Altered States - Filming Techniques

Over Tuesday and Thursday, we had a workshop on filming techniques, specifically the Kuleshov effect.

The Kuleshov effect in its purest form is a film editing technique where you have a close up of someone's face, then a shot of what that character is seeing. Say the character has a neutral expression- by changing what that character is seeing, an audience can interpret that character's emotions differently.

To ensure that I understood the Kuleshov effect, I did some research after the workshop to solidify my knowledge, and found a video that explains it pretty well. I have linked it below.

We were put into groups of 5 or 6, and asked to gather footage together so that each person could make two short films, between 15 and 30 seconds, each. One of these films had to be a horror, and one a comedy. We needed to use the Kuleshov effect to achieve this with the same footage in both videos with audio to back up the effect.

We worked together to plan what footage we would gather and loosely storyboarded a general idea. We decided to use one of the corridors on Lower 3rd as a filming location after scouting different areas of the building, since we could turn the lights in half of the corridor off, allowing the backlit effect we wanted. We wanted our films to be from the perspective of one character who, when she turns the lights off, sees a shadowy figure in the corridor slowly getting closer to her. However when the lights are on, the figure cannot be seen.

Above: The group working on ideas

Next we all needed to edit our films in Adobe Premiere Pro.

I decided to work on the horror film first, since the overall format of the scene works better for horror. I added different layers of music throughout, with a creepy track playing only when the shadowy figure is on screen.

Above: Screenshot of the horror film from Premiere Pro

For the comedy, I took the finished horror film and removed the creepy music and thud from the end, and replaced the shots of the figure in accordance to the Kuleshov effect, leaving the rest of the shots the same. When filming, we thought it would be funny if George (our shadowy figure) jumped his way down the corridor, so I took that shot and cut it into tiny sections, putting them back together in such a way that he almost flew. To make it funnier, I added a little popping sound every time he reached the highest point of his jump. Instead of the thud at the end, I added the sound from a popular meme video on YouTube.

Above: Screenshot of the comedy film from Premiere Pro

I feel the the Kuleshov effect worked quite well in these films. In the horror, Natasha looks scared, but in the comedy she looks confused.

Horror Film

Comedy Film