WEBVTT - The Kuleshov Effect, Part 1 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:03.000 Hey everybody, Joe here, I'm just cutting in before the 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:07.280 music with a brief editorial insert it's happened before it 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:09.879 happened again. This is one of those episodes that went long. 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:12.840 Rob and I originally planned it to be one standalone chat, 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:15.680 but it started taking on an unwieldy form while we 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.759 were recording, so we decided to go ahead and chop 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:21.200 it up into two parts. So this is why in 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:23.560 a few minutes you might hear me make references to 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.040 things I'm going to bring up later in the episode, 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:28.920 but we actually won't get to them until part two, 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.440 so apologies for any confusion on that front. As a 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.800 general outline, we're going to introduce and illustrate our central 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.600 topic in part one here, and then we'll be going 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:41.959 deeper into the weeds of subsequent research in part two. So, 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:45.280 without any further delay, I'll now plunge you back into 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:51.680 the show. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production 0:00:51.720 --> 0:01:00.840 of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome who Stuff to Blow 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:04.160 Your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.920 and today we're gonna be talking about a concept known 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:12.800 as the Coolest Shop effect. This is an idea from 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.040 film theory. But I think this will make a really 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.480 interesting episode because it's first of all, it's at that 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.720 that weird intersection space, you know, the midnight at the 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:27.240 crossroads of of art and science. And then uh, Secondarily, 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.360 I think it's one of those great observations that is simple, 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:35.000 almost obvious in its implications when when you first grasp it, 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:38.039 but you the more you think about it, the weirder 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:42.520 and more powerful it gets, especially in a historical context. Yeah, 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:44.240 this is an interesting topic and one I have to 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:47.520 admit that I don't think i'd ever really absorbed before. 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:49.600 I don't know if it ever came up in um 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:52.480 any of like the film classes that I took, like 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:56.800 in college. Um same here and uh and and at 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:59.320 the same time, Yeah, I read about this and then 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.160 went out and actually watched um um, I watched a 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:04.440 film and watched you know, probably a couple of TV 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:06.600 shows over the weekend, and so I had it fresh 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.280 on my mind looking for it. And on one hand, 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:11.400 you do see it everywhere, but then you don't, like 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:14.880 it's uh, it's this thing that that when you're when 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:16.560 you first read about it, it sounds like, oh, well, 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:19.280 this is like part of the blueprint of how film works, 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:21.400 and that's kind of that's kind of one of the 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:25.399 arguments that's made for it, And yet it's not necessarily 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:27.640 as a parent as you might expect it to be, 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:30.000 but there are some wonderful examples to be to be 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:32.960 dwelt upon. Well, the way i'd put it, after having 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:34.840 done all the research for this episode, is that I 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:37.440 think it is sort of part of the blueprint of 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.920 how film works, except in the way it's usually explained. 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:43.720 It's just a few degrees off. Yeah, yeah, that would 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.040 I think that would make sense. But I'll explain more 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.200 about that as as we go on. Another thing that's 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.239 interesting about this though, is it's something that's originally from 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:53.880 the realm of art and esthetic criticism. You know, it's 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:56.920 from film theory, but it also has a sort of 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.840 mixed research history within the fields of experiment mental psychology, 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:04.960 and neuroscience. You know, there's some empirical experiments that seem 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:07.720 to find evidence of the effect and others do not 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:10.720 find it. And I think part of the part of 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.560 the difference there is how you ask the question and 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:15.840 what kind of stimula you use. But it could be 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:18.119 interesting to see what the difference is there as well, 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.400 But I guess we should get straight to explaining what 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:25.320 the coolest show of effect allegedly is. So, in the 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.640 words of the authors of a two thousand six neuroscience 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:31.040 paper by mobs at All that I'll refer to later 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:34.880 in the episode, the coolest jov effect is the following proposition. 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:38.920 It is that quote, the manipulation of context can alter 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:46.200 an audiences perception of an actor's facial expressions, thoughts, and feelings. Yeah, 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.600 and this is something that is at at the very 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:52.560 root of everything. Is is based on theory of mind, 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.800 that we as humans look at another person and we 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:00.960 simulate what's going on in their head, what, what are 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:05.400 their thoughts, what are their motivations, what are their intentions, etcetera. 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:09.480 Um uh so, yeah, it's theory theory, theory of mind 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:11.560 at heart. But it's not just the face. It's also 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.880 something else. And basically this gets into just an into 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.520 filmmaking and editing, right. It's the the idea of montage. 