// ABOUT
I grew up in a house with a 16mm projector and a father who used it to show us films on Sunday nights — mostly ethnographies and nature reels, whatever the library in town had that week. I became an editor because I wanted to understand how those nights were made. I’ve been cutting professionally since 2002.
I trained in New York and spent eight years there as an assistant and additional editor before moving north in 2012. I work now out of a converted dairy barn on the edge of a small town, with one cutting room, good north light, and a wood stove that I feed more than it feeds me. Directors visit for stretches of days or weeks at a time. It suits the kind of films I cut.
My approach, if you want a short version of it: structure first, feeling second, polish last — and never confuse the three. A rough cut that feels right but isn’t built right will not survive its first test screening. A film built right can absorb almost any amount of revision and still stand up. “Feeling” is not the enemy of structure; it’s what structure is in service to.
I teach a week-long workshop once a year for emerging documentary editors, by invitation through a small nonprofit I won’t name here. That’s the extent of my teaching. Otherwise my time is the films.
// METHOD
Paper first. Before the bins, before the sequence, there’s usually a two- or three-day paper edit. We print transcripts, we mark up, we argue over coffee. The sequence that results is half-blind and usually wrong, which is the point. Being wrong on paper is cheap.
Radio cut second. Audio only, no picture. We assemble the spoken spine of the film with no visuals at all. If the story doesn’t hold as radio, it won’t hold as picture. This step saves entire months later on.
Assembly third. The first full screenable version. Usually 40–80% longer than the finished film. Meant to be ugly and honest.
Structural edit. We rearrange, transplant, occasionally amputate. The card wall in the room is alive during this phase. Directors describe this step as either thrilling or devastating depending on sleep.
Fine cut. Line-level work. Frames, not seconds. Sound design begins in parallel.
Lock. I will not lock a picture on a Friday. I’ve seen too many films unlocked on a Monday. We lock mid-week, after a screening, after a night of sleep, after one last pass at dawn.
// TECHNICAL
I cut on Avid Media Composer for long-form (bin locking is non-negotiable when a director and I are both reaching into the same project). I’m fluent in Resolve and use it for offline color passes, scratch conform, and delivery. I’ll receive camera originals or edit proxies; I prefer DNxHR LB for proxies and I’ll transcode on arrival if the post house hasn’t.
Media mirrors to two local drives and a third at a friend’s studio two towns over; an LTO-8 archive pass happens at picture lock and again at delivery. I’ve never lost a frame, but I’ve known editors who have, and that’s enough.
I can conform AAF, OMF, XML, and EDL cleanly to any sound or color house you bring. I keep a slate of the specific frame-rate and audio-sample choices we made on day one and I won’t let them drift. If you’ve ever had a film where the sync slipped by a frame across the third act, you know why.
Accessibility passes (captions, audio description planning) are something I will think about starting from the assembly, not tacked on at delivery. The film is for its audience, including the audience the film hasn’t met yet.
// PATH
- 1994Father’s 16mm projector, Bell & Howell, bulb replaced twice.
- 1998–2002Film school; cut on a Steenbeck once a week, under protest.
- 2002First paid assistant gig in New York. Logging tapes.
- 2006First additional-editor credit. Still the proudest line break.
- 2010First solo feature as editor of record.
- 2012Moved north. Rented the barn before I’d seen it dry.
- 2015“Small Weather.” The one I cut on film.
- 2017“Nine Hundred Days.” Stepped out from the bench once.
- 2019Started the green notebooks. One per film, no exceptions.
- 2022“House Without Walls.” The card-wall film.
- 2024→“The Long Field.” Currently locking.
// CONTACT
Calendar is committed through the end of 2026. If a director or producer I’ve cut with or assisted for has sent you, mention their name in the first line. That’s still how the door opens. Cold queries will not be rude but they will not land either.
Mud season returns are slow; the road from town is impassable for about three weeks every April. Correspondence picks back up after the thaw.