About the Filmmakers

"Pope Michael" was made by a very small crew. Check out a little bit about them here.

Adam Fairholm
Director / Editor

After making the original short with two of my classmates at Notre Dame (Emily Gorski and George Heidkamp), I've been the lone filmmaker on "Pope Michael" for most of the journey.

I was a film and television major at the University of Notre Dame, where I made a "Pope Michael" short for a class before getting interested in expanding it to a longer form. Although I'm not longer working in production (I love to write code and do that for my day job), "Pope Michael" was a fantastic experience. I currently live in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Derek Fairholm
Music

A graduate of the University of Miami's Frost School of Music, Derek is an incredible musician, and my younger brother. Although he has been known to strap on a banjo or a french horn, Derek's passion is the piano - more specially, jazz music. He's written all of the musical pieces that appear in the film (aside from the opening song, which is by Andy Burd). He currently lives in Miami.

Andy Burd
Music (opening song)

A film producer since 1965, Andy recently began writing and performing songs on the banjo in Three Oaks, Michigan. Andy was a professor one of my classes at Notre Dame, and has worked as an unofficial consultant on "Pope Michael" since well before pre-production. His original song "Down by the River Jordan" appears in the opening sequence of the documentary.

Doug Klinger
Sound

I've known Doug since I was in elementary school in Florida, and he volunteered to come on a trip to Delia a few months into production. After a few false starts, the time was right for Doug to come along on trip 4 in October 2010. He tackled some particularly difficult shoots for audio such as the one at Kansas University. He currently lives in Boynton Beach, Florida.