First, right in our hometown, GreenFest Philly is holding a Green Film Festival as part of their annual street festival. The festival will be held on September 13, 2009 on 2nd and South streets in Philadelphia. Submissions are still being accepted.
Green filmmakers in the New York Tri-State region also have the opportunity to participate in a green film series curated by Slightly Overexposed Productions' Stacey Burgay, who we met at DIY Days Philly. Burgay is looking for fiction and non-fiction films that either "focus on issues that reflect the public and the environment" or were produced using the Code of Best Practices for Sustainable Filmmaking, which we profiled in June. Films will be screened at the Oval Film Center (12 Stuyvesant Oval, New York, NY) on August 24, September 10, and September 17.
The Going Green Film Festival shows just how far along green film has come. Offering entry categories for films created using "green guidelines", films about environmental issues and films featuring hybrid or alternative transportation, the festival honors the commitment of green filmmakers to lessen their impact on the environment. The festival will be held in March 2010; submissions will be accepted until January 15, 2010. (h/t The Thin Green Line)
Our friends over at Oscilloscope, who distributed FLOW, have another environmental documentary coming out which we're very excited about. The film, which was shown at both Sundance and the LA Film Festival, follows Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man) and his family as they spend a year in New York City trying to live without leaving any impact on the environment. That means that Colin, his wife, and his 2-year-old daughter planned to make no new purchases, use no electricity, and produce no trash.
To document the experiment , Colin started a blog that has since become a resource for anyone trying to reduce their carbon footprint. In addition to the film, Colin's story is also the subject of a book that will be released in September alongside the film. Meanwhile, Colin's currently working on the No Impact Project, a non-profit project meant to "engage citizens in choosing lives that they believe will both make themselves, their communities and the planet happier."
Find your favorite lawn chair and blanket and head down the block for Street Movies, a drive-in movie experience without the cars. Back for its 12th summer, Street Movies is a showcase for independent filmmaking organized by Philadelphia's Scribe Video Center. This year’s focus is on youth-produced works in a range of genres that explore a gamut of social issues including environmental justice.
“We’ve got an animated film called E-Wave which illustrates human damage to the environment as a result of electric energy waste," says Street Movies Program Coordinator, Boone Nguyen. "We also have Eve’s Garden, a piece on a community garden in Camden, N.J. that is bringing the community together as they reclaim green spaces.”
So give your wallet and the environment a break this August and check out these free, family-friendly outdoor screenings around your neighborhood. Screenings start at 8:30pm and include post-film discussions.
Wednesday, August 6 - CAMDEN Host: Walt Whitman Arts Center Location: 2nd & Cooper Streets
Thursday, August 7 - MANTUA Host: Montesorri Gensis II Location: 3510 Brandywine Street
Wednesday, August 13 - FRANKLINVILLE/NORTH PHILADELPHIA Host: Centro Pedro Center Location: Eagles Park, 7th and W. Schiller Street
Thursday, August 14 - GERMANTOWN Host: Why Not Prosper and Social Re-entry Location: 717 E. Chelten Avenue
Wednesday, August 20, EAST POPLAR/NORTHERN LIBERTIES Host: Friends Neighborhood Guild & Friends Housing Cooperative Location: 8th and Fairmount
Friday, August 22 - WEST PHILADELPHIA Host: Jubilee School & Neighborhood Bike Works Location: Clark Park, 43rd & Baltimore Avenue
Saturday, August 23 - SOUTH PHILADELPHIA Host: First African Baptist church Location: 16th & Christian Street
From M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense to Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, filmmaking in Philadelphia has become big business. The industry generates millions of dollars in revenue, promotes tourism, and gives work to hundreds of union workers.
What it doesn't do, however, is obey the law.
Philadelphia has mandatory recycling laws for businesses, yet compliance is still the exception rather than the rule for businesses of all types throughout the city. The Philadelphia Commercial Recycling Guidelines require businesses to develop a Recycling Plan, submit it to the city, publicly post the plan on site, and distribute it to all employees. The plan must include:
providing recycling containers, and separating recyclables (high-grade office paper, aluminum, corrugated paper, ferrous and nonferrous metals, etc.) from garbage (food waste and other organics)
creating an education program to communicate expectations, changes, impacts, etc. to employees
Given the temporary nature of the film business, developing a recycling plan of this nature on each individual set would be difficult, but developing a template of recycling rules that would govern all filmmaking in this region could fulfill the city's requirements. These rules should reflect the reality that materials will differ depending on the department, and will need to be enforced on the set, on location, in the catering tents, and in the production office. Maintaining a list of recycling drop-off sites for construction materials and hazardous materials would also help to keep lumber, plastic and other building materials not currently included in the city's regulations from being sent to landfill.
