Not Without Us, a documentary about seven grassroots environmental activists who head to Paris in November 2015 for the United Nations Climate Talks, was the idea of award-winning director Mark Decena. He first met some of the environmental and social activists featured in the film at the World Social Forum in Tunisia and followed them for a year in their home environments in preparation for the climate conference.
Prior to his trip to Paris last year, Decena and my son, Jeff Boyette, a freelance film editor, first spoke about his project at a fundraiser for the film. Jeff had known about the film because he and Decena had worked together before. Decena said would need an editor and Jeff said he was interested, and it was during Decena’s time in Paris they confirmed Jeff’s role.
Around Christmas 2015, Jeff began viewing hours and hours of interview footage of the principal speakers in the film. Videographers had been shooting film for a year by that time. Decena had the vision for what he wanted, and Jeff understood the structure and politics Decena had in mind. Jeff said by watching the interviews, he realized what the activists wanted the world to know about their organizing, and this understanding guided his editing.
Jeff knew from the beginning this would be a quick and intense editing job because Decena planned to premiere the film at the San Francisco Green Film Festival on April 25. “Three months is a fast timeline for a film,” Jeff commented. They got busy with an organized and systematic approach with plenty of back and forth, but putting a film together is never straightforward. Jeff said editing requires several screenings with flaws and warts to get feedback, then doing it again. They did not deviate from Decena’s original vision but tweaked things a bit, and finished the film on time.
Learning to edit
Jeff first learned about video editing in high school in Sebastopol, Calif. I had already supported his interests in drumming, playing bass, new camera lenses, juggling equipment and unicycling, but I could not afford Final Cut Pro video editing software, and I’m not sure my computer would have done it justice.
Nevertheless, he and his buddies made videos. Sometimes he was the talent onscreen hopping from one picnic table to another on his unicycle or challenging gravity down a serious hillside in the woods on his unicycle (where was the parent!). One weekend he made a charming video about our cat, Elvira, with background accompaniment by Wynton Marsalis.
We moved him down to San Francisco in 2003 so he could continue learning about film editing at San Francisco State University. He also learned about that time he was an activist and really cared about what was going on in the world. I might not know a more knowledgeable person about how politics actually play out in the real world.
After graduating in video editing, he was fortunate to get an intern position with Scott Compton of Remedy Editorial. The job became full-time, and Jeff spent five years there as intern, assistant editor and staff editor in “an excellent environment” for an aspiring film editor. He worked on a variety of production pieces for tech and pharmaceutical companies that might be used to open a conference, for example, or as a training video. At Remedy, innovation and technical challenges were embraced, such as videos with graphics running across multiple screens.
Jeff said there were also jobs that were more for fun and less for profit such as indie films, music videos, documentaries and journalism pieces. It was through these jobs that Jeff met Decena, who was finishing a documentary called Watershed about the current state of the Colorado River, which has been so heavily used for irrigation it does not reach its own delta anymore. Robert Redford was the executive producer and narrator of that film.
Decena hired Jeff to help finish the editing of Watershed.
Jeff decided to try freelancing after five years at Remedy, and his workload never diminished. He has been independent more than three years, and at first worked with the same contacts he had made at Remedy. Eventually he tried to connect with documentary directors, and made trailers and additional content pieces for their films.
He has done music videos for Chuck Prophet and My Morning Jacket, and one he edited for Prophet won the 2015 Van Gogh Award at the Amsterdam International Film Festival for Documentary Directing. The director was Darrel Flowers and the video was “Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express – Strings in the Temple.”
During 2015, Jeff worked with director Owsley Brown on the series Music Makes a City about conductor Teddy Abrams and his contribution to the renaissance of the Louisville Orchestra. The series ran for 13 episodes, and aired on PBS stations in 2014-15.
During the past year, he has worked on two feature-length documentaries. One of them was another film directed by Brown titled Serenade for Haiti. The film began seven years ago, but is entering its final countdown and scheduled for release this autumn. Jeff has been part of the editorial team seeing the film through final mixing and coloring.
And there was Not Without Us, which commanded countless hours through the winter and into spring. The film had its premiere at the Castro Theater in San Francisco April 20 as the closing night film of the San Francisco Green Film Festival.
After his work on the film, Jeff and Madeleine Van Engel got married, and they just returned from a honeymoon in Iceland. They live in Oakland. They and their friends are active, aware, smart, fun-loving, generous and paying attention – just the kinds of folks we want on board as we figure out our future.
The Indie Film Festival opening reception catered by Farm to Table FRESH starts at 6:30 Friday. Not Without Us starts at 7:15. All films are free due to a grant from Arkansas Parks and Tourism.