Life & Work with Damian Martorana

Today we’d like to introduce you to Damian Martorana.

Hi Damian, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have spent my life as an artist and an athlete. Maximizing my potential and earning my living by using my talents as a professional volleyball player, ballroom dancer/instructor, and now, an award-winning film producer and editor based in L.A.

Born in Buffalo, NY and raised in Rochester, NY, by my parents Andrew and Dee Martorana, who were descendants of Sicilian/Eastern European immigrants. They were raised with good morals, high values, and a strong work ethic. I was blessed with the same incredible upbringing in a middle-class environment, given multiple opportunities to explore my interests and discover my talents, fully supported with unconditional love. The best childhood I could ask for.

Attending West Irondequoit High allowed me to explore the arts and athletics.

The Arts…

I took a Broadcast Media class one year. We watched a senior film project in the editing room and I was blown away by what I saw and by what was possible with editing. I was hooked. I went on to create the IHS Student News show opener that aired on local cable. Instead of writing a report on Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, I was inspired to create a video report using “One” by Metallica along with clips from Platoon and Hamburger Hill. That earned me an A+.

Athletics…

The summer before my freshman year, I joined my best friend to try out for the JV Volleyball team. I knew the basics from a couple of neighborhood picnics and by the end of the season, I was practicing with Varsity.

My father was my inspiration, I grew up watching him play sports, lift weights, and play the drums. We first started my foray into sports by playing catch and then progressed to other things like basketball and football. He attended every game and even coached a few times!

After that 1st season, I got suspended for some trouble and spent a day at a Scared Straight program at the Monroe County Jail. It did just that. It scared me straight into joining an after-school volleyball club run by Head Coach Cal Wickens. If it weren’t for the sport of volleyball, I would have had the wrong friends, made the wrong choices, and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cal was a tough love coach with a strong, loud voice that rattled heads, making it a challenge to play. After one game, he took me aside and said, “Listen to what I am saying, not how I am saying it.” That clicked and I was able to focus and have fun. I remembered that advice. It made it easier to deal with stressful people and stressful situations and excel forward.

The only way to learn and get good at something is to focus on it, like a dog with a bone, until it becomes natural and the skill is mastered. Throughout my senior year, I was touring the country playing for Cal’s boys and men’s teams. I was so committed to the sport that I didn’t attend my graduation because I was at a tournament in Chicago.

I was named MVP of the I.H.S. Boys Volleyball, Mizuno High School All-American, and attended the Junior Olympic training camp at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado – twice. I was recruited by every Division I school in the country and eventually signed for a scholarship with recent NCAA Collegiate National Champions, Penn State University. Four years later, I went to the European Pro League in the Netherlands for a team in Assen. I was officially a professional volleyball player.

Eight years before that, after my freshman season, I was talking to a senior teammate. He asked me what my plans were with volleyball. I replied, “Division 1, Pro, and the Olympics.” He chuckled. “Those are pretty big goals,” he said. In retrospect, I understand his perspective and I’ll admit that I was a little delusional. However, I recognized how it motivated me. Big goals may look unattainable to a person that lacks the ability to dream big and the courage to climb the mountain to fulfill the dream. One IS delusional if they don’t have the talent, lack desire, and don’t get off the couch to work towards the dream until it becomes reality.

Before retiring from the wonderful sport of volleyball after 12 years, I had the most profound moment on the court. Not as a player but as a coach. During my college/pro years, I was coaching the PSU volleyball summer camps and Cal’s club team.

I was coaching the 3rd team of girls 16 and under, which was a mix of talent, personalities, and desire to be on the court. Arrogantly, I asked the girls on the first day of practice if any of them have ever felt what it’s like to have a gold medal placed around their necks. Nobody raised their hand. I told them if you work hard and do what I tell you to do, I will give you that experience. We lost every game in the first half of the club season, but every tournament, the team got better and better and soon started winning games. Finally, at the last tournament of the season at Penn State, we found ourselves in a gold medal match, surrounded by a couple of hundred people, and it was match point. We won and tears of joy ran down our faces as we celebrated at center court. Ha! I couldn’t believe I lived up to my promise. It was the best and most memorable gold medal I had ever had placed around my neck. The setter for the team went off to college, and for a senior thesis paper, she wrote of the person who had a profound effect on her life. She wrote about me, her club volleyball coach.

