FILM WORK
ABOUT
DAMIAN MARTORANA
Award-Winning Producer and Editor
DAMIAN MARTORANA
Damian Martorana is a Buffalo-born producer, director, editor, and storyteller who has spent his life performing under pressure — first as a championship volleyball player, then as a professional ballroom dancer and studio owner, and then as a filmmaker trusted by Emmy-winning producers, working actors, cities, foundations, and national television.
He is the principal of Damian Martorana Productions and Editorial, a full-cycle company that takes a project from a sentence on a page to a financed production and a finished picture. The work spans feature films, documentaries, television, shorts, music videos, product films, corporate campaigns, nonprofit films, and civic media. The IMDb page lists 30+ credits. The through-line is not a job title. It is a story: finding the emotional heart of raw footage, performance, and brand material, then shaping it into work that moves an audience and ships on deadline.
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The spark — West Irondequoit
The filmmaker started in a freshman broadcast-media class at West Irondequoit High School, on the big VHS tape decks, with a camera in his hands. Within a few years, he was cutting the opening bumper for the high school news show. The moment that locked the craft in place was a senior Humanities book report on Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried: Damian built a montage from Platoon and Hamburger Hill, laid Metallica’s “One” under it, and earned an A+. He was not waiting for permission to tell a story. He was already cutting one.
On the same campus, he was becoming one of the region’s most decorated young volleyball players — Mizuno High School All-American, FAB 50 Select, Empire State Games, USA Junior Olympic training team. The two lives were never separate. Timing, discipline, and the refusal to miss a cue were the same skill, whether the ball was in the air or the edit was on the deck.
The athlete
Penn State recruited him on an athletic scholarship to play for Coach Mark Pavlik. From there, he transitioned to a professional career in the European Volleyball League in Assen, Netherlands, and with traveling teams in the U.S. He won a national title with the Rochester Pace Bootlegger Men’s team in 2000 and earned All-Tournament and regional honors over more than thirty years in the sport.
He has never left the gym. Since returning to Buffalo in 2025, Damian has served as the Assistant Coach for D'Youville University’s Men's Volleyball program and as the Head Coach for Lockport Volleyball Club’s 16 Black team. He has also worked with Rochester Pace Bootlegger, coaching several age groups to gold medal finishes. For him, developing people is vital, and he approaches coaching with the same focus he applies to running a set. The gold-medal seasons with his clubs are not just a side note to his coaching career; they represent his leadership credentials—his ability to command a room, set high standards, and unite a group of individuals into a cohesive team.
The dancer
After the professional court came the professional floor. In Orlando, Damian built a second career as a ballroom dancer, instructor, and producer. He founded and operated Rhythm Fitness, taught thousands of students, competed at a high level, and produced and starred in theatrical ballroom shows that sold out.
The studio taught him the other half of directing: how to work with bodies, music, nerves, and live audiences. It also forced the next turn in the craft. Tired of hiring other people to shoot and cut his company’s work, he bought a computer and taught himself Adobe Premiere. In 2009, he was editing promotional films for world-class events, including the Millennium Dancesport Championships, and for dance icons Nigel Lythgoe and Mary Murphy of So You Think You Can Dance. He produced and edited videos for products, events, and places across Greater Orlando. A narrative short for a Full Sail senior film, Murphy’s Law, confirmed what he already knew: if he wanted to work at the highest level, he had to go where the best editors and producers were.
Hollywood
In 2012, Damian drove into Los Angeles with his dog, Mambo, and twelve years of work began.
He did not arrive as a specialist. He arrived willing to do the whole job — write, package, raise and manage money, line-produce, serve as Unit Production Manager on feature work, first-assist, direct, and cut. The first paying work that opened those rooms was actor reels: hundreds of them. That grind taught him how to find a performance inside raw footage and how to make a working actor look hireable. From there the jobs got larger.
On nationally syndicated television, he was Associate Producer on the U.S. version of Just for Laughs Gags under Emmy-winning producer-director and showrunner Ron Deutsch, helping design and drive a high-volume comedy series built from segments, bumpers, tags, and transitions that could not slip. Related pipeline work included pilots for Bellum Entertainment. For Emmy-winning Amazing Race producer Evan Weinstein, he edited documentary and premium series work, including Awakening Giants — raw interview and archive turned into character-driven picture.
