Human Elements - Season 3

I was the editor for the first four episodes of the latest season of Human Elements, our environmental series at Crosscut and KCTS. Series creator Sarah Hoffman had an ambitious goal for this latest season. She decided to jettison the nameless narrator who helped frame the episodes in past seasons and, instead, let the subject of each episode drive the storytelling in both a formal sit down interview as well as ambitious verite sections.

Any documentary filmmaker can tell you how hard it is to wrangle verite moments into a cohesive narrative arc. Knowing this, our team gave ourselves a much longer gestation period for each episode, often going through numerous radio edit revisions until landing on a story and structure that made sense and was supported by the hours and hours of footage Sarah and cinematographer Bryce Adolphson collected for each episode.

The result is so satisfying to watch - especially when our subjects have meaningful interactions with the natural world that they have decided to focus their hours and hours of dedicated work and emotional labor on. And the subject of our first episode, Malcolm, is a perfect example of professional dedication and deep empathy for the species he has dedicated his life to: endangered marmots on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

This next episode follows a glassblower from Washington’s stunning Lopez Island who creates magical animals out of glass.

This last episode features Daniel Curry who is a “range rider” in north eastern Washington where he manages wild wolves and local livestock, making sure that they can co-exist without the wolves killing the cattle and without the ranchers killing the wolves.

Sarah Hoffman and I collaborated closely to edit in more verite action and I think our hard work paid off!