Beyond Cut and Join

Kersti Grunditz Brennan

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. The output of this research includes films, academic articles, personal essays, a video essay, and pedagogic applications. These outputs cumulatively demonstrate the artistry of the editor and the significance of editing.