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Speaker 1: Is he angry at me? Is he smiling? Oh? That

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Speaker 1: makes me wonder did they when the film Ghostbusters too?

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Speaker 1: Did they have multiple paintings of Vigo with slightly different

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Speaker 1: expressions on his face? Or did they just use one

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Speaker 1: portrait and and rely on the kool a Shov effect

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Speaker 1: For us, I read emotions into it. I wish I

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Speaker 1: thought of this earlier. Well, anyway, so we're about to

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Speaker 1: get to the description of the main alleged experiment that

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Speaker 1: establishes the this that we're about to get into canonical

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Speaker 1: kool Ashov effect territory. So, following this realization about the

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Speaker 1: power of editing or montage to change what is perceived

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Speaker 1: within the shot itself, there's this famous story about an

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Speaker 1: experiment kol Ashov supposedly carried out to put the idea

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Speaker 1: to the test. And I want to flag at the

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Speaker 1: beginning here that multiple sources I've read raised questions about

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Speaker 1: whether this test ever actually took place in the way

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Speaker 1: it is described. Um, but I'd say it doesn't especially matter,

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Speaker 1: because we're going to be just using this story to

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Speaker 1: illustrate an idea. Then we can look at other tests later,

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Speaker 1: not to provide evidential force that it must be, as

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Speaker 1: Kolashov says, So whether or not this event actually took

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Speaker 1: place exact like this, This is how it's described in

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Speaker 1: a book called How Movies Work by Bruce Kawen. This

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Speaker 1: was a University of California press. Kawen writes, as follows

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Speaker 1: about Kulashev's experiment. He found some old footage of a

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Speaker 1: pre revolutionary actor named Yvonne majukin a single long take,

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Speaker 1: probably a makeup test, in which the face showed an

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Speaker 1: unvarying neutral expression. Kulashev then cut three different shots into

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Speaker 1: this take, one of a child playing with a toy,

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Speaker 1: one of a bowl of soup, and one of an

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Speaker 1: old woman in a coffin the sequence when as follows,

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Speaker 1: face child, face, soup, face woman face. When he showed

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Speaker 1: this short film to an audience. Although this may be

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Speaker 1: a bit of cinematic folklore, they remarked what a great

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Speaker 1: actor Majukin was. They enjoyed the subtle way he expressed

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Speaker 1: affectionate delight at the child's playing hunger soup, and grief

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Speaker 1: at the death of the woman whom they assumed was

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Speaker 1: his mother. The Masoukan experiment, as it has since been called,

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Speaker 1: had a permanent impact on the theory of screen acting.

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Speaker 1: It showed that audiences will read shots in terms of

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Speaker 1: each other, and therefore that a film actor who ought

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Speaker 1: ideally to under act could allow the montage to suggest

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Speaker 1: some of his or her emotions and thoughts. The point

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Speaker 1: for our immediate purposes, however, is simply that the impression

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Speaker 1: of continuity is often generated by the audience. Now we'll

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Speaker 1: come back with some additional history of research to to

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Speaker 1: build upon this later, But Kulashov used this alleged experiment

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Speaker 1: in support of his broader theory of how film worked,

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Speaker 1: one of the main points of which was that the

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Speaker 1: soul of a film was in the editing process, and

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Speaker 1: that the edit of the film actually had more power

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Speaker 1: over the film's effect than the contents of any individual shot.

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Speaker 1: I think another way of phrasing this is that the

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Speaker 1: way you edit your footage together is ultimately more important

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Speaker 1: than what an actor does while the cameras rolling, because

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Speaker 1: the meaning of an actor's performance can be totally changed

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Speaker 1: by the editing context. And in fact, Kolashov allegedly carried

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Speaker 1: out a couple of other experiments along these lines that

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Speaker 1: are known sometimes as creative geography and creative anatomy. Creative

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Speaker 1: anatomy would be using shots of parts of different bodies

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Speaker 1: from different actors, creating the illusion that they all belonged

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Speaker 1: to the same person, So you can show a different

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Speaker 1: person's hands, lips, legs, and so forth and create an imaginary,

397
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Speaker 1: composite person that doesn't exist. He also did the same

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Speaker 1: thing with physical geography, so he would have, for example,

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Speaker 1: a shot of people walking along a street in Moscow

400
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Speaker 1: and then maybe going up a staircase and then going

401
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Speaker 1: to a mansion that was actually the White House in Washington,

402
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Speaker 1: d C. Creating the illusion that they're all there's just

403
00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:01,840
Speaker 1: one continuous all call in the same place, but they're

404
00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:04,959
Speaker 1: on different continents, which at the time they looked at

405
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:08,119
Speaker 1: that discovery as revelatory. They're like, oh wow, Like you