The last year I played volleyball, I stopped for lunch after dropping off coaching applications at some local high schools. Across the street was an Arthur Murray ballroom dance studio, and while eating a burger, I thought of movie stars like Fred Astaire, Patrick Swayze, and John Travolta. The first movie I saw that inspired me to want to be part of the movie industry was Raiders of the Lost Ark. I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to be an action hero or an archeologist. I did know that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in Rochester. So, what would happen if I walked into that studio and asked if they were hiring? Worst case, I learn how to dance and girls like guys that can dance, right?

With no dance experience or desire to be a world-champion dancer, I finished up my lunch and went to the dance studio. I opened the door to a set of stairs leading to the second floor, and a big chandelier hung from the ceiling. As I walked up the stairs, I heard a voice in my head that said, “You’re going to go wherever they tell you to go.” I didn’t think much of it because I didn’t want to admit that I heard a voice. I walked into an empty studio, except for the manager sitting at the reception desk.

Raised to be a respectful gentleman with good manners, I waited patiently and then, after a brief conversation, the manager made a call and sent me across town to another Arthur Murray to meet with the owner, Kimberly, a strikingly beautiful woman with a strong, confident presence. She explained the job and that they were only hiring for staff to relocate to Orlando. Florida was halfway to California (the movie capital of the world) and I remembered what the voice said. I was up for the adventure. Six months later, I left the snow in Rochester and arrived in sunny Orlando to start a new chapter in my life as a professional ballroom dance instructor for Arthur Murray.

After spending a couple of years with Arthur Murray, I ventured off to start my own dance company – Rhythm Fitness. I offered a hybrid aerobics class wherein the participants learned several Latin dances (useful in social settings) while getting a cardio workout.

To coin the phrase, “From the gym floor to the dance floor.” Starting with one class at a local Gold’s gym, Rhythm Fitness was in all the Bally Total Fitness’ and YMCAs in Orlando. These classes funneled to my group classes, private lessons, showcases, and competitions. I started taking theater classes and I fell in love with the craft of acting. This led me to produce, direct, and choreograph a theatrical ballroom dance show called Rhythm and Fever, based on movies like Moulin Rouge, The Warriors, and Dirty Dancing, starring my dance partner, my students, and myself.

Eventually, I set out to produce Rhythm Fitness dance videos, but it was too expensive to have a production company produce them. An Olympic coach once said, “Losers make excuses. Winners find solutions.” So, I got a camera, a computer, and tapping into my high school editing experience, I taught myself how to edit on Adobe Premiere. Regardless of how hard I worked to be the next Tae-Bo sensation, Zumba proved that was not my destiny.

Teaching people how to dance and the ability to dance confidently with anyone, anytime, anywhere is priceless, fulfilling, and life-changing. That being said, I never walked into Arthur Murray’s in Rochester to be a World Champion dancer. I had a monkey named Cali on my back. At the end of the day, I couldn’t take myself seriously as an editor while living in Florida. The best editors were in Hollywood. Mentor and friend Ken Eulo once said, “Know what you want, why you want it, and what you are willing to do to get it.”

The fear of the unknown holds a lot of people back from reaching their goals and dreams. If I did not go to LA and pursue the California dream of film editing, the monkeys of fear and failure would eat away at me for life. If I were to be a father or become a full-time coach one day, how could I encourage them to use their talents to pursue their dreams and to not let fear or failure stand in their way? It’s amazing what happens when you walk toward your heart’s desire. Once I made up my mind to go to LA, many doors of opportunities opened.

My mother told me once, “Find something you love to do as a child, and if you can make a living doing it, then you’re winning at the game of life.” And thanks to my mother and her mother, I was blessed with an artistic eye, a creative mind, and an entrepreneurial spirit. In February of 2012, I packed up my two-door Mazda, my computer, and Mambo, my canine kid, and drove for three days to Los Angeles to be a professional film editor.

As a mentor once said, “Focus on the work to get the gold. Not on the gold.” Most people just focus on the gold and forget to do the work, which is why they never get the gold. Focus on the work. Art is subjective, which can be very frustrating, but my personal competitiveness would drive me to be the best editor I can be, producing the best work that I can and exceeding the client’s expectations. The carrot of opportunities dangled in front of me and I morally and ethically chased them to get what I needed to grow into a great film editor and make a good living doing it. Currently, I am producing and editing a feature documentary about aviator Robert DeLaurentis and his record-making Polar Circumnavigation.

It’s been said by many accomplished people that “What you do today is who will be tomorrow.” To this day, at the end of the day, I look back to see what I’ve accomplished personally, financially, and professionally that will move me forward to achieving the reality I’ve envisioned. Prove to yourself that you can achieve what you set your mind and heart on. If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.

