Hey y'all,
The first ever EDIT VERZUS is happening next Friday nite, June 5th!
Our battle editors finally met each other to cover the ground rules and wow, the trash talk got … very supportive really quickly. They will have one week to review footage and make notes and selects, but nothing will go down on a timeline until the big bell rings.
After that, they will have 40 minutes to cut a fundraising sizzle surrounded by hype crews, mixed drinks and wall-to-wall coverage. Oh, and a set by the one and only DJ Uymami!
Will they be able to stay in the zone, trim and render in time?
Let’s meet our shortcut key warriors!
Emily "Frankenbyte" Frachtling cuts and produces full films in the time it takes your mom to caption a meme.
With multiple Emmys and a turnaround timeline that defies the laws of physics (it’s rumored she once edited a documentary before it was shot) she leapfrogs through the post schedule of PBS NC’s North Carolina Weekend with time enough to actually enjoy one, week in and week out.
She originally sharpened her edit blades as an AE on HBO's Momentum Generation, then wrangled a high-performing YouTube series at Duke University while also animating it, because, why not? Her mind renders like a 12-core, her bin organization rivals IKEA catalogues, and her ripple delete abides no hesitation.
Sowj "Trans Code" Kudva has cut and produced their way through a verdant jungle of fiction and nonfiction filmmaking for 23 years.
Their belief in independent media making is unshakable and they regularly wave one middle finger at harmful studio practices and the technofeudal takeover of global media infrastructures. Their other middle finger flies across the keyboard, slicing piles of unmarked raw footage into bite sized in and out points like a one-person content farm.
In the classroom (Night School Bar, Elon University) they teach the hardest part of editing: how to collaborate and embrace the vulnerability necessary to make creative work. Their research focuses on production studies, the political economy of communications, information studies, and AI.
EDIT VERZUS is the kick-off event of the 2026 Southern Documentary Convening, and it goes down at The Fruit on Friday, June 5th.
Directors, come find your new favorite editor. Producers, come find out what they've been doing in that dark room this whole time. Cutters, young and old, come learn a few speedy tricks for your next project. The people win, the culture wins, the best edit wins.
This is part of the Southern Doc Convening, so you'll need a pass. SDF is offering a limited number of discounted one-nite passes for LOOK DIFFERENT crew;
We’d love to have you in the room if you can swing it! This also gets you into the student doc pitch and convening mixer.
Thank you to all the filmmakers who submitted to our call for entry. We are excited to be announcing the selected project real soon.
Until then, keep looking different,
D.L. and Saleem
LOOK DIFFERENT is a quarterly meetup for Triangle documentarians, generously supported by The Southern Documentary Fund.
