Subsequent to Russian sound film revolution, Soviet cinema was swept by a vibrant culture called formalism. Formalism proposes that artwork's value and meaning are principally constructed from its form or language rather than from its pure content or subjects. In the light of film theory, formalism is thus the creative production process of movies by means of artistic expression in composition, rhythm and editing. Moreover, this formalistic expression shaped the remarkable developments in film theory and provided a new norm for distinctive and creative production of films by Russian producers during the 1920s. The most prominent producers with formalist approaches, among many, were Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov. .
Sergei Eisenstein believed that a film could be constructed using a series of shots to create and convey abstract concepts to an audience. A constant collision of one shot called the "thesis" could be combined with another shot called the "anti-thesis" to create a totally new meaning called "the synthesis". This exploration of combining shots is called collision or intellectual montage and has its meaning in the sense that these series of colliding shots raised points of conflicts for the audience that needed to be resolved. And in the very process of this resolution, Eisenstein believed that there is a meaningful creation in the minds of the audience. Eisenstein said that the "montage of attraction, units of impression combined into one whole, could be used to introduce a new level of tension into the aesthetic experience which would produce unprecedented levels of emotional saturation". While Eisenstein was exploring collision montage, Vertov's formalistic expression in film was the creation of cinematic documentary with rhythmic montage through the visible world of the Kino-Eye (movie camera). Kino-eye showcases its significance from the very collection of raw material to the finalization of the film, the decision on collection of images to the final editing of film, where it goes through the scientifically experimental method of exploring the visible world.