“Created person” is a mounting effect, implying the appearance of the illusion that the viewer sees the same person on the screen, but in fact, before him is the installation of frames of parts of the body of different people. The effect was revealed and described by the Soviet director Lev Kuleshov in the book “The Art of Cinema”, published in 1929.
Content
Description
The essence of the experiment, as a result of which this effect was discovered, was as follows. To begin with, Kuleshov shot women who sit in front of a mirror, bring their eyes and eyebrows, paint their lips, put on shoes. Then, at the installation stage, the captured pieces - the lips of one woman, the legs of the other, the back of the third and the eyes of the fourth - were glued in a certain connection with each other. As a result, with the complete reality of the material on the screen, a completely new woman did not exist in reality.
The experiment allowed Kuleshov to argue that the full power of cinematic influence is in the installation.
“You will never achieve with such material absolutely unprecedented, seemingly incredible things. "This is impossible in any other spectacle than cinema, and this is achieved not by focus, but only by organizing the material, only bringing it into one or another order."
The director’s discovery had a significant impact on the development of Soviet cinematography. The discovered effect allowed literally to attach the face of any other to the body of one actor.
“Let's take a simpler experience: a person is standing near the door - this is removed by the general plan; then we move on to a close-up - and the close-up is already taken off the head of another person; Thus, you can stick the face of A. Khokhlova to the figure of Nata Vachnadze, and again this will not be a focus, but an installation, i.e. organization of the material, not a technical trick. ”
Such searches for new ways in Kuleshov’s cinema were inspired by the American director David Wark Griffith . Within the framework of one film “ Intolerance ” (1916), with the help of editing, he combined four completely different in time, place of action and characters characters: the fall of Babylon , the crucifixion of Christ , Bartholomew’s night and the plot of modern life. As a result, from scattered pieces of old plots, Griffith created a new whole story [1] .
It is believed that “Created Man” is a special case of the “Kuleshov effect” mentioned to a lesser extent, due to its narrow focus. It was revealed as a result of the famous series of experiments (“ Created Earth Surface ”, “Dance”), with the help of which Kuleshov comprehended the creative power of editing: namely, he discovered that editing allows not only to achieve certain metamorphoses on the screen, but also to create whole objects with unusual internal connections [2] . However, for Kuleshov, as a discoverer of the illusion of a created object, it was important not the absence of created objects in reality, but the impression of the viewer, whom this absence does not bother [2] .
The effect of the “Created Man” effect on the viewer, as a result of which he believes in the integrity of the object displayed on the screen, is due to the specifics of the cinema, which represents time, expressed in the forms of space. Composing a movie object from individual fragments, the director creating the cinema space gives the phrase an additional dimension - time. Cinematic time allows not only to put together “ruins”, but also to make them at least not for long, but still exist [2] .
Notes
- ↑ “From two frames a new one arose”: Key concepts in the cinema of Lev Kuleshov (Russian) (unopened) ? . The art of cinema. Date of treatment January 15, 2019.
- ↑ 1 2 3 The world from dust (Russian) (neopr.) ? . Session Magazine. Date of treatment January 15, 2019.
Literature
- Kuleshov L.V. The art of cinema (my experience). - L.: TEA-MOVIE-SEAL, 1929.