The Kuleshov Effect

While reading an essay I came across an interesting reference to a Russian film maker named Lev Kuleshov who became known for his experimentation with montage and editing.

The Kuleshov Effect refers to a form editing where one picture or sequence would be played multiple times throughout the film with the images in between changing. This creates the illusion that the unchanged image is actually different each time as the audiences perceives it to be different by the affect of what came before.

This is something which interests me as far as the effect itself is concerned as well as the possible implications it could have for my film.

Something I have previously toyed with is the idea of faceless people or creatures. In the context of animation this idea could be highly useful in that if a character had no face, could they still express emotion? A lack of or possibly a minimised amount of facial features would bring the focus to the characters gesture and body language, strengthening an overall sense of kinesthesis and being that my film revolves entirely around a single protagonist, the viewers connection to this character is of great importance to making the film engaging.

Additionally the short film L'Homme Sans Tete comes to mind.