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:22.200 That's the word that's often used here, but that would 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:25.080 probably give us ideas of a very specific technique of like, 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.320 you know, you're like the training montage and Rocky film 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:31.200 or something. You should actually be thinking of montage when 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:33.280 we say it in this episode. More broadly, it's not 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:38.159 just that. It means the the arrangement of different shots 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.440 into a sequence through editing. No matter what kind of 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.480 technique you're using there, If you're taking different shots and 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:48.960 putting them into a sequence, that is montage for today's purposes. Yeah, 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.320 and and again it all comes back to editing. The 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.360 way the footage is put together, you can basically think 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.760 of it as like face p O V shot face um. 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.880 For instance, Alfred Hitchcock described it once as being a 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.440 situation where okay, again, think of three shots. First shot, 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.200 he says, his man looking out the window. Shot number 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:13.040 three is a man smiling. Now what you put in 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.640 that second slot, whatever that second shot is that you insert, 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:20.560 that changes the context entirely. Now, uh, As we were 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.560 discussing before we recorded here, this Alfred Hitchcock example, the 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.719 widely cided is also a little imperfect because if you 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.599 want to get right down to the like the core theory, 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.080 it's just it's shot one should be a man looking 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.400 out a window. Shot number three should just be that 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.400 man looking out a window, No smile. But it still 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.040 comes down to what is shot number two, because that 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:43.800 changes how you think about that man. In shot three, right, 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.960 you seem to see something different in the man, even 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.400 though you could use the exact same footage of him. 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:53.400 So the editing context changes what we think we see 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:56.120 in a previous or a subsequent shot, even though you're 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.159 using the exact same shots. So one of the funny 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.200 in Hitchcock example he uh he talks about this in 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.200 a famous interview I think he did with maybe it 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:08.000 was with the CBC or somebody, but but he was 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.080 using the example of Okay, in the first uh sequence, 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:14.360 imagine that the middle shot that's intercut there is like 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:17.680 a mother playing with a baby, and in that case, oh, 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.800 he's a kindly old grandfather man. And then the second 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:22.800 option is that the middle shot is a woman in 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.039 a bathing suit, in which case he says, then you 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:27.719 perceive his smile as being that of a dirty old man. 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:30.200 And I guess it kind of helps because it's actually 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:34.279 Alfred Hitchcock they use in the visual example. Now we'll 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.400 come back to more about what this idea is and 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.200 what it might mean, but maybe first we should just 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:44.440 do a little bit of biography on the namesake of 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:48.040 this idea. So the cool Ashov effect is named after 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:52.280 a guy named Lev Kolashov, who was a Russian filmmaker 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:56.080 and film theorist who I think, I don't know, you 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:57.919 could say it was like a major force in the 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.720 history of film theory and and uh and is primarily 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:08.160 responsible for popularizing this alleged effect. Yes, Lev Kulashev who 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:13.160 lived nine seventy Russian director film theorists who started out 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:18.080 in art direction and some acting before moving increasingly into directing, 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.400 experimental editing and scholarship. He was one of the founders 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.520 of the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School. 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.360 And yeah, he introduced the American film concept of montage 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:32.440 into Soviet cinema based on examining the works of directors 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:36.520 such as D. W. Griffith. And as David Gillepski points 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.760 out in his book Early Soviet Cinema, he quote played 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.400 a more significant part in the development of the Golden 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.720 Age of Russian cinema than any other figure with the 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:51.080 exception of Eisenstein. And this would referred to Sergei Eisenstein, 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.800 another big name and film a big big name Russian 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:57.400 film director of the time. Period theorist of the day 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.120 who listeners might know from such films as a Battleship 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:05.320 Potempkin from that's the old baby Stroller Down the Stairs 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.200 movie right now. One thing I do remember from actual 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:11.800 film classes that I took in college was that a 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:16.000 lot of early Soviet cinema does make use of the montage, 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.160 more in the sense of the specific film technique where 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:22.880 you're like taking a bunch of different images and and 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:25.800 putting them together to suggest a kind of, uh, a 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:28.720 kind of sequence or progression, more like the training montage. 