MIDGE COSTIN

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER 

Midge Costin holds the Kay Rose Endowed Chair in the Art of Sound Editing at USC School of Cinematic Arts given by George Lucas in 2005. She has been a feature film sound editor in Hollywood where her work is featured in Oscar-nominated films for Sound Editing, and won the Golden Reel award for Sound Editing on Crimson Tide. She is a past board member of the Motion Picture Sound Editors, a lifelong member of the Editors Guild, and lectures internationally on the transformative power of sound.

BOBETTE BUSTER

WRITER/PRODUCER

Bobette Buster is a Professor of the Practice of Digital Storytelling, Northeastern University (Boston), and the author of “DO STORY: How to Tell Your Story So The World Listens” (2013, Chronicle Books US), now in its 10th printing, and “DO LISTEN: Understand What’s Really Being Said, Find A New Way Forwards” (2018, Chronicle Books US). Bobette is a Film Independent Fellow in Screenwriting, and lectures at Pixar Studios, Disney Animation, Catholic University of Milan, La Fémis (Paris), Google (Dublin, London), the BBC, and Animation Ireland. Bobette was a creative story executive in Hollywood for Tony Scott, Ray Stark and Larry Gelbart, while also creating the first MFA course for Feature Film and Television Development at USC, where she was an Adj. Professor in the Peter Stark Program.

KAREN JOHNSON

PRODUCER 

Karen has been producing women-centric, and arts-centric media for 20 years. She is most interested in stories by, for and/or about women. Besides Making Waves, Karen recently produced director Heather Lenz’s 2018 Sundance documentary feature Kusama: Infinity about the avant-garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, distributed domestically by Magnolia Pictures and worldwide by Dogwoof, Ltd.. She produced director Amanda Micheli’s multi-award-winning documentary feature Double Dare about Hollywood stuntwomen, an official selection of the Toronto International Film Festival, distributed worldwide by NBC/Universal. Karen is also co-founder of the social media site nerdgirls.com promoting girls in STEAM. She is also a lawyer.

EDITOR

David J. Turner is an award-winning editor, sound designer, and documentary filmmaker. He teaches Sound Re-Recording Mixing at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and recently worked in post-production on Fruitvale Station, the Grand Jury Prize-winning film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. His documentary work has taken him to 20 countries across the world - directing and editing films for a global non-profit organization that garnered 23 Telly Awards and helped raise millions of dollars for crisis response domestically and internationally. David is also a prolific composer.

SUPERVISING EDITOR 

Thomas G. Miller, ACE was associate producer on the feature documentary Licensed To Kill (POV-PBS), and co-produced Code Black. He has also edited the feature documentaries Good Kurds, Bad Kurds (Independent Lens-PBS), Home of the Brave (Sundance. BBC,CBC), and Camp Out (MTV/Logo). Miller produced and directed, the award-winning documentaries One Bad Cat (Ovation) and the IDA Humanitas Award winning documentary Limited Partnership (Independent Lens-PBS). Other credits include editing and producing television films for Discovery, Fox Family and WNET’s series on disabilities, People in Motion. Tom served on the board of the International Documentary Association for 9 years, and is a member of American Cinema Editors (ACE), the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and the Writer’s Guild of America, West. Since 2004 Tom has been a Professor of Cinema Practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He’s also a pediatrician and served as a medical consultant for Sesame Street.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY 

Sandra Chandler’s work has received theatrical exhibition, been broadcast widely on ABC News, NBC News, A&E, Sundance, PBS, TLC, Cinemax, the Discovery Channel and National Geographic Explorer, and featured in film festivals. Her extensive work for HBO has garnered her two Emmy nominations for outstanding cinematography: Living Dolls and All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise. Also for HBO, she shot the critically acclaimed, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and The Young and the Dead. Most recently she shot the soon-to-be theatrically released, Thunder Soul—The True Story of Conrad Johnson and the Kashmere Stage Band, and One Lucky Elephant, broadcasting on the OWN network.

Music By

Allyson Newman gained her Masters degree in composition from the Sydney Conservartorium of Music. Her first feature film Watermark screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 after which she then moved to LA to study film scoring at USC. Allyson has been awarded both an Australia Council for the Arts Grant and an Australian Guild of Screen Composers Award for her work in film music. Allyson scored the multi award winning documentary feature Limited Partnership as well as Emmy nominated media series Her Story. In July 2017 Allyson participated in the BMI Conducting Workshop and then went on to score Kusama-Infinity which premiered at Sundance 2018. Alongside composer Matt Novack, Allyson wrote music for Emmy Winning TV series Childrens Hospital. and recently completed music for the new Netflix series Medical Police. In 2019 Allyson scored State of Pride directed by Oscar Winning Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman which had its premier at SXSW, as well as A Woman’s Work which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.

ASsistant editor

Amy Reynolds Reed is a sound designer, editor, and re-recording mixer. Recently, she worked on documentaries “Feminists: What Were They Thinking?”, “Pioneers in Skirts”, and virtual reality documentary “Another Dream.” She teaches Sound Design and Re-Recording Mixing at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She has also started to enjoy distance running.

CONSULTING EDITOR 

Kate Amend most recently edited the award-winning documentary feature film The Case Against 8. She was the International Documentary Association’s inaugural award winner for Outstanding Achievement in Editing for her work which includes two Academy Award-winning documentary features: Into the Arms of Strangers and The Long Way Home. Amend also received the American Cinema Editors’ Eddie award for Into the Arms of Strangers. Other recent films include Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Time of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpouche, and One Lucky Elephant, winner of the Best Documentary Editing Award from the Woodstock Film Festival. Amend has been an advisor at the Sundance Institute Editing Lab and has appeared on panels for the Sundance Film Festival, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, International Documentary Association and American Cinema Editors. She is on the faculty of the School of Cinematic Arts at USC, is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and is on the Board of Directors of the American Cinema Editors.

OUR CONSULTANTS

Gary Rydstrom has won seven Oscars and been nominated 14 times for his sound work on Lincoln, War Horse, Lifted, Finding Nemo, Minority Report, Monsters, Inc., Star Wars Episode I-The Phantom Menace, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Backdraft. Many of Gary’s projects have had multiple nominations for Oscars, BAFTAs, Cinema Audio Society Awards.

Mark Jonathan Harris is an Oscar winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, novelist, and film professor. His writing and directing credits include: The Long Way Home, Academy Award for Best Feature Length Documentary; Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, Academy Award for Best Feature Length Documentary; Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives, (as writer) Emmy nomination. He also wroteThe Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, a documentary about editing. His latest film,Foster, aired on HBO in May 2019

LEGAL CONSULTANTS: (for Clearance and Copyright): Donaldson + Callif, LLP and Jack Lerner, Esq a Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Director of the University of California.

William Whittington conducts research and teaches courses in film and television history, genre studies, film and Buddhism, audio culture, photography and digital culture, adaptation, and gender and sexuality in film, television and new media. Between 1993-1997, he served as the curator of the USC Warner Bros. Archives. His scholarly work includes articles and interviews on genre, sound, new media and technology. He is the author of "Sound Design and Science Fiction" from University of Texas Press, 2007, and co-editor of “Spectatorship—Shifting Theories of Gender, Sexuality, and Media" from University of Texas Press, 2018.

THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS

We are super grateful to all who support the making of this important film.  Some of the most generous are listed here. 

RoAnn Costin

Jot and Marietta Turner

David Ahmanson

Carla Brewington 

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Visit www.calhum.org.