Published 11/9/2007

Filmmaker tells stories close to home and around the world

by Beckye Randall

In his documentary “The Place Where It All Began,” filmmaker Jeff Stephen Maki invites viewers to visualize virgin forests, grazing mastodons and native villages where the city of Marysville now sits. With captivating images and stirring narration, he describes the landing of Captain Vancouver in Tulalip Bay, the first missions and schools in the Pacific Northwest, and the monumental contributions of the Native Americans of the area.

Maki is an accomplished artist, videographer, musician, graphic designer, film producer, writer and engineer. His wife Debbie is an award-winning photo retoucher and digital artist whose work has been featured by the Kodak Company. Together with their 10-year-old son Jason, the Maki family lives and works in Marysville.

Jeff Maki’s client list, however, spans the globe. His professional resume includes the creation of marketing materials for Thomas Kinkade Galleries, creating sales videos and presentations for a helicopter basket manufacturer, producing a documentary entitled “Transforming Rock Into the Blues” (currently being edited for PBS), and working on a Paul McCartney album cover.

Maki grew up in Montana and received an engineering degree from Montana Tech. “I was drawn to the arts and was offered a scholarship to art school,” Maki said, “but engineering was a more practical career choice.” In 1984 he moved to Seattle, and 15 years later he and his young family moved to Marysville.

With every engineering job, Maki gravitated toward the design aspect, focusing on writing and drafting. In the early 1990s, Maki bought the first software package for electronic publishing – PageMaker – and began a startup marketing publication called Business Wise. The periodical was basically a one-man show, with Maki putting in 20-hour days handling sales, marketing, writing and production.

Despite the workload, he found time to work on another project, developing a graphic program called Cartoon Sketch. With a simple interface, users could create cartoon characters from sets of facial features, bodies and background scenery, adding dialog bubbles and type options. The fledgling Apple Computer Company purchased the rights to the software, including it in its proprietary library, and Maki realized his first blush of commercial success.

Over the next decade, Maki was thrown a variety of projects, from engineering the design and packaging of crystal accessories to several technical writing assignments for Burlington Northern Railroad and book cover designs for a national author.

As he worked, he learned new skills and incorporated them into his repertoire. As technology improved, he mastered new equipment, software and techniques. His reputation for innovation continued to generate business for him, most of which he could complete in his own home studio.

In 2005 he decided to produce a documentary that would showcase the rich history of the Pacific Northwest. In a visit to the Everett Library’s Northwest Room, local historian David Dilgard said, “You know, Marysville is the place where it all began.” Suddenly, Maki realized his hometown was the perfect subject for his documentary.

“I searched for a place that had a concentration of outstanding and monumental regional history and ironically the trail kept leading me to my own back yard. Before my research, I never dreamed how important Marysville's history was to the Pacific Northwest. The list is long: mastodons, European explorers’ land claims, the first missions and schools--even the first horse drawn school buses (kid wagons), not to mention the greatest lumbering in the world,” said Maki.

He contacted the Marysville Historical Society for input but wasn’t expecting to find many resources there. “Marysville is a small community and this was a minimally-funded non-profit organization run by volunteers. But I was surprised by the treasure trove of photos and artifacts they had,” said Maki.

“Ken Cage was the catalyst to make this happen,” Maki continued. Cage, the historical society’s president, was instrumental in convincing the organization’s board that the production of a video documentary was a project they should embrace. Over the next few months, Cage escorted Maki to the last virgin timber stand in the area, “Mother Nature’s window,” and other significant sites while providing anecdotal material for Maki’s research.

In addition to materials from the Everett Library’s Northwest Room and Marysville Historical Society, Maki also drew from the archives of the University of Washington’s Special Collections, the Museum of History and Industry, and other private local collections in producing the video footage and narration.

The film was nearing completion when Maki brought a draft copy to screen at a general meeting of the historical society and met Al Elliott. Elliott, a Marysville resident, is a renowned mastodon and mammoth expert. “I know it’s too late now,” said Elliott, “but maybe you could do another film about the area’s prehistory.”

Intrigued, Maki visited Elliott’s home and was enthralled by the scientist’s impressive collection of fossils, excavated from this area, of giant mastodons.

“The sea level here used to be 300 feet shallower,” Elliott explained, “so the area between Tulalip and Hat Island was a huge grassland where mastodons grazed.” Many significant fossils have been unearthed on dry land in Snohomish County, and a nearly complete mastodon skeleton was recently discovered on Hat Island.

The story of these ancient giants was so compelling, Maki went back to the editing room to include interviews with Elliott in the film. The documentary’s scope was expanded to include prehistoric times as well as the area’s more recent pioneer history.

The filmmaker encountered other challenges while producing the film. No photos exist for Captain Vancouver’s ships, the Discovery and the Chatham, and illustrations produced from descriptions seemed too “flat” for the documentary. Maki’s research turned up an exciting source – the Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon, contained scale models of the two ships, built to exacting specifications based on a crew member’s journals. Maki photographed every angle of the ships and, using digital techniques, was able to produce 3-dimensional images of the ships in Tulalip Bay that look as real as any photograph.

Maki also composed and recorded all the music that accompanies the stirring images in the documentary. “I use Garage Band and a keyboard,” Maki confessed, crediting a software program that is commonly provided on Mac computers. “But the harmonica is really me, playing an actual harmonica.”

The DVD, complete with a professionally designed cover graphic, is now available as a fundraiser for the Marysville Historical Society. The $24.95 purchase price benefits the non-profit organization’s continuing efforts to preserve the fascinating history of north Snohomish County. To order, visit www.makimotion.com.

Now that the local history project is complete, Maki is working on a documentary chronicling the Swedish efforts to restore that country’s ancient castles and fortresses. He recently visited the 16th century summer residence of King Gustav Vasa in Tuna and marveled at the nearly-palpable historical atmosphere.

“I was sitting where the kings of Sweden have dined,” said Maki. “The palace has been virtually unused for centuries, and the rooms and furnishings are nearly the same as it was hundreds of years ago.”

When Maki arrived with his camera equipment, it was the first time the interior of the ancient residence had ever been filmed. He was allowed to capture the tombs of 1000-year-old kings and filmed frescos on monastery ceilings that were painted hundreds of years before Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

The Swedish documentary is in its post-production phase now, with Maki back in his home studio editing the footage and writing narration to accompany the images.

“There’s no better time than now for a person to be starting in this business,” advised Maki. “YouTube has democratized film production, and filmmakers can self-publish and self-market with companies like amazon.com and filmspecific.com.”

He pointed to the success of the film “Open Water,” which was based on a true story and shot on a $400 camcorder. It was picked up by a major studio, digitally enhanced, and distributed in wide release.

“I designed a game board – all the playing pieces, the graphics for the board design, even the packaging -- for a guy that I never met. He paid me via PayPal.”

Wherever Jeff Maki’s talents take him, he always plans to come back home to Marysville. After all, it’s the place where it all began.