Documentary Editors Take Tribeca
Shining a light on edit room stars
This is the second of three installments where we hear from members of the Alliance of Documentary Editors. Today, I’m sharing insights from Editors and Assistant Editors of:
My Mom Jayne directed by Mariska Hargitay
I Was Born This Way directed by Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard
The Last Dive directed by Cody Sheehy
Just Kids directed by Gianna Toboni
On Wednesday, I spotlighted the editing teams behind four films at Tribeca Film Festival (Are We Good?; Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print; Why We Dream and How Dark My Love.) If you missed that, you can read it below.
I also spoke to one of the ADE’s founding members Derek Boonstra (Are We Good? The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, The Invisible War, American Vandal) about how the organisation took shape and how it’s helping documentary editors find strength in community.
Bella: How did the Alliance of Documentary Editors come to be formed?
Derek: In 2018, an LA-based documentary editor sent a job posting to an assortment of a few dozen other editors that was seeking to fill an editing role for a premium-cable documentary sports series. Among the listed requirements for the job were "12-HOUR DAYS [NON-NEGOTIABLE]".
That email turned into a reply-all thread of experienced documentary editors commiserating about the increasingly long hours and abysmal work/life balance that was becoming the norm in the industry, and sparked a conversation about ways in which documentary editors, who often work in isolation from each other and generally don't have union protections, might be able to collectivize and push back against the currents of exploitation that were being felt widely among us.
A few weeks later, the first in-person meeting of about a dozen documentary editors occurred, and things just kept progressing from there. Over the next few months, bylaws were drafted, a mission was created, and the Alliance of Documentary Editors was born. Now in its 7th year, the all-volunteer 501(c)6 non-profit ADE has over 1000 members from across the US and worldwide, and continues to provide resources, knowledge sharing and moral support for documentary Editors, Assistant Editors, and their collaborators.
Bella: How does the ADE serve its members?
Derek: For those in the Documentary Editing and Assistant Editing field who become members, ADE has a private Slack message board where members share knowledge and strategies for navigating an ever-evolving field. ADE members swap jobs, ask technical questions, share memes, and sometimes vent to a community of people who fully understand the professional issues that they are dealing with. For the wider industry, ADE members have crystallized a number of public-facing resources, such as the Guide for Documentary Editing Schedules, the BIPOC Editors Database and other resources and guidance documents.
From inception, ADE has included Assistant Editors in its mission recognizing the deterioration of mentorship opportunities that they have been afforded over time, and has sought to create new avenues to reverse that trend.
ADE also champions the role of Editors as an authorial presence in the documentary process and pushes for wider recognition of how important the often-overlooked role is to the ultimate creative vision of the final product.
We also occasionally host events at film festivals, produce panels and organize fun in-person social hangouts (like the pictured New York chapter hike)!
Bella: What are the biggest challenges facing the field and how ADE hopes to confront them?
Derek: As with nearly everyone in the film production field, ADE members are currently grappling with the effects of the recent industry-wide contraction in the amount of quality documentary films and series being greenlit, as well as how the rapid advancement of AI continues to change the playing field. Through ongoing knowledge sharing among members on the ADE messageboards as well as with outside organizations like the Archival Producers Alliance (whose founding members met with ADE's founding members for formation advice, and whose Best Practices Guide to Generative AI is ADE endorsed), ADE strives to be an enduring resource for anyone navigating the challenges of a quickly-evolving field.
Editing Teams on their latest films at Tribeca
My Mom Jayne directed by Mariska Hargitay
As the youngest daughter of legendary Hollywood bombshell Jayne Mansfield, Mariska Hargitay didn’t have an ordinary childhood — but her young life turned into an emotionally devastating one after Mansfield’s tragic death at the age of 34, when Mariska was only 3 years old. Growing up, Mariska steered clear of all of the sensationalistic details of her mother’s life and career — including the gossip that the media peddled about her. Now, as a prolific actor-director-producer with decades of acclaimed roles and projects under her belt, she is ready to learn more about — and understand — who her mother Jayne truly was.
JD: The focus was always to keep it personal, intimate, and first person. A sort-of biographical telling, but wrapped in the blanket of a personal essay. And in terms of interviews: with one exception, the voices in the film belong to members of the family. And that always felt like the correct lens with which to explore the storytelling.
