Transitioning from Documentary to Drama

Post New York Alliance Podcast

Transitioning from Docs to Drama

Join us for a podcast with host Isabel Sadurni and New York’s top Editors, about how they consistently and successfully bridge the worlds of non-fictional to scripted editorial. Followed by Q&A.

PANELISTS:

ALLYSON C. JOHNSON

(The Namesake, Vanity Fair, Monsoon Wedding )

SAM POLLARD

(If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise, 4 Little Girls, Clockers)

TIM SQUYRES

(Life of Pi, The Armstrong Lie, Syriana)

CRAIG McKAY

(Sin Nombre,Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia)

ALAN OXMAN

(Control Room, Happiness, Welcome To The Dollhouse )

Many established narrative editors have turned their hand todocumentaries, while others have worked in the opposite direction working as documentarians who crossover intonarrative territory. Whether working within fictional or non-fictional worlds -- we as visual storytellers are instinctively drawn to elements common to both genres, yet thefilmmaking communities often exist separately. What are the strengths, strategies and strokes of luckrequired to bridge the two worlds successfully?
BIOS
ALLYSON C. JOHNSON’sFeature Film work includes: Mira Nair’sAmelia,The Namesake, Vanity Fairand MonsoonWedding which received the Golden Lion for Best Film at the2001 Venice Film. Her television work includes NBC’sS mashand The Slap, The Wire, Quanticoand Marco PoloforNetflix. She is presently editing Baz Luhrmann’s series TheGet Down for Netflix. Johnson received an Emmy Nominationediting the documentaryT he Who’s Tommy: The AmazingJourney. Other rockumentaries include Up From theUnderground (Quincy Jones),S ay It Loud(VH-1) and herTriptych short film Kick Out the Jamsappeared at the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum. She hasalso collaborated with such filmmakers as Spike Lee and Griffin Dunne and Bill Moyers.
SAM POLLARDis an Emmy and Peabody Award winning feature film and television video editor, and documentaryproducer/director whose work spans almost thirty years. He recently completed as Producer/Director a 90-minutedocumentary titled August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Standfor the PBS series American Masters. His first assignment as a documentary producer came in 1989 forHenry Hampton's Blackside production Eyes On The Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroadsfor which he received a Peabody Award. Between 1990 and 2010, Mr. Pollard editeda number of Spike Lee's films: Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Girl 6, Clockers, and Bamboozledand co-produced a number of documentary productions for Spike Lee PresentsM ike Tyson, Four Little Girls, When The Levees Broke.
TIM SQUYRESh as edited several films fordirector Ang Lee; Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet ,EatDrinkManWoman, Sense a nd Sensibility,T he Ice Storm,Ri de with the Devil, The Hulk, andCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The latter earned Mr. Squyres Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Hong Kong Film Award, and [American Cinema Editors (ACE)] Eddie Award nominations, as well as the Golden Horse Award (Taiwan's equivalent of the Oscar).He was an Eddie Award nominee for his workonRobertAltman'sAcademyAward-winning, GosfordPark ,whichalsoearnedMr.Squyresan American Film Institute (AFI) Award nomination.His other feature credits as editor include Stephen Gaghan's S yriana , starring Academy Award winner George Clooney; Paul Auster's L ulu on the Bridge and TheInnerLifeofMartinFrost; andGeorgeButler'sdocumentary G oingUpriver:TheLongWarof John Kerry . He has also edited television documentaries for Bill Moyers W hat Can We Do About Violence? a nd A ddiction: Close to Home ) fo r Michael Moore, ESPN, and VH1 .
CRAIG McKAY i s an award-winning feature film editor, story consultant, director, and executive producer. Directing credits include Emmy-Award-winning Bubbe Meises,Bubbe Stories for PBS and HBO’ s T he Red Shoes written by Jo hn Guare. Documentary credits include Br avo’s H aiti: Dreams of Democracy, A cadem y - Award - nominated M andela , and PBS’s a ward - winning W itness: Voices from the Holocaust. Awards in editing include an Emmy for the NBC mini-series Holocaust , as well as two Academy Award nominations for R eds and T he Silence of the Lambs. Other editing highlights include Copland, Philadelphia, Married to the Mob, Something Wild, Melvin and Howard and many others. McKay was also an Executive Producer on the award-winning feature-length documentary A Normal Life.
ALAN OXMAN is a film editor and producer who has worked on a variety of narrative and documentary films. As a producer Alan's recent credits include A Matter of Taste which screened on HBO and was nominated for an Emmy Award and P age One: Inside the New York Times which was distributed by Magnolia Films and was also nominated for an Emmy Award. He was a producer on Edet Belzberg’s T he Recruiter , which won the Peabody Awar d, as well as on C hildren Underground which won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. Alan recently served as post-production supervisor on Inside Job (Academy Award for Best Documentary,2011)andproduceron H otCoffee (Sundance2011,HBOSummerDocSeries).Hewas the co- producer and supervising editor of the Al-Jazeera documentary C ontrol Room (Grand Jury Prize, Full Frame Film Festival). His editing credits include W elcome to the Dollhouse (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival), H appiness ( International Critic’s Award, Cannes Film Festival) and Storytelling (Cannes Film Festival), all for director Todd Solondz. He was a consulting editor on the Oscar- nominated N oEndinSight, which also won the Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.Alan co-edited U nzipped (Audience Award, Sundance Film Festival), which won the A.C.E. Award for Best Documentary Editing. He won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Documentary Editing on the PBS series C ity Life .