”Beyond Cut and Join” by Kersti Grunditz Brennan

The documented artistic research project (doctoral thesis) can be found in DiVA and in Research Catalogue.

Cut and Join are both verbs and nouns. Beyond the verbs lie the creative actions of the editor. Beyond the nouns lie the creative authorship of editing.

Abstract

The research project Beyond Cut and Join – Expanding the creative role of film editing comes out of two major observations over decades of professional film editing experience: that a lot of film editing’s potential is untapped in filmmaking, especially in relation to character creation; and that editors’ skills, influence and authorial participation often are misunderstood and undervalued. Through editing practice and writing, this research explores an expanded role of editing by asking: 1. what can editing do to create characters; 2. what is a useful and challenging creative research design for exploring editing; and 3. what expanded description of film editing can be articulated for these explorations. The project aims to share, refine, and add to editing vocabulary by articulating creative strategies for shaping characters. It further aims to challenge notions of authorship in cinema by developing collaborative structures and artistic methods that benefit creative processes in the edit room. By demonstrating how significant the handprint of one individual editor is, the project’s final aim is to highlight the extent to which editors’ personal experiences influence their choices in composition of material. Outcomes of this project are filmmaking methods that place editing and collaboration in the forefront when weaving dramaturgy, aesthetics, and content creation processes that shape film characters and cinematic stories.

Artistic Manifestations and Academic Outputs

All films, texts, and expositions that have come out of this research are collected in a research catalogue exposition:

Beyond Cut and Join - Expanding the creative role of film editing by Kersti Grunditz Brennan

The artistic manifestations of the film and research project BLOD – in collaboration with Annika Boholm – can also be found on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/showcase/10282259

More about BLOD: www.blod.one