Without these guidelines, employees concerned about the environmental impact of film have had little opportunity to change wasteful day to day practices, besides literally sorting recyclables out of the dumpster and carting them home for residential collection! Construction coordinators have also managed to donate some materials to organizations like Habitat for Humanity, but production managers are not accustomed to including recycling costs in their budgets, so spending man hours researching and redirecting these materials must be done surreptitiously, or off the clock.
Philadelphia would also benefit from having a business like Build It Green! NYC in the area. They are a "non-profit retail outlet for salvaged and surplus building materials", where film productions could donate and shop for recycled building materials. In addition to lumber and sheetrock, designers can also shop for previously used cabinets and appliances in their inventory.
For more commercial recycling information, call the Philadelphia Recycling Hotline at 215-686-RECYCLE (7329) and check out the Pennsylvania page at Earth911.org for local recycling businesses.
You can also report any non-compliant business by emailing robin.geller@phila.gov.
Filmmaking uses a tremendous amount of resources. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the meal tent on a typical movie shoot. Feeding hundreds of people in a temporary, often outdoor, location usually involves the crew eating in giant plastic tents, with air conditioning or heat pumped in. Access to sinks and running water is usually limited, so all of the plates, cups, and utensils are disposable. These items are almost always plastic, as are the hundreds of bottles of water and soft drinks that are thrown out at every meal, since no recycling is ever provided.
Estimating how much food to make is difficult, and providing film crews with an array of food choices results in an enormous amount of food being wasted. Snacks, or "craft service", are also required on every union film, offering donuts, candy, and other heavily packaged, mass produced convenience foods. If things like apples or carrots sticks are offered, it will be conventionally grown produce that has a large carbon footprint. None of this food is made with local or organic ingredients, because sustainability has not been a priority on the production company's bottom line.
While feeding the crew in a more environmentally friendly way would usually involve spending more money, anyone who has worked on a big budget film can attest to the unbelievable waste of cash and resources that goes on in every department. It is not the lack of funding, but a lack of commitment that keeps productions from making many "green" changes, and food is no exception.
So, here are some suggestions for feeding the crew:
Buy organic food, shade-grown/organic and fair trade coffee & teas.
Choose organic or local produce whenever possible.
Look for sustainable seafood and organic and/or free-range meats from local farms.
Encourage the use of reusable dishware and mugs, if a place to wash dishes is available. If not, provide recyclable or compostable plates, cups and utensils.
For catered meetings and general craft services, make sure food suppliers do not provide Styrofoam. Ask caterers to provide only recyclable serving containers, like aluminum pans.
Find out if leftovers from catered meals can be donated, and give unopened packaged food to the local food bank.
According to a report issued by The UCLA Institute of the Environment, the film and television industry is one of the largest contributers of air pollution in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and it ranks alongside the petroleum refining industry as emitting the most greenhouse gases. The study's authors cite "the heavy reliance of the FTI on transportation and energy consumption in its normal operations" as the likely cause, so finding more sustainable transportation solutions should be a central part of any green production guidelines.
Several states now offer green filmmaking recommendations through their local film offices, and many of them include suggestions on how to minimize the impact of transportation. Here are the most common suggestions:
purchase ultra low-sulfur diesel, or biodiesel for generators and vehicles
contract with companies who also use vehicles that run on alternative fuels
encourage car-pooling/public transportation for crew
do not allow equipment and vehicles to idle unnecessarily
use an electric vehicle to transport items between buildings
use hybrid or fuel-efficient cars to transport talent, scout locations, shop for props, etc.
find local suppliers for paint, lumber, food, etc.
limiting the frequency of trips and coordinating trips with other departments when possible
And, perhaps most importantly, productions need to take the time in the planning stages to make environmentally friendlier travel possible, by trying to find shooting locations, hotels, construction areas, etc. that don't require driving long distances.
At the base of the Wasatch Mountain Range in Utah is a 5000 acre environmental meeting ground for “world leaders, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, Academy Award-winning actors and directors, innovative scientists and accomplished corporate leaders.” It's called The Sundance Preserve. This year, Robert Redford decided to open his film festival there, with a screening of Josh Tickell’s biodiesel documentary Fields of Fuel, which received standing ovations and went on to win the Audience Award. The film will go on the road starting in New York City, and will follow the presidential campaign nationwide, in an attempt to "make green energy the #1 issue in the 2008 presidential elections."
Josh first discovered biodiesel in 1996, while studying abroad on an organic farm in East Germany. He applied what he learned there to his chemistry and engineering education, designing a portable machine that made fuel out of used cooking oil. He then toured the country for two years, towing his "Green Grease Machine" behind his Veggie Van, an unmodified, diesel engine Winnebago fueled by used fryer grease from fast food restaurants. He has written two books, and in 2005, Bill Clinton selected him to be part of his Global Initiative on Climate Change, helping to finance his biodiesel powered "relief ships" that provided much-needed food and suppliesto Hurricane Katrina survivors. Fields of Fuel is his latest effort to mobilize Americans to ditch their foreign oil dependence for a more sustainable fuel future.
