Lev Kuleshov

Lev Kuleshov was a soviet filmmaker, who was amongst one of the first to
dissect the effects of juxtaposition. His experiment was on the art of
manipulating what we see and feel.
In his experiment, he edited together a short
film, where there was a shot/ picture of an
expressionless man, whose face was
alternated with various other shots (a plate
of soup, a girl in a coffin a woman on a
divan). The film was shown to an audience
who thought that the expression on the
mans face was different each time he
appeared, depending on where he was
looking (What picture appeared next to the
man), showing an expression of hunger, grief
or desire, respectively. The footage of the man was actually the same
every time. A montage is a series of short shots that are edited into a
sequence to condense space, time and information.
This creates meaning because, the shot of the mans face were cut
between various other shots, which gave the impression that he was
emoting to all those events, but in reality, the shots of the mans face
were the same each time.
An example from a modern film is American Sniper. This film involves the
Lev Kuleshov effect as they use it to first film the American Sniper (the
good guy), and then the next shot is in the view from the sniper, aiming at
two people.