This session of DOCUMENTARY FUNDAMENTALS is about editing your next documentary. 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?

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DOCUMENTARY FUNDAMENTALS: A professional development series designed to give the emerging or intermediate documentary filmmaker an inside look at the filmmaking process from pre-production planning to post-production and distribution. Over the past few years, UnionDocs has developed this ongoing program for documentarians that desire a better foundation for navigating the modern landscape of independent filmmaking. This six-part program takes place over the course of one weekend at UnionDocs. Buy a SERIES PASS ($125) or choose to attend individual sessions ($25/each).

Instructors

Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director/producer named one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC “40 Under 40” list. Her work has been supported by organizations including SFFILM, Chicken & Egg, Cinereach, Sundance, Field of Vision, and Firelight Media. Jessica has served in producorial roles on Tania Cypriano’s BORN TO BE (NYFF 2019), Nathan Truesdell’s THE WATER SLIDE (True/False 2018), and Johnny Ma’s OLD STONE (Berlinale 2016). Residencies include UnionDocs and a MacDowell Fellowship. She is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and Brown Girls Doc Mafia.

Jessica Kingdon’s first documentary feature ASCENSION 登楼叹 (2021), won a nomination at the 94th Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature category as well as Best Documentary at the Tribeca Festival and Hamptons International Film Festival. The film has received nominations from the the DGA Awards, Spirit Awards, the Gotham and the International Documentary Association along with five Cinema Eye nominations and six Critic’s Choice nominations.

Stephen Maing is a filmmaker and cinematographer based in New York City. Maing’s feature documentary Crime + Punishment was awarded a 2019 Emmy and the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival; it was also shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. His previous films, HIGH TECH, LOW LIFE and THE SURRENDER, also directed, filmed and edited by Maing, were released on POV and Field of Vision, respectively, and recognized with a Grierson Trust British Documentary Award, World Press Photo Award for Best Documentary, and a POYi Documentary Award.

He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, Sundance Institute Fellow and recipient of the International Documentary Association’s prestigious Courage Under Fire Award. His films seek to expand the form and limits of longitudinal nonfiction filmmaking. They are cinematic investigations of societal phenomena, complex power structures, and the individuals who challenge them.

Omar Mullick is mostly known as a Director and Cinematographer for the 2013 feature film THESE BIRDS WALK, which went on to be theatrically distributed by Oscilloscope. The film was named one of the Best films of the Year by Indiewire, Sight + Sound Magazine, and The New Yorker where Richard Brody listed it one of the best foreign films of the 21st Century. That year, Filmmaker Magazine named Omar one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

As a Director, his work can be seen on HBO’s flagship series THE VOW, NOMAD for CNN, ABSTRACT, and FLIGHT/ RISK for Amazon Studios, a non-fiction feature detailing the work of whistleblowers at Boeing. In 2022 Omar produced THREE SONGS FOR BENAZIR, which was acquired by NETFLIX and was the first indigenous Afghan film to be nominated to the Oscars.

In Fiction, Omar wrote and was the cinematographer for TU ME RESEMBLE, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2021. His subsequent screenplay on the Charlie Hebdo attacks was selected for the 2022 Sundance Screenwriters Lab. He is currently in pre-production on his first feature fiction film SON OF STONE.