406
00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:12,760
Speaker 1: actually don't need to shoot stuff that's in the same

407
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Speaker 1: geographic place in order to suggest being in the same

408
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Speaker 1: geographic place. You can invent geographies that don't exist out

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Speaker 1: of different parts, which of course now it is just

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Speaker 1: this is just how you make films. You know, you

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Speaker 1: you you have one exterior and you maybe the interior

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Speaker 1: is a set or it's somewhere on the other side

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Speaker 1: of the country. You know. Um, you know, you read

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Speaker 1: you read any behind the scenes making just any of

415
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Speaker 1: your favorite films, and you'll find stuff like like the

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Speaker 1: Library and Ghostbusters the first Ghostbusters film. I think parts

417
00:23:43,080 --> 00:23:45,120
Speaker 1: of that are and just you know, they're from all over,

418
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Speaker 1: depending on whether you're outside or your inside or you're

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Speaker 1: in the basement. And then uh, and then also when

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Speaker 1: it comes to the anatomy question here, I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: it's why you have stunt doubles, body doubles. It's why

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Speaker 1: you can finish a film. Uh, even though Bello would

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Speaker 1: oc died whilst shooting it, right, So that's probably you're

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00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 1: getting into the poor example of it, and that that

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00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:09,919
Speaker 1: does specific example No. Plan nine for matter space is

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Speaker 1: a is a wonderful example of of what you can

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Speaker 1: do with the magic of cinema editing. But but to

428
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Speaker 1: get back to the core idea here the spit and

429
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Speaker 1: I think it'll be important for us to think about

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Speaker 1: the coolest show effect in a couple of different ways.

431
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:35,880
Speaker 1: One is just the broader idea that editing context can

432
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:39,680
Speaker 1: radically change the meaning of individual shots, which I think

433
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:43,280
Speaker 1: we just all know from experiences is obviously true. This

434
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:47,520
Speaker 1: is a fact about how movies work. But the other

435
00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: thing is the more specific claim of the alleged MOSU

436
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:54,800
Speaker 1: can experiment that you can take a totally neutral shot

437
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 1: of an actor's face, displaying no emotion whatsoever, and by

438
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:02,719
Speaker 1: intercutting it with other footage, you can change what the

439
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: audience perceives in those shots of the actor's face. You

440
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: can the audience will come to think that, you know,

441
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:12,920
Speaker 1: a neutral face intercut with the image of a child

442
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 1: playing is like a happy parental uh, you know, and

443
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 1: like a bowl of soup means they're they're they're filled

444
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: with pangs of hunger, even though it's the exact same

445
00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: neutral footage of the face. So that's the more specific claim,

446
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 1: And I think it's that second one that's more questionable

447
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,520
Speaker 1: but but also interesting in its own regard, and we're

448
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 1: gonna look at least a couple of papers about that

449
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:35,240
Speaker 1: as we go on, but I thought it might be

450
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:37,959
Speaker 1: good to just discuss a few examples that this UH

451
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:42,159
Speaker 1: thinking about this effect calls to mind from UH, from

452
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,880
Speaker 1: movies that you and I have seen. And one thing

453
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: I find very interesting is that, at least personally, anecdotally,

454
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:51,719
Speaker 1: I feel a kind of experience of the coolest Shov effect,

455
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: even the more specific version with neutral faces in movies

456
00:25:56,080 --> 00:26:01,240
Speaker 1: that don't actually involve real faces. A really great example

457
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:04,119
Speaker 1: I came across was mentioned on the TV tropes website

458
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: for the cooler Shov effect. If you never never been

459
00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 1: to that website, it's a great it's like a wiki style,

460
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,640
Speaker 1: you know, user submitted content, but it just includes big

461
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:16,199
Speaker 1: lists of different sorts of conventions of of TV and

462
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:20,199
Speaker 1: movies and things like that, narrative conventions, filmmaking conventions, UH

463
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 1: cliches and such, and so they've got a page on

464
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:26,320
Speaker 1: the cooler shop effect, and it mentioned how in two

465
00:26:26,320 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: thousand one of Space Odyssey, which I thought was a

466
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:33,160
Speaker 1: fantastic example. Oh, I absolutely agree, and I wouldn't have

467
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:36,159
Speaker 1: thought of it at first myself. But yeah, you just

468
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: have that red light that how has no face at all,

469
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,400
Speaker 1: not even the semblance of the face exactly. So yeah,

470
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:44,680
Speaker 1: it's not even a computer screen that kind of looks

471
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 1: like a face. It's just a red light. Uh. And

472
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,959
Speaker 1: so that completely removes the possibility of picking up on

473
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,240
Speaker 1: queues and micro expressions based on the feelings or mind

474
00:26:55,280 --> 00:26:58,120
Speaker 1: state of a human actor. House face is just the light.

