Cherry-picks commits from master that have changes to specified files.

git-pick-file.sh

$!/usr/bin/env sh

branch=`git symbolic-ref --short HEAD`
git checkout master
commits=`git log --pretty="%H" --reverse -- $*`
git checkout $branch

for commit in $commits; do
  git cherry-pick $commit
done

Usage:

Create the clean branch:

$ git checkout --orphan my-new-branch
$ git rm -rf .
Create an initial commit, because cherry-pick doesn't work on an empty head.

$ touch .dummy-file
$ git add .dummy-file
$ git commit -m "Initial commit"

Now, assuming you're still in the "my-new-branch" branch, run

$ git-pick-file.sh file1 file2 fileX
Then to make sure everything worked as planned, check

$ git log