Variety: Oct. 7 at the Vancouver Intl. Film Festival, four sustainability execs from major Hollywood studios gathered to participate in a packed forum on sustainable production, with keynote speaker and “The X-Files” creator Chris Carter opening the one-day event.
“Vancouver will become a model for green production in North America,” Carter said. “When word gets out, productions will flock here. You’re going to have to build a wall. It will be huge, made out of recycled materials. And yes, the Americans are going to pay for it.”
4 comments:
It’s good to see that there is room for this practice in the industry. While I definitely think that there could be a lot of semantic arguments made over the word ‘luxury’ and whether or not art and entertainment should be categorized as such, but I think that it’s important to start viewing more things as a luxury and not fewer. I’d be the first person to say that art and culture are vital, and that dismissing them as luxury items seems is to not appreciate their full value in society, but in terms of sustainability they are absolutely luxury. Pretty much everything is, anything that isn’t basic nutrition, water, and shelter is, certainly all things that call for or achieve progress is. And that doesn’t mean that luxury is bad, or that progress is bad, or that art and culture are bad, those things are all very important to improve the quality of life of everyone around the world, and in turn, increase the productivity of those around the world bringing in even more quality of life value. But that increase in scale of improving people’s lives also can mean that we increase the rate at which we consume our resources. If we truly care about progress, and improving quality of life, that should mean ensuring a sustained growth. There’s no time like the present to start doing so.
It is great that there is a move towards sustainability happening in the film world, hopefully it moves over into the theater world as well (which does seem to be happening what with the rise in LED light usage and the phasing out of lauan). As a group the film, tv, and theater industries have an unfortunate bend towards wastefulness and damage to the environment. The main problem seems to be that whatever it is we’re using at the time we use a lot of it. Sure, we might not use as much lumber or electricity as the construction of large building or something like that but what we make is temporary and most of the time just going to get thrown out. Speaking of which, I think its commendable that tv productions are trying to recycle more but if that industry is similar to theater then so much of what gets made is purpose built that I question how useful holding on to it really is in the long run.
It's about time, sheesh. Theater and film are so inherently wasteful and short-sighted that I sometimes wonder if the waste collection people judge us in their truck as they survey another day's worth of scrap woos and assorted oddities.
That being said, this article gives me some hope. The work of "sustainability directors, on-set and off has only just begun. The mere creation of the position was no doubt a milestone, but such individuals, the real work is only just beginning.
While this movement is very recent, only a few years old, it's already made great strides. The Vancouver (a prominent shooting location for a variety of series and films) aspires to be the first "green production" leader off the industry. The choice of Vancouver may seem like an interesting location for a prototype of a green film movement, but it is true that Canadians do tend to be more aware of this issue, or at least more willing to act on matters of sustainability, If their government is anything to go by.
To Vancouver and sustainability leaders everywhere, I say good luck and keep fighting!
Yes! Finally! I know who terribly wasteful the entertainment industry is, and it still makes me sad every time. Even here in the scene shop, it always hurts during a build call, that half of the plywood gets chopped up and thrown out because its not the right dimension. Then of course during strike its all going right to the landfills, and thats just us. I think that its really about time that we start being so much more aware of what waste were creating. I'm glad that such a huge company is taking this step, and I really hope that others follow. I think some of it comes from that fact that the budgets are huge, and that means its easy to order new foam and wood for everything, then pay to have the dumpster take it away. I would be interested to see if they cut back budgets if they would be forced into finding more ways to repurpose things, and be less wasteful. If this production really saved 70% I surely hope that this is spreading quick and many others in the film industry catch on.
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