2013 Sundance Doc Lab pt.2: Summer Camp + Indie Film Rehab

I was invited to attend this year's Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Lab as an assistant editor. Each assistant is assigned to one of the five feature-length documentaries that have been invited to participate in the lab. Each project consists of its director(s) and editor. This is Part Two in my Sundance Labs re-cap. To read Part One, click here.

Post screening discussion

The lab is a summer camp and a rehabilitation center for your film. Or maybe a better way to phrase that - since rehab connotes that you're coming in with problems - is that it's a gut check for your film. It's fun, it's creatively and intellectually invigorating, it's exhausting. Fellows and advisors bare their souls. Many come to terms with what their film is and isn't. The Sundance screening room has a way of making people tear up for one reason or another. I've learned so much at the lab about storytelling and editing, just in time to take on a new doc project, my first ever as an editor.

I apologize for being vague on the details as to how the labs can have such a profound effect on a group of adults, most of which will have met each other for the first time. But I'm trying to protect the privacy of the lab to a certain extent. I want any one reading this to have a flavor of what the doc labs are like but without betraying the confidence of any of the participants.


Filmmakers are putting themselves in a vulnerable place, allowing a group of strangers (albeit extremely talented strangers) to pick a part their work. Many of these projects the filmmakers have been working on for several years. Some are personal, first-person stories. They all deal with huge emotional stakes. I wonder if the filmmakers realize when they are applying to be part of the lab how brave they are to screen their work once their accepted.

The advisor presentations (in which directing and editing advisors show samples of their work and share their process or experience or distilled knowledge) can also be emotional experiences. I recall a presentation in which the editor, who had worked on Ken Burns' Jazz and had a hand in fundamentally changing the approach of that project's editing process, choked up when he attempted to articulate his fondness for the music. His voice cracked discussing the subject, not simply the filmmaking process. That's passion. We should all be so lucky to have that kind of passion toward content.

One is also moved by the pieces the advisors screen. Even though we only get to see snippets of their work, I'm increasingly surprised by how emotional I can get from simply viewing an excerpt. Sometimes it's a perfectly chosen piece of music, sometimes a moment revelation by one of the subjects. My favorite presentations involve seeing before and after samples. This way you get to see a sequence evolve in the span of an hour long presentation. Bonus: You get to see such accomplished artists and craftspeople undergo the same trial and error process that you do. No one gets it right on their first pass. This is very humbling.

The screening room doesn't always have to be an intellectually rigorous or emotionally fraught place. Herb, our projectionist, was kind enough to throw Game 7 of the NBA finals on the screen:

Not the outcome I was looking for that night.