🎬 The Editor's Effect

This is one of the most basic principles of editing.

It dates back to the start of editing. It's the idea that you can change how the audience percieves the meaning of a scene by choosing what two shots you use next to each other in an edit.

This is The Editors Effect. Also known as the Kuleshav effect. (see the notes to why I called it The Editor's Effect)

This principle provides us editors a way to look at how we're crafting our scenes. It tells us that we can show meaning to the audience by choosing carefully the each shot which goes into our timelines.

The video above shows the original effect in use from the first time that Lev Kuleshav demonstrated it. You can start to see what you feel based on what the editor cuts to.

Alfred Hitchcock went a step further and added a new function to the Kuleshav effect which makes it even more powerful in film storytelling.

We're storytelling animals and we add meaning to everything. Which the basic Editor's Effect allows for, but as editors we want to add fill as much information about our characters as possible in our edits.

We want the audience to feel connected to or distanced from our characters. Aflred Hitchcock's addition does that.

Hitchcock added a simple reaction to the end of the Kuleshav effect. He said that you can add more meaning to a character by simply capturing a reaction when you cut back to them.

See when Kuleshav first demonstrated the effect, he used the same clip of the same face and just changed out the cut away. In the next video, Hitchcock adapted the cut-back to include a man who is similing.

Thus you can immediately change your whole story based on what the middle shot is. Your decisions for what a character looks at, then you show, then they react are incredibly powerful. Every shot matters.

This effect is plastered all over our world today. You can see it in TikToks, you can see it in YouTube videos. It's everywhere.

Now that you know about it, you can start to see it and use it in your projects.

It's as simple as showing the camera on a character looking at something, cut to what they're looking at, then cut back to their reaction.

Want to make a character seem nervous, get a couple of shots of them acting nervous, then show what makes them nervous then cut back to them. You'll add more meaning and story to the scene.

There's so much you can do with this one simple technique.

Now I'd like to make a side note here and say that after watching this video from This Guy Edits, there might need to be a change in how we talk about and describe the Kuleshav effect moving forward. We need show appreciation for all the creatives that contributed to the film and editing industry.

That's why throughout this whole issue, I've referred to it as The Editor's Effect instead of the Kuleshav effect.

This is the first in a few issues that will be reminding us of the basics of editing. Remember this basic principle if nothing else:

Your decisions matter. You can imbue meaning and story unto the audience by showing a character looking, cutting to what they're looking at, then cutting back to their reactions.