475
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 1: And yet the editing context, at least for me, absolutely

476
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:07,640
Speaker 1: causes me to read emotional expression and emotional content into

477
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 1: the red light. So sometimes, depending on what it's being

478
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:14,400
Speaker 1: intercut with, the light looks calm. Other times the red

479
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 1: light looks suspicious or even paranoid. Yeah, yeah, that's I think.

480
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 1: This is this is this is a great read. Um it.

481
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,719
Speaker 1: It reminds me of another example that I ran across.

482
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:27,199
Speaker 1: I was I was just looking for at first, I

483
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:30,200
Speaker 1: was just looking for mainstream examples, you know, and h

484
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: I ran across um a video from making star Wars

485
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 1: dot net. It points to some examples in Star Wars,

486
00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 1: the first of which is is just pretty pretty standard.

487
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: I imagine. Um, you have the scene where Luke is

488
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: surveying the destruction of his aunt and uncle's home. Have

489
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 1: shots of devastation, shots of Luke's face. Uh, you know,

490
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 1: so they inform each other. But the more impressive examples

491
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,280
Speaker 1: I thought, we're discussions of how you have shots of

492
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: Darth Vader during the final confrontation in um, the Return

493
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,480
Speaker 1: of the Jedi. Uh, this is this is where uh,

494
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:06,200
Speaker 1: Emperor Palpatine has has had Luke Invader fight and then

495
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 1: Luke refuses to kill his father, and so, uh, the

496
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:12,879
Speaker 1: Emperor is just going to force lightning him to death

497
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: in front of Vader. And we of course, you know

498
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: later in the film, we we see Vader's face, but

499
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:20,280
Speaker 1: you don't see Vader's face. You just see this, uh,

500
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 1: this emotionless bug skull helmet. But in that scene where

501
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 1: we're seeing what he's seeing, we're seeing shots of Luke suffering,

502
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:35,480
Speaker 1: writhing under the agony of the force lightning. Um. We

503
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: we we we see that change Invader even though we

504
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 1: don't see his face. I totally agree. I think this

505
00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 1: is another great example. Yeah, it's just the mask, so

506
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: you can't be picking up on human expressions, but yeah,

507
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: you read expression into the mask face based on what's

508
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:56,000
Speaker 1: happening to Luke, you start to almost see him feeling compassion. Yeah.

509
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: Another example they bring up is the Mandalorian TV show

510
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: where through most of it, the title character of the

511
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: Mandalorian does not remove his helmet. And you probably have

512
00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: more room to even explore how this works in that

513
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: TV show because you know Vader Vader's you know, you're

514
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 1: generally dealing with severe situations, but in the over the

515
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: course of the Mandalorian TV show, you have him interacting

516
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 1: with with light and cute things, with comedic things as

517
00:29:22,200 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 1: well as serious things, and so there's plenty of opportunity

518
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: for that. Again, this you know, emotionless Mandalorian helmet in

519
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:34,719
Speaker 1: this case, uh, to to seem to convey different emotions. Uh.

520
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: And of course that's not to discount body language and

521
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 1: plenty of other, um, you know, cues that enable us

522
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 1: to lean into it. But but still, you know, all

523
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 1: these things work together to help us form that theory

524
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 1: of mind. What's going on inside Vader's mind, what's going

525
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 1: on inside the Mandalorian's mind, or Howe's mind. Absolutely. Yeah,

526
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: another great example. Now, one example I was I was

527
00:29:56,360 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 1: looking into and thinking about two brings us back to Hitchcot.

528
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 1: I was thinking about Psycho, which of course has has

529
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: a number of scenes that are very iconic, and you know,

530
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: we that easily come to mind, and you may even

531
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 1: be able to picture even if you haven't seen the film. Um,

532
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: but there's there's one scene in particular where Janet Lee's

533
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:17,920
Speaker 1: Marian Crane is changing clothes in her room at the

534
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: Bates Motel. Norman Bates played by the handsome Anthony Perkins,

535
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 1: is in an adjacent room. He approaches a picture frame,

536
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: he removes it and it reveals a peephole. Uh. He

537
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 1: puts his eye to the peephole, and we switched to

538
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 1: a p o V shot of his voyeurism. Here's Marion

539
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: Crane undressing, then a close up of his eye eyeball

540
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 1: like side view of his eyeball staring through the peephole.

