Ringling College Film faculty Sean Webley wrapped up 2025 by releasing two feature-length documentaries, screened at film festivals across the country. Seconds Away debuted on October 26 at the Austin Film Festival, and The Voyage Out premiered on November 15 at DOC NYC, the country’s largest documentary festival. Webley served as cinematographer for both films.
Directed by Benjamin Kegan, Seconds Away offers an intimate view of the close relationship between the Olympic-hopeful Belgian American runner Peter Callahan and his coach Patrick McHugh, who is diagnosed with cancer. Kegan’s work often explores how relationships to our bodies can reveal something deeper about who we are as a society and individuals, situating the body within a larger political, cultural, or social context. In the 2009 short film Team Taliban, he explored post-9/11 politics through professional wrestling and his 2020 documentary Expiration Term of Service centered on the labor tensions of aging soldiers caught in military bureaucracy.
“Stylistically, we wanted the film to feel more like a narrative feature than a traditional talking-heads documentary,” said Kegan, shining light on Webley’s cinematography on the project. “Drawing from works like Chloé Zhao’s The Rider and Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad, we leaned into vérité intimacy and a cinematic, subjective style to immerse the viewers in the rhythm, breath, and inner world of our subjects.”
A Forbes review compared Seconds Away to the renowned 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams, noting that “Kegan and Webley captured a slice of life in a way that is not often presented on screen for professional runners.”
The Voyage Out, directed by Barlow Jacobs, follows professional hunter Mark Warnke, survival expert Callie Russell, and 28-year-old tech entrepreneur Mansal Denton on an eventful eight-day bow-hunting trip in the Sawtooth Mountain Range in Idaho. Webley shot the film using Super 16mm film. Executive producers Ley Line Entertainment also produced Best Picture Winner Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Jacobs described the logistical challenges Webley and the rest of the crew faced during the shoot: “I knew we were going to be deep in the mountains and fully off the grid for eight to 10 days, shooting on film, with a three-man crew: cinematographer, an assistant cameraman, and a sound guy. I knew the logistics of that were going to be a massive challenge. Marc told me we would be hiking five to eight miles per day at around 9,000-11,000 feet elevation. And we would be doing that with all of our film gear, off-trail, traversing a raw and brutal landscape. The temperature fluctuates from 11 degrees to 78 degrees on any given day. We were sleeping on the ground. I could go on and on.”
Webley previously served as the cinematographer for the 2020 Peruvian comedy La Restauración by writer/director Alonso Llosa and as director/cinematographer for the 2022 short film Beef.
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