Abstract
This chapter aims to reveal, from a cognitive perspective, what docu- mentary editing is and how it works as a creative action in filmmaking. It proposes that the editing of documentary film is a cognitive process of perceiving or imagining potential structure and rhythm in a mass of unscripted material and then shaping that material into a significant form.1 Further, in this process, editors, directors and the raw, uncut filmed material are all contributors to the generation of ideas. Shaping raw material into a coherent documentary film, this chapter will argue, is not work done solely in the brain; rather, it is the work of an “extended mind” (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) and requires a complementary activation of brain, body and the “film objects” (Vertov 1984) themselves.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Cognitive theory and documentary film |
| Editors | Catalin Brylla, Mette Kramer |
| Place of Publication | London |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pages | 303-319 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9783319903323 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9783319903316 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Keywords
- Film Editing
- Creative process
- Cognition
- Collaboration
- Distributed cognition
- epistemic action
- Alan Berliner
- Kate Amend
- Film Editors
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Cite this
Pearlman, K. (2018). Documentary editing and distributed cognition. In C. Brylla, & M. Kramer (Eds.), Cognitive theory and documentary film (pp. 303-319). London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3_17