24+ years of editing and post-production for documentary, educational, and branded storytelling.

Reporting 911 and Why it Still Matters_Sample Edit

3:10

An 80-minute feature documentary for The Great Courses, made in partnership with the 9/11 Museum and released on YouTube. It tells the story of the attacks through the journalists who were reporting live from New York as it happened, some of them from ground zero. Building the film meant going through nearly all the raw 9/11 footage that exists, plus upscaling the old material to 4K so it would cut cleanly against the rest of the presentation. I was sole editor, on a deadline locked to the 20th anniversary, with some of the biggest names in American journalism watching the cut. Notes came from an internal producer, two producers at the 9/11 Museum, a third-party media team, and senior leadership, all at once, so keeping everyone aligned took real communication. Long hours, weekends, high stakes. One of the toughest and most rewarding projects I've done.

Weaving Nature Opening Sequence

0:56

A 20-minute documentary made with Maryland Public Television for PBS American Masters. It follows Maryland artist David Bacharach building The Mounds, an outdoor installation that turns weaving and metalsmithing into a statement on climate change and land, air, and water damage. I was sole editor from concept to final cut. The subject and his story were strong going in, but shaping that into a real narrative in the edit was the hard part, and I was also running post-production start to finish, working around camera operator issues along the way. Color correcting a film shot entirely outdoors is its own fight, and this one tested me. PBS American Masters picked it up as the first entry in their Shorts series, and it won an Emmy. Still the project I'm proudest of.

The Banjo: Music History and Heritage_sample edit

5:25

A 10-episode docuseries for Wondrium, around 5 hours total plus live musical performances woven through the series. Hosted by musician and MacArthur "genius grant" recipient Rhiannon Giddens, it traces the banjo's roots from Afro-Caribbean culture through bluegrass, folk, and jazz, with appearances from artists like Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and Béla Fleck. Production hit some snags: footage came in soft, color and lighting inconsistent across shoots. As sole editor, through several producer changes, it fell on me to save it. That meant regrading footage, rebuilding scenes, cleaning up audio, and using advanced editing techniques to reframe bad shots, relight them, and clean up the picture. I was eventually bumped up to assistant producer so I could help fix problems from every angle, not just the timeline.

Urban Legends Explained

1:23

12 episodes, 24 to 31 minutes each Gold Telly Award winner Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman dig into why urban legends stick around: Bigfoot and other cryptids, haunted places, creepypasta, and the stories about cars, food, and health. They also look at how these tales spread online and what they say about what scares us. I edited all 12 episodes. Every one opens with the hosts telling a legend, and I took 2D illustrations from a freelance artist and gave the flat artwork motion in Premiere Pro and After Effects. For every story or creature with no images available, I generated the AI images and video myself in Adobe Firefly, the only tool company rules allowed. This was early in the tech, well before the quality you see today, so it took some problem solving to make it hold up on screen.

Imagining Tomorrow's Entertainment

1:48

10 episodes, 22 to 30 minutes each Buzzie Nominee, Most Innovative Factual Program/Project of the Year (World Congress of Science and Factual Producers) Professor Eric R. Williams walks through where entertainment is headed with extended reality: esports, mixed reality sports, interactive storytelling, cinematic VR, the metaverse. He meets the people building it along the way. I was the sole editor and did some of the graphics. The footage came from all over: 3D objects, 360 cameras, unrendered VR animations and environments, plus cameras of every kind from internal teams and freelance directors and operators shooting around the country. Getting all of that to sit together in one cut took a lot of problem solving and a lot of late nights. It was also a blast to work on. Maybe because of the hard parts, honestly. I learned a ton on this one, and I still use it today.

Grills Gone Wild: From the Backyard to Backstage

1:37

Six cameras, 72 hours of footage, and one very serious barbecue championship. “Revealing, deftly cut and amusingly hosted documentary.” Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel Once a year, Starke, Florida turns into a barbecue town. In February 2011 I brought six cameras to Boots ‘n BBQ, the Santa Fe College Foundation scholarship fundraiser that doubled as the Florida BBQ Association State Championship. The film follows comedian Alex Ortiz as he works the grounds, talks shop with pitmasters, and gets backstage with the concert acts, including southern rock’s Jimmie Van Zant. Boxing champ Pinklon Thomas and wrestling champ Dory Funk Jr. turn up too. Novice teams and veteran teams are cooking toward the same judging deadline, and that clock does a lot of the storytelling. I directed the four day shoot with six cameras, one of them a Steadicam operator. Then I edited the whole thing myself. That meant cutting 72 hours of footage down to a 60 minute film, with graphics built in Motion and After Effects. A barbecue festival is hard to cover because everything happens everywhere at once. The edit had to keep the cooks, the crowd, and the stage moving together without losing the people at the center. The film premiered August 4, 2011 at the Twin Theater in downtown Starke. Two days later, Cinematique Theater in Daytona Beach ran three screenings with red carpet showings and a Q&A with Ortiz and the crew. The Daytona Beach News-Journal gave it a full page in its GO386 entertainment section. In October it screened at the 2011 Orlando Film Festival, where Orlando Sentinel's Roger Moore reviewed it.

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