Lucia Palmer

By Lucia Palmer

Originally published in Austin Fusion Magazine, June 20, 2013 with images by Aaron Rimbey

Amidst a deluge of environmentally themed documentaries in recent years, the new eco-documentary “Elemental” stands apart in its humanist perspective and filmic aesthetics. Filmmaker Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee examines the deep connection between three individuals and the natural world in the film.

Eriel Deranger is a Native American rights activist fighting against the exploitation of the Canadian Tar Sands and her community by oil companies. Rajendra Singh is an Indian man on a pilgrimage to save the Ganges River from the massive human pollution killing the river. Jay Harman is an Australian inventor struggling to fund his nature-inspired energy saving inventions. Their lives and efforts provide an entryway into a conversation about the inescapable ties between humanity and nature.

Rather than focus on facts and statistics like many documentaries dealing with ecological issues, Vaughan-Lee wanted to tell a character’s story that taps into our relationship with our environment and our growing disconnection with nature.

At its narrative core, “Elemental” is a hero’s journey following the main characters as they encounter obstacles in their fight for the environment. As the characters’ actions unfold, their battles reveal their own personal flaws as well as the underbelly of environmental activism. Hopefully, said Vaughan-Lee, this will allow people to relate to the characters’ stories whether or not they are interested in environmental issues.

“These characters are not just zealots holding signs in picket lines. I wanted to explore their deep, personal connections to nature and how this motivates them.”

The filmmakers chose outliers for their protagonists, individuals who go beyond the normal parameters of their society in their activism. Choosing these characters, said Vaughan-Lee, allowed him to weave an interesting and engaging story.

“These characters are not just zealots holding signs in picket lines,” said Vaughan-Lee. “I wanted to explore their deep, personal connections to nature and how this motivates them.”

“Elemental” also breaks with documentary genre standards with its cinematic aesthetics, giving it the look and character of a dramatic feature film. Shot using Canon 5D cameras, the cinematography has a painterly quality with vivid colors and thoughtful compositions. The use of cinematic visuals, said Vaughan-Lee, was a deliberate choice to give the film a narrative feel.

“One of my pet peeves as a documentarian is that the aesthetic is always secondary, and I don’t like that. I like beautifully framed images,” said Vaughan-Lee.

Vaughan-Lee’s filmmaking technique is also influenced by his history as a professional jazz musician. The musical score for Elemental was co-written by Vaughan-Lee and Scott Salinas, Vaughan-Lee’s friend and classmate from Berklee College of Music. This partnership produced a score that is intimately tied into the storytelling.

“The scores I was always most inspired by were from narrative films,” said Vaughan-Lee.

Unlike many documentaries where the music is more like an afterthought to an already completed film, Vaughan-Lee took an approach that applied the musical score more integrally into the filmmaking process. Vaughan-Lee used the acquired footage and conceptual outline to write the musical score prior to editing the film.

“We sat down and talked about what the film was about, and how music could play a role,” said Vaughan-Lee.

Editing and writing the music became a collaborative, dialectical process for the filmmakers. They cut the film to the music, but the editing also informed the music.

“We’d rethink some things about the score, and go back and re-write some things, and then go back and edit,” said Vaughan-Lee, “it was a really organic process.”

The final score was recorded with a 70-piece orchestra, providing an unusually cinematic score for a documentary. The score helps to develop the human stories as they progress and enhances the dramatic impact of civilization’s toll on the environment.

Raised as the child of ecologically conscious parents, Vaughan-Lee said he has always been interested in environmental problems and issues. But with film, he could explore these questions in ways that he couldn’t tap into in his previous work as a musician.

“Film allowed me to dive into things I was interested in. It was like the beginning of a conversation into things, allowing me to engage in a dialogue with these issues,” said Vaughan-Lee.

In his work, Vaughan-Lee hopes to explore the connections between the environment, politics, culture, and other artificially separated spheres in our society.

“One of the problems we’re having is that we separate these issues into different things. Here’s food, and over here’s health, and over here’s water. I wanted to explore the connective tissues between it all,” said Vaughan-Lee.

Much of the funding for “Elemental” came from donations from Vaughan-Lee’s Global Oneness Project, a collaborative online effort to explore the connections between ecology and culture.

The film was recently screened in Austin along with a special panel discussion with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee.

Elemental is now available to watch on iTunes.