Biography
Susan Brand is Head of Editing at Edinburgh Napier University in Screen Academy Scotland. She works with undergraduates and postgraduates including specialist teaching in advanced editing. Susan has worked in the industry internationally for over 20 years as Editor and Edit Consultant. This includes the UK, US, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary and Southeast Asia. She has been hugely inspired as a storyteller by this international experience which informs her teaching.
Susan’s undergraduate degree was English Literature at the University of York. Her postgraduate studies in film took place at Bristol university and the National Film and Television School. Her editing has been awarded, including a BAFTA nomination. These films have been broadcast and streamed on the BBC, Channel 4, Sky Arts, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, A&E and many others. She sees strong audience connection as vital to the success of her films and a commercial mind set, regardless of the complexity of the stories.
She has taught film editing at numerous universities and film schools around the world. This includes work as Visiting Professor at the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at New York University on the MFA Film Production. Tisch, NYU has produced many of America's most renouned filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Oliver Stone. She has been a frequent guest speaker at industry events in the UK, for example the Scottish Documentary Institute, The Grierson Trust, Women in Film and Television and she runs her own 2 day course entitled Storytelling in the Edit.
Her teaching combines technical and creative training where story is the heart of the edit. For her, editing’s closest relative is screenwriting and this informs everything she does with students. She stresses the importance of understanding film story structure in detail and the emotional journey for the audience. Her teaching has a wide range of influences drawing inspiration from myth and legend to Three Act Structure, from sound design to the cinematography/editing interface. She calls herself an actors’ editor, and encourages a sensitivity to seek out truly authentic performance in the shot material. In this way, her teaching is an in depth exploration of the full purpose and potential of the edit.
Industry approaches and expectations are part of all teaching where Susan draws on her extensive experience in the UK and internationally. This includes how to work with other members of the creative team during production and post-production. She encourages close collaboration. Part artist, part diplomat, part technician, part psychologist, the role of the editor is creative and complex. Susan encourages her students to hone all these faculties and aim high and strive to take position as the next generation of the world’s best editors.