Over the past 5 years, I’ve been producing a short documentary, Behind These Walls, that follows the campaign and closure of the Jefferson Drill Site in South Los Angeles.

This project has long been a labor of love, but in order to finish the project as it deserves and release it for viewing, I’m fundraising to help pay for music, sound design, color and archival costs. 

I'm so thrilled to be able to share this project with the world. As of February 2021, the editing process is complete, and I've linked the cold open above to give you a sense of the project. Thank you so much for your consideration!

THE STORY:
Behind These Walls is an unprecedented lens into a South Los Angeles community's five-year campaign to shut down an urban oil drilling site located just feet from residential homes in the largest urban oil field in the nation.

Told through the eyes of two local neighbors and activists, this film explores the effects of one Los Angeles oil drill site on the health and well-being of those who live nearby. Behind These Walls is the story of  the Jefferson neighborhood’s crusade against inadequate Los Angeles oil and gas health and safety regulations. This short documentary situates the Jefferson Drill Site as a focal point in the larger context of Los Angeles as a city built on oil, and in California, the fourth-largest oil producing state in the country.

Behind These Walls has been submitted to several festivals, and will be available for viewing online in 2021.

THE DIRECTOR:
Caitlyn Hynes is a Los Angeles-based producer and editor. She co-produced ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary LANCE (2020), and has credits on CNN’s The History of Comedy (2018), HBO’s Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (2018), and Netflix’s Flint Town (2018). She also co-produced and was an additional editor on an upcoming Netflix documentary to be released in 2021. As a Masters student at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, she won the Bryce Nelson Award for Distinguished Journalism for her long-form investigative reporting and short documentary on the Jefferson Drill Site in South Los Angeles.