MEGAN DONEMAN
Megan Doneman studied a Bachelor of Business Communications majoring in Film at the University of Technology, Australia. Her final year film, a short docu-drama portraying the grieving process of a woman who tragically loses her brother (which she produced, directed and wrote), won the Classic Cinema Award for “Most Promising New Filmmaker” at the Pacific Queensland Film and Television Awards in 1998.
On the basis of the success of her first short film, Megan was hired to work on Alex Proyas film “Dark City”, initially for a nine-week stint as a runner for the editing department, headed by Academy-award nominated editor, Dov Hoenig (“Heat” and “Fugitive”). Her hard work and dedication led to her working on the film until its completion nine months later, training as an assistant editor, upon Hoenig’s recommendation.
Megan continued her career as assistant editor on movies such as George Miller’s “Babe 2”; Jane Campion’s “Holy Smoke”; John Woo’s “Mission Impossible 2”; Samantha Lang’s “Monkey’s Mask”; Michael Rymer’s “Perfume” and “Queen of the Damned”; and Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy as well as “King Kong”.
While working in the editing department of both large and small budget feature films, learning the creative and technical aspects of filmmaking and storytelling, Megan also produced, directed and wrote another successful short film, “Till Morn Do Us Part” selected for “Best of the Rest” screening at Sydney’s prestigious Tropfest Short Film Festival.
She also acted as one of the cinematographers on Channel 4’s TV documentary, “Kirosawa: The Last Emperor”, filming director John Woo’s interview segment.
In 2001 she moved to London, where she spent 18 months, running screen-acting workshops for London theatre actors, at the prestigious Sadler’s Wells Theatre in Islington. These intensive eight-week courses allowed her to share the information she learned from years of working on films and in editing with up and coming actors who found the experience invaluable. Megan would direct, film and edit two-hander scenes given to all the actors upon completion of the course. It was during this time, she decided to pursue her long time goal of making Yes Madam, Sir, an undertaking that would take her six years to complete, in between working on paid industry jobs on major feature films.