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:31.520 But the main example I remember there is a movie 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:35.440 we watched by Vertav called The Man with the Movie Camera, 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.559 which is basically the whole movie is just a montage 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:43.240 of of you know, Russian public life. By the way, 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:45.520 if anyone out there wants to hear us talk even 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:47.720 more about silent film, we did an episode of Weird 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.520 How Cinema UM at some point in the last year 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:53.240 where we did like a silent film double feature where 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.199 we we picked out just a couple, maybe three different 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.080 silent films and talked about what was neat about them, 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:01.320 and just talked about sort of the challenges to the 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:05.280 modern viewer that that silent film poses, but also the 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.440 rewards of watching them. So what one of the main 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:12.480 things Kolosov was doing here was that he was he 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:17.839 wasn't even uh even even shooting new footage in these experiments. Uh, 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:21.920 he was taking pre existing footage, silent film footage usually 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:26.840 um Czarist era silent film, and re cutting them to 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:30.920 to see what could be done with this montage feature 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:34.720 like how how to arrange the footage to get different, 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:39.000 um you know, emotional results. And a lot of it 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:41.520 was based again in looking at what was going on 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.520 and what seemed to be working in uh in in 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.880 in Western film, in American film specifically, again like the 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:52.360 work of d. W. Griffith, and uh just in general 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.559 Koulish office was it was somewhat controversial at times, apparently 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:59.640 in in these uh these experiments, you know, he's looking 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:03.000 at American models, Western models, So he was accused by 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:06.760 Communist Party members at times of appealing to Western ideas 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:10.320 and forms too much. And he's also apparently been accused 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.720 of living it up during tough times in Russia and 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:17.760 destroying archive silent era films during this editing work, which, 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:21.840 again the work that wasn't really based that so much 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:24.679 in shooting new footage and experimenting with how you might 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:27.680 added them together, but taking pre existing footage from the 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:32.520 archive and adding it together. Now as a director, Kulashov 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.520 is apparently and I'm speaking largely of a director that 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.280 I really didn't know anything about before, so neither, but 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:43.480 he's apparently best known for 's The Extraordinary Adventures of 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:46.520 Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks. He also 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.760 adapted the works of Jack London and Oh Henry, but 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:53.240 especially for this show, we should really highlight that he 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:56.480 also made a death ray spy thriller. I thought this 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:59.640 was really interesting somehow. I guess this never came up 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.480 when we did our Invention episodes on the death ray, 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:05.839 or if it did, I've forgotten about it, because this 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:08.160 seemed new to me. But it fits right in there, 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:11.679 because if you haven't heard our episodes of the Invention 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:13.720 podcast on the death Ray, those were some of my 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:16.400 favorites that we did, especially because we got to talk 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:20.080 about an invention that never really existed and yet was 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:24.040 the subject of a popular fervor, you know that, Like 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.960 people were really excited about death rays for the nineteen twenties, 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:32.000 and that just there was never any such thing. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:34.600 the invention itself never existed, but you had kind of 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.600 a global death ray fever going on. And this is 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:40.440 so it's right smack dab in the middle of it, 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:45.520 a film titled lut Smirty or the Death Ray. Galetski 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:50.400 describes it as quote a relatively violent film about international espionage. 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:53.440 So I had to look in. I looked at footage 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:55.600 the available footage that I could find out. It wasn't 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:59.480 wasn't super great to watch, but there's some impressive stills. 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.000 The plot is spot on for what you might expect 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:05.240 from a Soviet death ray movie at the time period. 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:09.040 We follow a socialist revolutionary who has to flee an 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:14.040 unnamed fascist capitalist country. The socialist revolutionary has to flee 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:16.959 to the Soviet Union, and once there he is introduced 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.760 to the new technology of the death ray, which can 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.920 explode gunpowder at a distance, which is a key detail 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:28.320 because that's exactly, uh, the sort of thing that was 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:30.800 part of the death ray fever that we discussed in 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.440 the Invention episode. That's right. So the brief top line 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.880 on that is that, uh, basically a lot of this 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:40.000 death ray fever came from reaction to the horrors of 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.640 long range bombing aerial bombing in World War One, and 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:47.040 people wanted the idea of something that could shoot bombers 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:49.520 out of the sky from a great distance before they 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:52.040 got to your cities, and the death ray filled in 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:57.000 that gap exactly. So basically, the evil spy follows him 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.520 and steals the death ray technology so that they can 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:03.560 use it to suppress labor strikes. But don't worry, the 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:07.520 labor strikers steal the death ray technology back and use 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.400 it to blow up their oppressors bomber aircraft which is 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:14.800 about to be used against the strikers. This almost makes 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:17.480 me want to compile and watch a list of all 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:20.320 the death ray movies of the nineteen twenties. Just put 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.480 them all together and see see what kind of picture emerges. Yeah, yeah, 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.320 or and I'm curious, like, what is the best death 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:29.960 ray movie? I'm I'm assuming the best death ray movies 