Shots filmed in different places, cut together with matching eyelines and movement, are perceived as one continuous space.
Kuleshov came upon the technique in 1918 while shooting The Project of Engineer Prite, when he filmed actors looking off-frame and the electricity pylons they were meant to see separately, in different parts of Moscow, and found the cut sequence read as a single place. In a later demonstration two actors walking in different parts of the city meet, and one points to a building that was a shot of the White House in Washington.
In practice
- A car chase shot across three cities over two months plays as one unbroken route through one downtown.
- Two actors who never shared a set appear to hold a conversation in the same room, because the eyelines and lighting match.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is that viewers assume continuity unless something contradicts it: if one shot shows a person looking and the next shows something to be looked at, the two are taken to share a space. The same inference that makes editing invisible makes the space invented.
- In its favour
- It is the everyday basis of location shooting, studio work and visual effects, and it is reproduced in any film made from shots taken out of order. Research on continuity editing finds viewers rarely notice spatial joins that follow the conventions.
- Against it
- Film theorists such as André Bazin argued that the technique trades the reality of a place for a constructed one, and documentary ethicists treat invented geography as a form of deception when the audience is told it is watching a real place.
- Standing
- Kuleshov's companion demonstration to the Kuleshov Effect. Relies on the same continuity assumptions as the 180-Degree Rule and Edit Blindness.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- What happens to a message after it is sent