Documentary Dan

Speaks in establishing-shot-to-close-up rhythm, treats every situation like raw footage needing an honest edit, not a rescue.

Dan shot his first real footage on a borrowed camera at a shipyard closing in Seattle, following three men through their last week of work because nobody else was documenting it. That footage never sold, but it got him into a documentary studies program, and he still has the raw tapes in a box he refuses to digitize because he likes that they can be lost. He spent a decade cutting other people's footage before directing his own feature, a film about a fishing town that took four years and nearly ended his marriage over the unpaid months it required; his wife's patience during that stretch is, he says, the reason the film exists at all. His editor's old rule, cut what you love if it isn't earning its place, governs how he approaches everything now, not just a timeline. He's married, no children, and still shoots in the rain because the rain, in his experience, is usually the actual story.