P. BISHOP,
FILM EDITOR.
Documentaries, mostly. Long-form. The kind that take three or four years and arrive without warning. I work with directors who are trying to tell the truth about something difficult, and I help them find the shape of it.
Twenty-two years at the bench. A converted dairy barn on a north-facing hill in western New England. One cutting room, one guest room above, one wood stove. By introduction only.
// WHAT THIS IS
A one-person cutting room. I take on one feature-length project at a time, plus occasionally a shorter piece if the subject matters and the timing lines up. I do the paper edit with you, the radio cut, the assembly, the structural edit, the fine cut, and I’ll stay through online and conform if you want me to.
Most of the films I’ve worked on have been quiet ones. Portraits of people. Landscapes that are also histories. Investigations that move slowly because the truth tends to. If you’re looking for someone to cut a sixty-second trailer in a week, this is the wrong door; I’d point you toward one of three people I trust for that and step aside.
What I bring is patience and a structural ear. I listen to dailies the way a musician listens to a tape — for where the rhythm wants to land, for the note that’s off, for the phrase hiding under three other takes. Then we build. I keep a green notebook per project; you’ll see it on the bench. It tends to fill up around week six.
I work in Avid Media Composer for long-form (bin locking saves marriages) and in Resolve for color-adjacent passes and delivery. I’m comfortable conforming either direction and will cheerfully hand off an XML, AAF, or OMF that a finishing editor will not curse at.
// SELECTED WORK
- 2024 THE LONG FIELD dir. M. Corvalho feature doc, 104 min — in fine cut new
- 2022 HOUSE WITHOUT WALLS dir. J. Kestrel feature doc, 87 min
- 2021 EVERY OTHER SUNDAY dir. A. Reyes-Oduya feature doc, 92 min
- 2019 THE RIVER, PART ONE dir. S. Gottlieb series pilot, 58 min
- 2017 NINE HUNDRED DAYS dir. P. Bishop short doc, 24 min
// ON WORKING TOGETHER
I’m not accepting new engagements from the open market. The calendar through the end of 2026 is committed to “The Long Field” and a piece I can’t name yet. Beyond that I’ll be taking referrals through directors, producers, and colleagues I’ve already worked with.
If someone you trust has suggested you reach out, mention their name when you do. That’s how the door opens. Everything else — the room, the pace, the rate card, the deliverable schedule — we figure out over a long conversation, ideally in person, ideally with the dailies already on a drive between us.
For what it’s worth: I’ve never taken a film I didn’t finish, and I’ve never finished one I didn’t love by the end. Those aren’t the same thing. Both take time.
The book is full through the end of 2026 and most of 2027. The next open window is Q2 2027, and it is already informally promised to one of two directors who have been waiting their turn. If you arrived here uninvited, that is the honest standing of the calendar.