541
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: She moves out of you in the in the p

542
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 1: o V shot, and then he places the picture frame

543
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 1: back over the peepole, back still turned to us. But

544
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: then he turns and we see his face and he

545
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: in his face is very interesting in this performance and

546
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: particularly in the scene because it is I mean, it's

547
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 1: it's hard to to just do exactly what he's feeling

548
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 1: like it's not like it's kind of blank. I mean,

549
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 1: I end up reading into it if i'm you know,

550
00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it, like what's he thinking? Obviously I

551
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:11,640
Speaker 1: know what's about to happen. He's going to go in

552
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: there and kill her while she's in the shower. So

553
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: it's easy to read in like grim determination. But he's

554
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 1: not like, you know, snarling and snickering with with with

555
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: fiendish desire in this scene or anything. Um. And it's

556
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: also interesting to think about this in terms of of

557
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: subversion because you know, we think of Anthony Perkins now

558
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: we think of Psycho, we think of him playing this, um,

559
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 1: this very troubled, uh murderous individual. But prior to this film,

560
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: he was like a Jimmy Stewart esque leading man and

561
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: a former teen heartthrob. So so Hitchcock was averting this

562
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: image in Psycho. So it's it's interesting to think about

563
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:52,840
Speaker 1: that watching a scene like this. So I also have

564
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: to add that having your character look through a peepo

565
00:31:55,880 --> 00:32:00,120
Speaker 1: like this is is hardly like neutral. That gives us

566
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:02,320
Speaker 1: a different idea. I mean, in the scene earlier, he's

567
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 1: he's got a very boy next door kind of energy.

568
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: He seems, uh, you know, just kind of like a sweet, shy,

569
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:11,640
Speaker 1: handsome young guy. Yeah, but yeah, once he's looking through

570
00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 1: the people, that does charge the way we read his

571
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 1: face very differently. Right now, speaking of Hitchcock and uh

572
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 1: and voyeurism, it's also worth worth noting that Rear Window,

573
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: starring the actual Jimmy Stewart, has plenty of examples of

574
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 1: this sort of thing, where, you know, a lot of

575
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: that movie is Jimmy Stewart's character looking through a telescope,

576
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 1: and then we have po V shots of what he's

577
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 1: seeing in other apartments and then he and then cuts

578
00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: back to him. Yeah. Now, one one more sort of

579
00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: it's sort of an example of it, but also kind

580
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 1: of a subversion of it, is a Spielberg face. This

581
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: is the close up of alle and Wonder on an

582
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 1: actor's glazed face in reaction to something they're looking at,

583
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: like a like a big old shark or a UFO

584
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: or a field full of dinosaurs or something. Well, in

585
00:32:56,640 --> 00:32:58,960
Speaker 1: the more specific sense, generally, I would say, these are

586
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 1: not neutral faces, but they are faces that are clearly

587
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:07,240
Speaker 1: they're having some kind of powerful inner experience. But it

588
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 1: sometimes might be ambiguous if you were to just see

589
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:13,200
Speaker 1: the face by itself, but then when it's intercut with

590
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 1: what they're looking at, it's it's very often awe right,

591
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: and and sometimes this is actually manipulated to uh to

592
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: a comedic effect online. For instance, in the Jurassic Park

593
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: sequence where they're you know, they're odd, they're getting out

594
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 1: of the car, they're just you know, completely zombified by

595
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:32,600
Speaker 1: something utterly amazing and holy before them. You don't know

596
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 1: what it is yet. I mean, you know it's going

597
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:36,480
Speaker 1: to be dinosaurs, but you haven't seen it yourself yet.

598
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: And so I feel feel like there's been a number

599
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: of of comedic debts where someone has has inserted something

600
00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: else there, uh, you know, something maybe more mundane than

601
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: than gigantic dinosaurs brought back to life through science the

602
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: new Taco bell menu item exactly. All right, Well, we

603
00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: ended up having a lot to say about the Coolest

604
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 1: Shov Effect. Actually, so I think we're gonna have to

605
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: call part one there. But when we come back, we

606
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:05,520
Speaker 1: can talk about some uh, some attempts to replicate the

607
00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:09,239
Speaker 1: original cool is show study, some interpretations of what maybe

608
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: lying behind it to the extent that it's true, and

609
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:15,240
Speaker 1: then maybe a little more research about ambiguous faces in general.

610
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to listen to

611
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:19,640
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can

612
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: find them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast

613
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:25,799
Speaker 1: feed with core episodes on Tuesday and Thursday, listener mail

614
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 1: on Monday, artifact on Wednesday, and hey, we're talking about film,

615
00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 1: so be aware that on Fridays, that's weird how cinema.

616
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:35,200
Speaker 1: That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and

617
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird or unusual film. Huge thanks

618
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:42,280
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

619
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:44,279
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

620
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:46,760
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

621
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

622
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:51,279
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact that Stuff to Blow

623
00:34:51,320 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

624
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

625
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:06,880
Speaker 1: heart Radio, this is the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

626
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:21,360
Speaker 1: or wherever you listening to your favorite shows