How can documentary directors work effectively with editors, sound designers, and other essential post-production talent?  How does a story emerge from a pile of footage?  Can you really “fix it in post”?  What is an online edit and can you do it yourself?  How does a good sound designer work, and how does post-production sound enhance your documentary?

Featured Presenters:

David Teague is a documentary film editor whose work has played at Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, Hot Docs, SXSW, Tribeca, Full Frame, and True/False, amongst many others. He recently edited E-Team (Sundance 2014) and the Oscar-nominated Cutie and the Boxer (Sundance 2013). Previously, David edited the Oscar-winning documentary Freeheld (Sundance 2007) as well as two other Oscar-nominated films (Mondays at Racine, Sun Come Up). Other credits include the feature documentary The Iran Job, the PBS series Constitution USA, and the Emmy-winning Sesame Street primetime special Growing Hope Against Hunger. David has also directed and edited two award-winning documentaries: Intifada NYC (LIDF 2009) and Our House (Hot Docs 2010, co-directed with Greg King). David has taught cinematography and editing at Downtown Community Television, the New School, Brooklyn College and Long Island University, and he is the author of two best-selling guides to film editing with Final Cut Pro. David lives in Brooklyn, NY, with Annie Wedekind and their son Henry Wedekind.

Will Cox started his career in the video department at Tekserve in 1995 while editing underground video features as part of nuBright Solutions, a collective of artist/filmmakers populating the web with indie films. After teaching editing for the Ford Foundation in Africa, he went to work at Oxygen Media, the first network to go entirely on-air using Final Cut Pro, as the Senior Engineer. Will co-founded Final Frame in 2001. Will has been color correcting for the past 13 years with Online/Color Correction credits on the 2010 and 2011 Oscar winning documentaries, The Cove & Inside Job, the acclaimed documentary Control Room (Sundance Film Festival), Speedo (winner at Full Frame), and Murderball (winner of best editor at Sundance), as well as numerous other documentary and scripted films. Will’s television credits include shows for MTV, Comedy Central, SpikeTV, Nickelodeon, Oxygen, Fuse, CourtTV, CSTV, The History Channel, Lifetime, PBS, IFC and ESPN.

Peter Levin, known for his work on Dark Days (2000), The 24th Day (2004) and Let It Snow (1999), is a co-owner of Splash Studios in Chelsea. He splits his attention between family, post-production, production and ice hockey. When he is not on the ice, he is usually found supervising post-sound, recording sound effects or mixing films and television shows. With 20 years in the industry and, hundreds credits to his name, he can usually make a story sound pretty good.

ZACHARY HEINZERLING is a film director based in Brooklyn, New York. His debut feature, Cutie and the Boxer is currently nominated for a 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Film. The critically acclaimed film won prizes at top film festivals around the world and was featured on many best film lists of 2013, including that of A.O. Scott from the New York Times and Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal. The film received a field leading three 2014 Cinema Eye Honors, for Outstanding Debut Feature, Outstanding Original Score, and Outstanding Visual Effects. Zachary was the winner of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival Directing Award for US Documentary. He was awarded the Charles Guggenheim Emerging Artist award at the 2013 Full Frame Film Festival. He was the recipient of the 2013 International Documentary Association’s Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award, which recognizes the achievements of a filmmaker who has made a significant impact at the beginning of his or her career in documentary film. He was nominated for a 2014 DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Documentary. He began his career at HBO, where he worked on four consecutive Emmy Award-winning documentaries as a Field Producer and Cinematographer. Most recently he directed a five-part web series with Beyoncé Knowles-Carter entitled “Self-Titled” for her latest album “Beyoncé”.

CUTIE AND THE BOXER

A reflection on love, sacrifice, and the creative spirit, this candid New York documentary explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of renowned “boxing” painter Ushio Shinohara and his artist wife Noriko. As a rowdy, confrontational young artist in Tokyo, Ushio seemed destined for fame, but he is met with little commercial success after he moves to New York City in 1969, seeking international recognition. When 19-year-old Noriko moved to New York to study art, she fell in love with Ushio—abandoning her education to become the unruly artist’s wife and assistant. Over the course of their marriage, their roles shifted. Now 80, Ushio still struggles to establish his artistic legacy, while Noriko is at last being recognized for her own art—a series of drawings entitled “Cutie,” depicting her challenging past with Ushio. Spanning four decades, the film is a moving portrait of a couple wrestling with the eternal themes of sacrifice, disappointment and aging, against a background of lives dedicated to art.

A nuts-and-bolts professional development series designed for the beginning or intermediate documentary filmmaker, Documentary Fundamentals @ UnionDocs is six-week course culminating in a certificate of completion. Registrants can also attend individual sessions. This curriculum developed out of our experience hearing what fundamentals documentarians need to understand to plan, produce, and release an independent documentary today.