Sam Dane (ALUM, JUne 2017)

Assistant Editor, 16 Bars

Mentorship has always been one of the keys to my creative drive. So when I was put in touch with Alison Shurman, a prolific documentary editor and an alum of The Edit Center, I really took her advice to heart. She told me the 6-week course was still the backbone of her editing process, even ten years later. And the personal and professional connections she made helped to jumpstart her career and give her the confidence to compete and create in a field that can feel isolating without the proper support.

I immediately signed up, and had an incredible experience learning from editors I couldn't have imagined even being in a room with a month before. We worked on promising, challenging films, and I treated it like an internship where I was constantly trying to do better, and be better, every day.

After the course, the teachers asked me to come back as a Teaching Assistant for the next one! And completely randomly, the teacher for the documentary section of the upcoming course was going to be Alison, the legend herself, and the sole reason I was there in the first place. We had a terrific 6 weeks, and in that time I was able to show her how thankful I was for leading me to this place, and how dedicated I was to becoming a great editor.

She saw something in me, and when the course ended, she recommended me to be the Assistant Editor on the feature doc she was in the process of editing. We've been working closely on the film ever since, and I'm seeing the entire post process with a magnifying glass, with the mentorship I so badly wanted.