Our Blog
Blog
Blog
Announcing New Website + Filmmaker Resources
June 19, 2019
I’m excited to announce our newly-designed website featuring several resources for filmmakers: First, check out our Blog page with editing tips in categories such as “Story Structure”, “Editing Shortcuts”, and “Documentary Trends”. Next, if you’re considering working with us, our Portfolio page features comments from 27 award-winning directors with whom we’ve recently collaborated. Finally, download my evergreen cover story for Release Print Magazine, which pioneered specific techniques for adapting screenwriting principles to character-driven documentaries. You’ll learn dramatic devices that I teach to my staff editors. The title says it all: Squeezing Reality Into Three Acts: What Documentary Filmmakers Can Learn…
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Apollo 11 Transports and Unites
April 23, 2019
I recently saw Apollo 11 with my favorite eleven-year-old. As we heard Walter Cronkite describe the highly-anticipated moon launch, we saw crowds of people in sixties get-up. I was instantly transported to being eight. After the adrenaline-inducing launch–which served as the first act climax– director/editor Todd Douglas Miller wisely decided not to return to the worldwide audience, glued to their television screens. Instead he focused solely on the treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage and audio recordings. This stylistic move reminded me of other documentaries that use primary materials to such a transporting effect, including Amy, Tupac: Resurrection, and Listen…
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Goodbye to a Beloved Visionary
April 14, 2019
I’m mourning and celebrating Barbara Marx Hubbard, who died in a Loveland, Colorado hospital on April 10th. She was 89. Barbara was a great thinker, speaker, and visionary. For me, she was also an inspiration and eventually the subject of my documentary American Visionary. I remember seeing Barbara for the first time; she spoke at the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment. This white-haired octogenarian described the future of humanity with an optimism and confidence I’d never witnessed. Then she paused and asked with gentle intensity, “What is your part in this shift?” Her question has provoked me and countless others…
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Story Consulting Availability
April 10, 2019
In six weeks I’ll be teaching in a documentary program abroad, so if you’ve been thinking about a story consultation with me, this is a good time to reach out! I also have a cheerful and talented editor available now. Debuting soon: our new website, which offers filmmakers more guidance for documentary storytelling. Also coming soon: my take on Apollo 11, which is the top-grossing documentary so far in 2019. Check it out!
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Road Trip Nation Edit
March 26, 2019
We recently edited an episode of the PBS series Road Trip Nation which airs today, March 29th, 2019. The edit was a fascinating opportunity to apply our documentary expertise to an hour-long television show. Aimed at young adults and also available at PBS.org, the Skill Powered episode focused on Shyana, Alex and Ryan, three characters looking to “handcraft a fulfilling career” without going to a four-year college. Our task? Edit three character transformations to unfold over a sixty-minute timeline. Working with director Willie Witte was a joy. Attracted to our reputation for cutting character-driven documentaries, he arrived at our review…
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Finding The Story’s Micro-Manifestation
March 15, 2019
I recently did a pre-production story consultation with Katie Teague, an award-winning director with whom I’ve worked before. She came up with a brilliant new term that many directors will find helpful when confronting the most important question about a narrative arc: “What does the protagonist want?” For some documentaries the answer is obvious. In Free Solo, Alex Honnold wants to be the first person to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan without ropes or safety gear. In Man on Wire, Philippe Petit wants to walk a high-wire between the Twin Towers. And in HBO’s Fifty Children, a film we helped structure,…
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Is Remote Editing Too Remote?
March 11, 2019
Last week I spoke with a few directors who each asked about a growing trend, “How does remote editing work?” For the record, eighty percent of our editors now work remotely. Our six doc editors are based in LA, Portland, NY, and the Bay Area. We often work with directors who live thousands of miles away. At stake for these directors is the quality of the director/editor relationship—generally regarded as the most important creative relationship in documentary filmmaking! If that bond is not strong, then how can the editor understand the director’s vision, much less abet it? Of course, some…
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Two Talented Editors + Storytelling Article
March 6, 2019
We currently have two talented documentary editors available soon! Both work remotely, as well as in person. Our Bay Area editor is one of the most kind, conscientious cutters I’ve met. Graduating summa cum laude from a top film school, he’s now a mid-career professional with award-winning titles under his belt. Another West Coast editor continues to astound me with his brilliance. We met working together on a documentary that won a top award at Sundance. He’s slightly introverted (in a creative way) and excels at listening to your vision and bringing it to life. Want to meet one of…
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Should You Break Documentary Convention?
February 22, 2019
One of the most exciting documentaries to emerge from Sundance this year is The Infiltrators, a narrative experiment which won the festival’s Audience Award and Innovator Award. Breaking the conventional filmmaker/subject wall, the directors enlisted undocumented Americans as co-conspirators to voluntarily get themselves detained. Their mission: release themselves and their fellow detainees. Mixing verite scenes with scripted re-enactment, this thriller expands the documentary genre “in exciting new ways,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Once we freed ourselves from conventional documentary ethics,” said the directors, “we entered into a realm of possibilities”. While many directors love the idea of “freeing themselves…
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Oscar For Best Documentary Goes To….?!
February 15, 2019
Recently a director whose film we cut asked me who I thought would win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. “RGB,” I replied without much thought. Now, before ABC’s live coverage of the Oscars on February 24th, it’s time to go out on a limb and make my case for this inspiring documentary about octogenarian Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But first, two disclaimers! The other four nominees are phenomenal. Go see these films: Hale County This Morning, This Evening; Minding the Gap; Of Fathers and Sons; and Free Solo (which recently surpassed RGB as the second-highest grossing documentary of…
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