The production office team is uniquely positioned to influence the adoption of sustainable practices across the entire production. This section gives advice and insight from interviews with five different production professionals who are already leading changes in their field.
From your department’s perspective, how can productions become more sustainable?
The full support of the company you work for – the content financier whether a broadcaster or film studios, or even distributors – is invaluable. Without this it is difficult to get traction with the team and crew. We need to change the psyche of production to ‘on time and on budget and sustainable’. Clearly stating our commitment to sustainability, and discussing it in the initial greenlight meeting will help to make sure the focus on sustainability carries through to all departments. And we need to support all departments to make sustainable decisions.
Recruiting HoDs who are passionate about sustainability helps to prioritise and model the commitment to the rest of the team, so it is front and centre, and not an afterthought. HoDs recruiting a team that is fully carbon literate and that understands and prioritises the need for sustainable solutions can lead to significant carbon reductions.
Having a dedicated sustainability team that is supported by the senior team within the production and the TV commissioners or film execs also helps, but we need to make sure everyone understands that we all have a role to play – the sustainability team are there to support us, and can’t deliver on sustainability objectives without us.
On the Essex Serpent, we found it was key to have engagement with the departments to make a difference. The sustainability officer was great and worked closely with the departments to come up with solutions, and we in production fully supported her doing that.
For example, the gaffer, best boy and lighting team were really on board with sustainability and came up with solutions like using batteries, LED lights and only where absolutely unavoidable, generators – but with HVO fuel.
Cecily Barber, Production Manager
The Essex Serpent: See-Saw Films
What are your top tips for sustainability within your department?
Organisational tips:
- Use the draft carbon footprint and create an action plan – look at initial predictions and then think strategically to address areas to reduce carbon.
- The production team have significant power in the contracts that they raise and negotiate with freelancers and suppliers – they can both make direct sustainable choices themselves or influence the supply chain to put in place sustainable practices. (See Section 5.1 of the main e-learning module for more detail).
- Target areas that have maximum impact, e.g. travel, energy, materials, waste disposal.
- Put sustainability at the forefront of all decisions, alongside budget.
- Have a HoDs briefing session at the beginning of filming involving the whole team to discuss sustainability and the green memo.
- Engage or challenge every department to see what sustainable options they can come up with.
- Plan carefully to prevent last-minute decisions, which often result in less sustainable solutions.
- Empower people to question and recommend solutions to find better and more sustainable ways to work.
- Share ideas with other productions – collaboration will help educate the industry.
Facilities
- Engage with facilities suppliers (preferably sustainable ones), for example, specifying that catering businesses should use reusable cups, plates, and cutlery, and asking them to list food on menus from least to most environmental impact.
- Use local kit hire.
- Ensure you have a recycling hub on set for catering and unit base waste.
- Consider disposal as part of purchases, so you have a plan for where things need to go at the end of the shoot.
- Source water environmentally.
- Implement a plastic ban.
- Reduce printing where possible. If hard copies are vital, print in black and double sided.
- Encourage everyone to bring their own bottle. You could also replace wrap gifts with welcome gifts that can be used to contribute to the sustainability of the production, for example, water bottles and coffee cups. Ask people to let the team know if they don’t need one.
Some of the steps we’ve taken on Home include:
- focused on making carbon reduction a collaborative responsibility and ensured its an upfront consideration.
- episode meetings between the PM and Series Producer of each Home season to discuss schedule budget and carbon reduction for each shoot.
- Both editorial and production logging into albert throughout the shoot. This assists with reporting and ongoing carbon assessing through production to complete predictions and final assessments for each shoot.
- Interrogating carbon like you would a shoot budget. Carbon is tracked via quarterly reports, and reports are communicated across Home and assessed to see if there are any further areas we can carbon reduce further.
Stella Stylianos, Line Producer (unscripted)
Home: BBC Studios, National Geographic and Disney
We sourced two hybrid all-terrain vehicles for transporting kit and tools around site. We charged them each night and so didn’t need to purchase fuel. We tapped into the on-site mains electricity supply where possible for charging battery powered tools and heating up tea urns for the tradespeople, reducing the need for diesel generators.
