About the Filmmakers

dawn porter

Dawn Porter, Director/Producer

Dawn Porter is the founder of Trilogy Films. She is Director/Producer of Gideon’s Army. She is an alumni of the Tribeca All Access program, where she won the 2011 juried Creative Promise Award for Gideon’s Army. Realscreen named Dawn one of their 2012 Doc Hot Shots 15 emerging directors to watch. Other Trilogy projects include Spies of Mississippi for ARTE

Germany and PBS, and a documentary about celebrity Chef Alexandra Guarnaschelli for the Cooking Channel. Dawn also works in narrative features as Executive Producer on Serious Moonlight, written by Adrienne Shelley and starring Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton. She is also an Executive Producer on The Green, an independent feature premiering on Showtime Networks and starring Cheyenne Jackson and Emmy®-winning actress Julia Ormond. Before becoming a filmmaker she was the Director of News Standards and Practices at ABC News, and Vice President of Standards and Practices at A&E Networks. Dawn is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Georgetown University Law Center. She was a practicing attorney at Baker & Hostetler and ABC Television Networks before beginning her television career.

 

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Julie Goldman, Producer

Julie Goldman founded Motto Pictures in 2009. In January 2013, three films that Julie produced will premiere in US Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival: God Loves Uganda directed by Roger Ross Williams, Manhunt directed by Greg Barker and GIDEON’S ARMY directed by Dawn Porter. Julie premiered two films at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival: Participant Media’s  A Place at the Table directed by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry directed by Alison Klayman. In 2011, Julie produced Buck, which won the Sundance US Documentary Audience Award. Julie was Executive Producer of In the Shadow of the Moon. She was nominated by the Producers Guild of America for the Producer of the Year Award for Sergio and was a consultant on the Academy Award®-winning The Cove and Matt Tyrnauer’s acclaimed Valentino the Last Emperor.

 

 

matthew
Matthew Hamachek, Editor

Matthew Hamachek’s work has aired on HBO, IFC, PBS, BBC and the Discovery Channel. He began his career working on the Oscar-nominated documentary Street Fight with Marshall Curry, and went on to collaborate with Curry again on Racing Dreams, which won Best Documentary at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. Their latest partnership, If a Tree Falls, won the Documentary Editing award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary. Matthew has worked on a number of other projects including the non-fiction series Film School with Nanette Burstein, The One Percent with Jamie Johnson and Gideon’s Army with Dawn Porter. He recently traveled to Morocco as part of the US State Department’s American Documentary Showcase to screen Racing Dreams at universities and cinemas around the country.

 

Summer Damon
Summer Damon, Co-Producer

Summer Damon joined Trilogy Films in 2009, where she has been an integral part of the company’s development. She co-produced Gideon’s Army. She is also Line Producer for Spies of Mississippi, currently in production for ARTE Germany and PBS. In addition to her work with Trilogy, she was Production Manager and 2nd Assistant Director for Concussion, a feature selected for US Dramatic Competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Summer deftly adapts her film production skills as tour manager for Natalie Merchant, the critically acclaimed vocalist and former frontwoman for the alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs. In addition to filmmaking, Summer holds a degree from The French Culinary Institute and has worked at some of New York’s best restaurants.

 

chrisChris Hilleke, Director of Photography

Chris Hilleke is a filmmaker from Birmingham, Alabama who has been making motion pictures in one way or another for almost two decades. As a die-hard independent he writes, edits, scores and directs, but it is his cinematography that has kept food on the table and small budgets available for his own work. Some of Chris’ more notable feature-length contributions in cinematography, include: the HBO documentary Gideon’s Army, the award-winning Man in the Glass: The Dale Brown Story, the sex comedy Autoerotic and the thriller A Horrible Way to Die. Chris’ commercial clients include US Space Camp, Mercedes-Benz, Subway, and Southern Progress. Between gigs as a director of photography he has managed to produce a slew of his own award-winning, short narrative and documentary films including the 2009 Sidewalk Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award Winner Some of What I know About Tommy.

 

patrick SheehanPatrick Sheehan, Cinematography and Sound Recordist

Patrick Sheehan is a documentary filmmaker with 15 years in the video and film production and post-production fields. Sheehan began working in video and film production as a location sound mixer. Film and video credits include multiple feature and short films including the Academy-Award Nominated JOHNNY FLYNTON, over 70 documentary films, broadcast work for HBO, MTV, Discovery Channel, National Geographic and The History Channel and regional and national advertising for Pfizer, Wal-Mart, Verizon Wireless and The Weather Channel. In 2004, Sheehan filmed and directed his first documentary film titled Getwell. Since that time, Sheehan has written, directed, filmed and produced multiple documentaries including Haiti is on Fire and Man in the Glass:  The Dale Brown Story, winner of the “Award of Excellence” at the 2011 Los Angeles Movie Awards, and The Audience Choice for Best Documentary at the 2011 Sidewalk Film Festival. Sheehan was also awarded “Best Director” at the 2011 Los Angeles Movie Awards (Feature Documentary Category). Recently, Sheehan was Director of Photography for American Man directed by HBO’s REAL Sports’ Jon Frankel. Sheehan’s recent work includes camera and audio for BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez and Director of Photography for Uncle Glen: A Bird of Rare Plumage.

 

Paul BrillPaul Brill, Composer

Paul Brill’s compositions for numerous award-winning films, TV series and commercials, NPR program themes, and several acclaimed CDs of original and innovative songwriting show that youthful adventures as an herbal smokes salesman, street performer, valet, corporate errand boy, and a marine biology instructor can serve the creative spirit well. Paul has received 3 Emmy® nominations for his scores for the films including Full Battle Rattle , The Devil Came on Horseback, and The Trials of Darryl Hunt.” Paul won the 2011 Best Music Award from the International Documentary Association for his score for the film, Better This World. He recently collaborated with rock legends U2 on the HBO film, Burma Solider  composing a new string arrangement for an acoustic version of their classic song, “Walk On.” He scored the hit documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, the recently released Page One: Inside the NY Times, as well as Christy Turlington Burns’ directorial debut, No Woman, No Cry, on which he collaborated with songwriter Martha Wainwright, and the film adaptation of the best-selling book, Freakonomics. He is the composer for dozens of TV series and films for A+E, MTV, The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and PBS, among others.

 

BryceBryce Kirchoff, Digital Media Coordinator

Bryce Kirchoff has produced web and social media campaigns for organizations at all levels of the media industry including local broadcast stations, regional cable service providers, and national cable networks. He currently leads social media efforts for Next Avenue, a national PBS franchise, and the social engagement campaign for the HBO documentary GIDEON’S ARMY. His clients and previous employers include Charter Communications, Wisconsin Public Television, Disney | ABC Television Group and Court TV (now truTV), where he worked closely with Emmy® -winning producer Linda Ellman to manage community engagement for ON NATIVE SOIL and optimized Court TV’s website for its “Choices” educational campaign aimed at helping at-risk youth make positive life choices. In 2011, Bryce received his master’s of science degree in New Media Management from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.