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?

Elan Bogarín’s feature 306 HOLLYWOOD, premiered on opening night of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival as the first documentary ever included in the festival’s NEXT section. It played over 60 festivals, won multiple awards, was released theatrically through the Sundance Creative Distribution Fellowship, was broadcast on POV (PBS) and is streaming on Amazon Prime. Elan was chosen for Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Film, DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40, and was awarded Emerging International Filmmaker at Hot Docs. Elan co-founded The Wassaic Project, and was nominated for the Gotham + Spirit Awards for producing BIG FAN which premiered at Sundance. Elan is the co-director of El Tigre Productions where she creates innovative non-fiction films and produces digital content for the world’s leading museums, platforms, and brands such as Google, MoMA, The Getty, The Whitney, and The New York Times. She has received support from organizations including Sundance, Artemis Rising Foundation, NYSCA, Latino Public Broadcasting, and IFP.

Troy Herion is a NYC-based composer writing music for film, theater, dance, and experimental arts. His orchestral and electronic music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, broadcast on MTV, and screened in major film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Full Frame, Hot Docs, and Toronto. Recent film scores include 306 Hollywood, The Hottest August, The Dog, Mountain Fire Personnel, and You Can Go. His concert works have been called “marvelous” by New Yorker music critic Alex Ross and performed by the Grammy-winning Crossing Choir, The Pennsylvania Ballet Orchestra, So Percussion, JACK Quartet, and Nash Ensemble of London. He studied composition as a PhD fellow at Princeton University with a dissertation on visual-music.

A two-time Emmy Award winning Re-Recording Mixer and a highly regarded Sound Designer, Tom Paul is one of New York City’s most sought after talents in the field  of post production audio. The last few years have been filled with working on wonderful films including The Big Sick, City of Ghosts, Cartel Land, Weiner, The Wolfpack, Particle Fever, The Square, Doris, and Anesthesia, to name just a few.

Tom’s home base in NYC is Gigantic Studios, a boutique post facility that Tom designed with partner Brian Devine. Gigantic recently expanded to include a third mixing theater, outfitted with Dolby Atmos, and a dual-operator Avid S6 console, as well as a DI theater with color grading and DCP creation services. Something special in this new room is the ability to mix while standing up, the first room of it’s kind. Tom worked with Walter Murch on Particle Fever, and his stand-editing system inspired tom to design a stand-up mixing system.

A New York City native, Tom Paul was surrounded by music and sound from the moment he was born.  As the son of an opera singer father and pianist mother, Tom’s exposure to the power of music planted the seed for his passion and aptitude for all things sonic. Tom got his professional start as a boom operator in 1988, moving on to production mixing in 1991.  Some notable titles of his early years in production sound include: Trust, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman, Little Odessa, Swoon and The Yards.In 1994, his passion for sound led him to the creative environment of post production.  Some highlights of his sound design and re-recordng credits include the Academy Award winning films The Fog of War and Born Into Brothels.  Other notable films include: Junebug, Palindromes, The Baxter, The King, and U2 360, the largest selling concert DVD of all time.   Tom won his first Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Mixing on Joe Berlinger’s Under African Skies, and his second one for Best Sound Editing for Cartel Land.

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).