He also learned those rooms from the other side of the camera. On Greg McLean’s Blumhouse feature The Darkness (2016), starring Kevin Bacon, he played The Crow. On James Moran’s Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story (2015), he was a featured background player and photo double for Doug Jones as the Slender Man / Operator. On Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s Blumhouse feature Viral (2016), he was the lead zombie. That is not a second career. It is on-set time on real features — marks, weather, creature work, and the clock — which is why producers trust him when a floor has to move.
Features and authored films followed. He was lead editor on Summer with the Guys (2023), produced by Warren Zide and directed by Terrence Green. He edited and assistant-directed Say Goodbye to Hollywood (2022) for Steven Helgoth, and cut the behind-the-scenes film for Helgoth’s Shadow Watchers, starring Billy Lush, Lesley Ann Warren, and Jake Busey. He produced, directed, and edited Memoir of a Call Girl (2021), developed through the New Hollywood Collective Director’s Chair workshop from Ken Eulo’s play Disconnect. He served as first assistant director and co-producer on a run of festival shorts — Free Way, Guardian Angel, Brothers, The Taxi Man, In 12 Hours, Nikki Sings Again, Corky All Grown Up, Portals, and others — films that had to work on time, on budget, and on story. He was first AD on a short for the 48 Hour Film Festival. He was Unit Production Manager on a feature. He was executive producer and director on Instant Karma, the series created by Annie Wood. On Brent Baum’s feature documentary Finding Noah (2015), narrated by Gary Sinise, he worked as a production assistant and transcriber.
The documentary Peace Pilot — To the Ends of the World and Beyond (2024) is the clearest proof of stamina. As co-producer, co-writer, post-production story producer, and lead editor, Damian shaped hundreds of hours of expedition footage into a feature that now streams on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google TV.
People hire him when the talent is famous and the clock is not generous. Collaborators have included Kevin Bacon, Doug Jones, Steven Bauer, Johnathon Schaech, Lesley Ann Warren, Jake Busey, Tyler Posey, Al Sapienza, Lydia Cornell, Mary Murphy, Nigel Lythgoe, Tina Imahara, James Moran, Frank Buono, Warren Zide, and Robert DeLaurentis. Institutions trusted him with public-facing work for the City of West Hollywood, the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation, the DeLaurentis Foundation, and BRAVO 369. The company was never only “Hollywood.” It was anyone who needed a story finished at a professional standard.
Festival recognition connected to films he produced and edited includes Best Editing at Southern Shorts (2016), Best Comedy and Best Drama at United International (2016), a REMI Award at WorldFest-Houston (2017), and Best Action Short at Culver City (2017). The reputation underneath the laurels is simpler. Colleagues call him the person who finds the heart of the material. Clients call him the person who delivers.
The character of the work
Decades of coaching and teaching are visible on a set. Damian runs a floor the way he runs a practice: clear standard, calm under stress, no wasted motion, everyone accountable, no one discarded. Directors use him as first AD because he owns the job. Producers use him as editor because he will sit with hundreds of hours and not complain. Talent uses him because the room stays human when the day gets long.
Mary Murphy called the experience trustworthy, safe, and five-star. Ron Deutsch called him indispensable. Tina Imahara called him unstoppable. Robert DeLaurentis compared working with him to a genie in a bottle. The quotes are on the Testimonials page because the work earned them.
Home — Buffalo
After twelve years in Los Angeles, Damian brought the company home to Western New York. The headquarters is Buffalo now: same practice, closer to family, back in the region that built the athlete and the editor in the first place.
For WBBZ-TV Channel 5, he has produced, directed, and edited a series of commercials; edited an episode of For Those Who Serve; and produced, directed, and edited segments for Discover. He attaches to narrative, documentary, commercial, music-video, and branded work for local producers, agencies, stations, corporations, and nonprofits. He leads workshops that teach producing and directing a short film or television pilot — the same full-cycle method he uses on paid jobs.
The company still thinks it, sees it, writes it, and does it. That line on the homepage is not a slogan. It is the sequence he has used since the VHS decks in Irondequoit.
