Creating character in editing

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on methods by which editors shape character in editing. Given that editors’ choices of shot, take, and timing augment and vary actors’ performances and directors’ instructions, and that these choices shape the audience perception of film characters, we ask: what components of editors’ expertise are activated in shaping material to create characters that viewers can invest in emotionally? Editors’ expertise is generally referred to as ‘intuitive’, which is a shorthand for knowledge and experience that informs decision making at a pre-conscious level. This article argues that ‘intuitive’ is not incorrect, however, drawing on the authors’ extensive editing practice and building on existing editing theory as well as ideas from science and film studies, we seek more specific identification and articulation of editors’ expertise. This article offers an original editing taxonomy in relation to editing character. The taxonomy includes explicit articulations of kinaesthetic empathy and implicit knowledge such as laws of physics, reflex reactions, and cultural conditioning. Awareness of these pervasive but often unrecognised forms of knowledge, we argue, can enhance editors’ ability to develop multifaceted characters through editing, clarify discussions between collaborators, and even enhance understanding of the art of editing more generally.

KEYWORDS:

• Film editing
• editors
• filmmaking
• character
• collaboration
• expertise

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Classical mechanics deals with speed far less than 3 × 10⁸ m/s and size far larger than 10⁹ m.

2 Specifics of different surfaces and the amount of friction force they produce are not as universally experienced as gravity.

3 Valid for the planet earth.

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startle_response

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kersti Grunditz Brennan

Kersti Grunditz Brennan is currently assistant professor of film editing and PhD-candidate in film & media at Stockholm University of the Arts. She has explored film form in documentary and fiction live action, short and long formats, narrative cinema, archival based stories, essays and experimental hybrids for the past 20 years; for cinema, other art contexts, through research and education. She holds an MFA in choreography, is an established film editor of several award-winning documentaries and has directed documentaries about prominent Scandinavian artists and the festival touring, award winning film The Man Behind the Throne; about Michael Jackson's choreographer Vincent Paterson; sold to 15 countries. In 2017, she was nominated for Best Editing and Best Screenplay at Swedish film awards (Guldbaggen) and for Best documentary at Swedish TV awards (Kristallen) for the feature documentary Citizen Schein, which she edited and co-wrote. She takes on many different creative and educational roles in film processes ranging from movies, TV, art exhibits and stage performances to workshops, research expositions, conference presentations and academic writing.

Karen Pearlman

Karen Pearlman writes, directs, and edits screen productions. She researches creative practice, distributed cognition, and feminist film histories. Collected by major film archives around the world, her trilogy of films about historical women editors (2016, 2018 & 2020) have won 30 competitive national and international awards from peak industry bodies and film festivals, including 3 for best editing, 3 for best directing and 6 for best documentary. Her 2020 film, ‘I want to make a film about women', was longlisted for an Oscar and shortlisted for an Australian Academy Award. The special jury prize citation from the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival reads: “a film of innovative brilliance, celebrating the inexhaustible, essential tenacity of suppressed artists everywhere”. These films and Karen's academic writing comprise a multi-modal study showing that the innovations for which the famed ‘Soviet montage era' of filmmaking is known, rest, in substantive measure, on the creative work of women editors. Karen is also the author of the widely used textbook on editing, ‘Cutting Rhythms' (Focal Press) now in its 2nd edition and with translations into Chinese, Korean, Arabic and Turkish. She is a senior lecturer in Screen Production and Practice at Macquarie University, in Sydney Australia, and a deputy director of Macquarie University’s Creative Documentary Research Centre.