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.959 came later, um came in the wake of films such 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:42.360 as this Thank Okay, Well, so that's love kool a 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:44.440 Shov and I wanted to get a little bit into 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:47.720 the background of this idea of the Coolershov effect by 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:51.400 consulting his own words. So I found a book called 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.600 cool a shov on Film Writings. This was published by 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.360 the University of California Press in nineteen seventy four. I'm 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:01.720 not positive. I think this might a reprint of some 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.959 earlier writings of Cooler Jobs, but the context is um 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:09.040 I was consulting an early section of this book where 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:13.559 he's discussing a series of investigations he and his colleagues 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.719 carried out in the late nineteen teens and into the twenties, 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:20.560 essentially to try to figure out how film actually works. 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:24.520 That they were asking questions like how do audiences make 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.280 meaning out of the images they see over the course 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:30.320 of a film, Which is a great question and it 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.760 is something that early filmmakers really had to figure out. 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.200 We we can take a lot of film meaning making 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:41.000 for granted these days, because uh, you know, film techniques 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:45.040 are so well honed these days that they're often invisible 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:47.320 to us. You know, you you, if you watch a 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:51.320 professionally made movie, you will you will not even notice 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:53.800 the fact that, say, all of the eye lines and 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.480 it have been aligned correctly so that when a character 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:58.760 looks at something and then it cuts to that thing, 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.120 it's lined up so that it's not confusing, but that's 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:04.120 like a technique that had to be learned, and there 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:06.720 are tons of things like that. They're just invisible to 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.440 us now, as as a lot of good filmmaking techniques are, 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.000 I mean ideally, I guess, uh well, I mean there 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:14.720 are different ideas of this, but you know, a common 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:17.040 view I think among a lot of filmmakers is that 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:20.480 techniques should not call attention to themselves, but instead should 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:23.240 disappear and allow you to just become totally absorbed in 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:26.600 the narrative to help bring about the raw experience quality 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:29.600 of modern cinema. Yeah, yeah, and that's I mean, that's 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.600 something I like to stick to. I mean, unless the 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:39.040 film is so poor it's a execution that you can't 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.800 help but but notice it, you know, well when Yeah, 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:44.200 and certainly there's plenty of examples of that. But so 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.000 cool A Chav and colleagues are trying to investigate how 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:50.560 does film work? What what are the techniques that that 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.840 cause an audience to think or feel a certain way? 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.880 And so famously, Kolashaw feels that he has achieved a 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.360 breakthrough when he starts to discover the power hour of 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:04.480 montage or editing. He starts to think of editing as 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.640 a sort of master key behind the power of cinema, 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.040 and he believes that montage has a power greater than 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:15.000 simply showing you a series of moving images in sequence 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.200 so that you think, well, one follows the other. Instead, 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.640 he comes to think that by ordering shots in a sequence, 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:26.640 you actually change the meaning of the shots themselves, or 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:30.280 change the perception of what is contained in the shots. 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:33.480 And there's a memorable example that Kolashov describes in the book. 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:37.080 I'll just read it directly. He says, I saw this 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:40.760 scene I think in a film by Rezumni, a priest's 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.880 house with a portrait of Nicholas the second hanging on 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:47.040 the wall, that that would be the czar right uh, 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.880 the village is taken over by the Red Army. The 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.280 frightened priest turns the portrait over and on the reverse 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:57.000 side of the portrait is the smiling face of Lenin. However, 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:00.360 this is a familiar portrait, a portrait in which Lennon 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:03.680 is not smiling. But that spot in the film was 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.879 so funny and it was so uproariously received by the 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:11.560 public that I myself scrutinizing the portrait several times saw 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:16.440 the portrait of Lenin as smiling. Especially intrigued by this, 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.520 I obtained the portrait that was used and saw that 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:22.600 the expression on the face in the portrait was serious. 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:26.840 The montage was so edited that we involuntarily imbued a 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:31.800 serious face with a changed expression characteristic of that playful moment. 