None of us have a choice when we are born. There’s no checklist in the mother’s womb to determine your outcome. With that said, and as always, I thank my mother and father for everything that has led up to this moment and years beyond their beloved mortal coil. Thank you.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
What fun would life be, how interesting of a character would you be, or how wise would your words of wisdom be if life were a smooth road? Embrace it. Everyone can look out at the beautiful mountain on the horizon and dream how fun it would be to climb to the top to see the amazing view. A handful of adventurous people will drive to the base of the mountain in an attempt to climb it until they see how much bigger and scarier the mountain is from the base. A few confident and skilled people will climb the scary mountain only to stop halfway. One person with the most desire and endurance will make it to the top, crack open a beer, and enjoy the beautiful view. Even to get a pilot’s license and purchasing a plane to get the same view is a challenge.

In other words, one has to answer the questions, what do you want, why do you want it, and what are you willing to do to get it? No matter what that is, the roads in life are not always smooth. They’re curvy and bumpy for a reason. And although we all can share similar experiences along the journey, each road is uniquely different for everybody. At the end of the day though, one’s biggest obstacle is usually one’s self.

With that said, ignorance is bliss. I’ve seemed to always have had the sense of, “I want to do that” and “I can do that.” At the start of my first day at Arthur Murray, I was taught the box step. As I was stumbling through it, I remember thinking, “I’m a professional athlete. I can do this. It’s just going to take patience, practice, and time.” Life is an endurance race. Breathe and stay focused on what you want and why you want it. The only thing that will stop you is, you. Unless it’s a bear or shark attack. Those can be very damaging.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
In the world of film and television, I work in the post-production department as an editor. Post-production is the last phase of a film or tv project. Editors are the third person to tell the story after the writer and director., and are one of the most important people in the process. They are so important that they are called the ‘Invisible Artist’.

Editors essentially breathe life into what the writer and director envisioned. They select the very best from what the Director and the Director of Photography filmed, then meticulously put it all together according to the script with music and style that engages and fully immerses the audience into the story from beginning to end and beyond.

For me, editing, for the most part, is a solo experience and one that I find peace in. It’s a creative and intimate journey that makes the reaction I get from the audience or client dull in comparison to the creative journey of editing.

What do you specialize in?
Making things great! Like John Lennon with instruments and music, I’m an artist. If you give me some footage, I’ll create a story out of it. Whether it’s comedy, drama, action, or horror, I specialize in finding the root of the story, the voice of the character and enhancing what the writer wrote and the director directed. On several occasions, I’ve been given a drive of footage, a script, and one note from the director, “Work your magic.”

Recently a Director asked me to recut a 45-minute Pilot that they had shelved into a short film. When I completed it, he said, “I never thought of telling the story that way.” It’s currently in the festival circuit and has won several awards and a few meetings to turn the short into a feature.

What are you known for?
My unique personal touch, creativity, artistic talents, and the care and the pride I take in my work.

What sets you apart?
Besides my height, my sense of humor, and the fact I’m a better Salsa dancer than any other film editor in the industry, probably the same as what I’m known for.

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
Mentors are absolutely essential in anyone’s success in life. At least, it is for me. My Father was my first mentor and the foundation of my success. My Mother is my spiritual mentor and the foundation of my well-being and spiritual growth. Aside from that, I have had coaches, teachers, and colleagues that have mentored me throughout my life. Their support and honesty inspire and motivate me to achieve greater success in all aspects of my life.

Mentors are not only there to guide, encourage, and teach but to be brutally honest in ways friends and family can’t or won’t. However, do not depend on a Mentor to wake you up and get you out of bed to do the work. Either your desire and discipline should get you up and to work, or your teammate should do that.

Be your own mentor first. You already know what you want and why you want it, so deep down inside your soul, you already know the answers and what you need to do for the most part. Along with your positive inner dialogue and thoughts, read books and watch movies of those that are doing or have done what you want to do. Learn how they did it. You must act as if you are already the person you want to be and have what you want. If you wake and do the things that those you aspire to be do, then you’ll eventually reach your desired outcome. Remember though, everyone’s level of success is different, and be careful not to sell your soul and loss your morals in the process.

Ask and thou shall receive. You are who you surround yourself with. To find a Mentor, look around you and see if there are people in your inner circle that can fill that role. If not, ask the Universe to send you one. I did both.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.damianmartorana.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damianmartorana/
• Other: https://vimeo.com/damianmartorana