The Blod Method: Case Study of an Artistic Research Project in Film

The BLOD project aims to create multivocal cinematic experiences through embodied practices. The research explores relation- building through a feminist methodology of creating gaps and friction – between audience, story, time, matter, and co-creators. The project asks, how to tell multifaceted, non-exploitive stories of womb-related states of life and death, rarely depicted in cinema? And how to disturb film industry hierarchies through a collaborative practice that maintains individual artistic integrity and promotes collective authorship? The BLOD method is articulated as a Manifesto, written to accommodate a multitude of contents, forms, and modes of collaboration, while demanding cross-disciplinarity, honesty and risk-taking. The method is non-linear, looping, and embedded in the manifestations of the research: films, performances, presentations, etc. Through this paper, different aspects of the BLOD method are tossed around in relation to BLOD research activities; making cinematic building blocks that allow and induce multiplicity, improvisation, and fluidity of form; sharing personal experiences through fictionalized documentary processes; dealing with ethics in interpersonal and ecological relations. The paper proposes that critical reflection and vulnerability are integral to film production and offers this case study as an example for method development in other research projects or films – especially ones that sprawl, tangle, and defy categorization by field or discipline

Beyond Cut and Join : Expanding the Creative Role of Film Editing

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.This Documented Artistic Research Project (Doctoral Thesis) will be presented in Research Catalogue.</p

THE BLOD METHOD : CASE STUDY OF AN ARTISTIC RESEARCH PROJECT IN FILM

The BLOD project aims to create multivocal cinematic experiences through embodied practices. The research explores relation-building through a feminist methodology of creating gaps and friction – between audience, story, time, matter, and co-creators. The project asks, how to tell multifaceted, non-exploitive stories of womb-related states of life and death, rarely depicted in cinema? And how to disturb film industry hierarchies through a collaborative practice that maintains individual artistic integrity and promotes collective authorship? The BLOD method is articulated as a Manifesto, written to accommodate a multitude of contents, forms, and modes of collaboration, while demanding cross-disciplinarity, honesty and risk-taking. The method is non-linear, looping, and embedded in the manifestations of the research: films, performances, presentations, etc. Through this paper, different aspects of the BLOD method are tossed around in relation to BLOD research activities; making cinematic building blocks that allow and induce multiplicity, improvisation, and fluidity of form; sharing personal experiences through fictionalized documentary processes; dealing with ethics in interpersonal and ecological relations. The paper proposes that critical reflection and vulnerability are integral to film production and offers this case study as an example for method development in other research projects or films – especially ones that sprawl, tangle, and defy categorization by field or disciplin