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.080 In other words, the work of the actor was altered 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.560 by means of montage. In this way, montage had a 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.280 colossal influence on the effect of the material. It became 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:45.520 apparent that it was possible to change the actor's work, 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:49.919 his movement, his very behavior in either one direction or 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.400 the other through montage. I thought this was a great 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:56.240 example because I haven't seen the film in question, but 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.879 but I can understand exactly the effect he's describing he 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.359 or with this portrait of Lenin because of the tone 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:06.960 of the scene. The context makes it darkly comedic, like 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.679 it's funny, but it's also threatening. That a serious or 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.399 neutral face could be perceived as having a kind of 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:18.479 wicked grin. Mm hmm, yeah, you know that this reminds me, 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:20.960 just in general, of any time you have kind of 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.120 kind of a portrait. He had a painting or a photograph. Um, 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:27.480 I guess that. You know, just in general, outside of film, 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.080 it can seem to take on different dimensions based on 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:35.159 what you are doing or what your mindset is. If 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.439 you're sort of imagining that the that the subject of 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:40.920 the painting or picture can see you, or you're leaning 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:45.600 into that sort of interpretation, like why is Vigo the 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:49.600 Carpathian staring in there like that? Is he? Is he proud? 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.480 Is he angry at me? Is he smiling? Oh? That 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.640 makes me wonder did they when the film Ghostbusters too? 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.639 Did they have multiple paintings of Vigo with slightly different 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:01.960 expressions on his face? Or did they just use one 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.679 portrait and and rely on the kool a Shov effect 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:07.280 For us, I read emotions into it. I wish I 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.399 thought of this earlier. Well, anyway, so we're about to 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.080 get to the description of the main alleged experiment that 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:17.200 establishes the this that we're about to get into canonical 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:22.439 kool Ashov effect territory. So, following this realization about the 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.520 power of editing or montage to change what is perceived 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:30.280 within the shot itself, there's this famous story about an 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.639 experiment kol Ashov supposedly carried out to put the idea 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:36.560 to the test. And I want to flag at the 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:40.399 beginning here that multiple sources I've read raised questions about 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:43.160 whether this test ever actually took place in the way 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:46.800 it is described. Um, but I'd say it doesn't especially matter, 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:49.240 because we're going to be just using this story to 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:51.960 illustrate an idea. Then we can look at other tests later, 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.720 not to provide evidential force that it must be, as 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:59.320 Kolashov says, So whether or not this event actually took 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:01.879 place exact like this, This is how it's described in 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:05.359 a book called How Movies Work by Bruce Kawen. This 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:10.240 was a University of California press. Kawen writes, as follows 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:14.640 about Kulashev's experiment. He found some old footage of a 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:20.119 pre revolutionary actor named Yvonne majukin a single long take, 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.680 probably a makeup test, in which the face showed an 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:29.080 unvarying neutral expression. Kulashev then cut three different shots into 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:32.040 this take, one of a child playing with a toy, 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.479 one of a bowl of soup, and one of an 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.880 old woman in a coffin the sequence when as follows, 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:47.200 face child, face, soup, face woman face. When he showed 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:49.520 this short film to an audience. Although this may be 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:52.879 a bit of cinematic folklore, they remarked what a great 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.800 actor Majukin was. They enjoyed the subtle way he expressed 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:01.360 affectionate delight at the child's playing hunger soup, and grief 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:03.639 at the death of the woman whom they assumed was 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:07.399 his mother. The Masoukan experiment, as it has since been called, 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.520 had a permanent impact on the theory of screen acting. 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:14.120 It showed that audiences will read shots in terms of 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:17.480 each other, and therefore that a film actor who ought 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:21.440 ideally to under act could allow the montage to suggest 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:24.520 some of his or her emotions and thoughts. The point 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:28.000 for our immediate purposes, however, is simply that the impression 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:33.000 of continuity is often generated by the audience. Now we'll 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:35.919 come back with some additional history of research to to 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:40.119 build upon this later, But Kulashov used this alleged experiment 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:43.440 in support of his broader theory of how film worked, 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:46.000 one of the main points of which was that the 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:50.080 soul of a film was in the editing process, and 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:52.960 that the edit of the film actually had more power 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:57.399 over the film's effect than the contents of any individual shot. 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:00.439 I think another way of phrasing this is that the 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:03.959 way you edit your footage together is ultimately more important 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.760 than what an actor does while the cameras rolling, because 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:11.080 the meaning of an actor's performance can be totally changed 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:15.520 by the editing context. And in fact, Kolashov allegedly carried 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:18.520 out a couple of other experiments along these lines that 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:23.560 are known sometimes as creative geography and creative anatomy. Creative 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:28.520 anatomy would be using shots of parts of different bodies 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:32.080 from different actors, creating the illusion that they all belonged 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:33.919 to the same person, So you can show a different 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:38.360 person's hands, lips, legs, and so forth and create an imaginary, 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:42.120 composite person that doesn't exist. He also did the same 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:44.640 thing with physical geography, so he would have, for example, 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:48.800 a shot of people walking along a street in Moscow 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:51.960 and then maybe going up a staircase and then going 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:55.440