We also worked very closely with our catering suppliers to ensure all food was sourced local to our build. We also asked to reduce the option of red meat on the menu and offered additional vegetarian and vegan options every day to encourage tradespeople to try alternative options.
Kirsty Brettle, Production Manager
DIY SOS: Big Build for Children in Need: BBC Studios Factual Entertainment Productions
What are the biggest challenges to working sustainably in your department, and how have you overcome them?
Time is one of the biggest challenges. During the shoot, when we’re all pushed for time and need quick turnarounds, researching sustainable options becomes more difficult. Time challenges can be alleviated by researching new, more sustainable options in advance, so you have a list of sustainable resources ready to call upon when needed.
Sustainable options can often be more expensive, and when budgets are tight, it can be hard to argue for them. This becomes easier if production companies and commissioners have stated their commitment to sustainability, and in some cases ringfence budget for green solutions. Supporting departments with their own budgets so that they can prioritise creativity and sustainability also helps.
We’ve had pushback when we’ve tried to get everyone to take personal responsibility, or introduce measures such as bringing in our own water bottles, coffee cups etc. However, this can be overcome through a combination of sustainability training and having senior team members model positive actions, which then filter down through the rest of the team.
Biodiversity also has a huge impact on climate change. Albert has recently released a biodiversity guide for productions that can help with planning, locations, props and disposal.
Travel is another challenge. With the urgent need for the industry to move to net zero carbon emissions, albert needs to be strict on domestic flights due to the intensity of their emissions, and are therefore asking productions to eliminate domestic short haul flights as part of their certification process.
We try very hard to transport everyone in the most green way possible, but travelling by train can take longer than a flight, so to allow for the extra time, we need to factor in additional travel days at the start and end of the schedule.
When we set up a kit hub for HOME Africa, we faced challenges with logistics for the kit, and arranging carnets and customs to cater for the range of countries it would be required to travel to/from. We also had complexities around contracting local talent – we needed to ensure that workers’ compensation insurance was considered as part of this process. It was labour-intensive and work heavy to set it all up. But it meant a significant reduction in the travel of team and kit to and from Kenya, so it was worth it.
Helen Wallbank and Stella Stylianos, Production Executive (unscripted)
Home: BBC Studios, National Geographic and Disney
Budget is always a challenge as you can imagine. But that isn’t the only deciding factor when booking travel now. For example, in BBC Studios we try to prioritise trains over domestic flights. Domestic flights in the UK need to be signed off by a senior production role. This is a huge change because often train travel is more expensive than flights, and takes longer, which has other budgetary impacts on the production. This clearly demonstrates BBC Studios’ commitment to sustainability over budget.
Lizzie Keating, Production Co-ordinator (factual entertainment)
How do you keep sustainability on the agenda?
We keep sustainability on the agenda by having frequent conversations in the production office and with HoDs. Talking about it a lot with the team helps them to feel empowered to make more sustainable choices and help others to come up with solutions too. It’s also important to talk to fixers and engage them in the ambition to reduce carbon.
Make sustainability part of the conversation every day by putting green memos on call sheets and highlighting sustainable options in green. It is also important how we talk to the crew about carbon reductions overall, not just in terms of lower impact choices like recycling and using water bottles but higher impact choices like how we travel to set. When we have this kind of conversation then as a result crew may, for example, ask for cycle storage provisions or other ways to reduce travel emissions.
We have a ‘Let’s Go Green’ sustainability group within the department who meet every couple of months to discuss the latest topics, case studies from various productions and guest speakers from other areas of the industry. The idea is to share concepts of how we are working sustainably with the hope that other productions will pick up different ideas.
Kirsty Brettle, Production Manager
DIY SOS: Big Build for Children in Need: BBC Studios Factual Entertainment Productions
What resources or groups would you recommend?
Albert biodiversity guide – this aims to help productions reduce their impact and explore ways of becoming nature positive.
With thanks to:
Cecily Barber, Line Producer
Helen Wallbank, Production Manager
Kirsty Brettle, Production Manager
Lizzie Keating, Production Coordinator
Stella Styianos, Line Producer