Biofuels have gotten a lot of bad press lately, so Josh is eager to explain that biodiesel is not corn ethanol. Unlike ethanol, which gets both its food and its fuel from the starch of the corn kernel, biodiesel can be made from over 1,100 species of oilseed crops, including soybeans, where the food comes from the protein, and the fuel from the oil. This eliminates competition between food and fuel needs, a huge drawback to ethanol production. And there is even a company in Massachusetts, GreenFuel, that uses algae as both a source for biodiesel, and a way to capture carbon emissions from power plants!
Biodiesel also has other advantages. It significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions, and can be used to replace sulfur, a lubricating agent in standard diesel fuel that produces sulfur dioxide, the major component in acid rain. In addition to its environmental benefits, the American Lung Association hosted a forum recently that focused on biodiesel's lower toxic compound emissions and particulate pollution.
These benefits to public health are significant even in the 5-20% mixtures that currently dominate the market, but 100% biodiesel is the future Josh is shooting for, so until Fields of Fuel is released in our area, check out his website, biodieselamerica.org.
Films made in this region may be heading in a greener direction. The New York Production Alliance, the Producers Guild of America, and the non-profit Earthmark are hosting a series of events designed to give the entertainment production community the information and tools necessary to “reduce waste, carbon emissions, and encourage recycling and reusing materials.” They plan to cover everything from paint/construction waste to the fuel used in their trucks. Union carpenters, painters, electricians, riggers, etc. that work on large budget films in the Philadelphia area are members of the larger locals of New York, so the changes this series is recommending could impact productions throughout this region.
Last weeks’ topic was biodiesel, with a presentation by Brent Baker of Tri-State Biodiesel (featured in Fields of Fuel). He gave an overview of the biodiesel industry, then highlighted his company’s use of 100% recycled waste fat from New York City restaurants. The New York City Parks Department uses biodiesel for its fleet, as does the Department of Sanitation, and the state has a 5% home heating biofuel mandate by 2012. Private companies are starting to come on board as well, and Tri-State Biodiesel now supplies biodiesel to Whole Foods Markets, and Fresh Direct, an online grocery delivery service.
Setting their sights on the film business, his company also teamed up with CAT Entertainment Services to fuel the Tribecca Film Festival in 2007, and there was a great deal of discussion at the event about running CAT equipment on biodiesel in future film productions. Haddad, an east coast company that provides trailers and trucks to the film industry, has also used biodiesel. And last year, the television show 24 began using biodiesel fuels to power their generators and production vehicles. Hopefully, this trend will continue, and getting the word out through this green film initiative was a great place to start.
Recently, I watched The 11th Hour, a simultaneously devastating and inspiring documentary narrated and co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. Broader in scope than Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, this film is an urgent call-to-arms, adding toxic pollution, natural resource depletion, and mass species extinction to the list of environmental degradations threatening to irrevocably alter human existence.
Both men have been at the forefront of a fledgling celebrity environmental movement (it was DiCaprio and Gore, at the 2007 Academy awards, who announced that the Oscars had “officially gone green”) and they, along with many others, have been using their star power and wealth as tools to raise awareness about our impact on the planet’s ecosystem.
Predictably, accusations of hypocrisy abound. Rampant consumption largely defines the entertainment business, but my admitted skepticism stems more from the movie industry’s failure thus far to recognize that it is during the actual construction of the sets that most of the environmental destruction takes place.
As a scenic painter, I know firsthand the sheer amount of wood, steel, aluminum, plastic, etc. that fills the dumpsters daily, often for scenes that never make it into the final film. Houses, restaurants, even entire apartment buildings and shopping malls are built from rainforest luaun wood and formaldehyde-filled lumber, only to be shot for a few weeks (or days), and then thrown away. Gallons of toxic, petrochemical paint, solvents, and adhesives not only find their way into our waterways and landfills, but into the lungs and bloodstreams of the workers, even on huge, multi-million dollar union productions.
It is routine for designers to demand (and for production to pay for) large-scale, costly changes throughout the course of a build, but requests for less toxic, more sustainable building materials are deemed too expensive. In fact, it has been my experience that the larger the film’s budget, the more waste it generates, and the more safety and environmental regulations are ignored. While any positive changes, from recycled office paper to hybrid cars are welcome, no amount of carbon credits can “offset” the effects of chronic toxin exposure on worker health, or reduce the amount of plastic permanently deposited in our planet’s oceans and soil.
Unfortunately, most of this takes place long before the shoot crew arrives, so how much actors like DiCaprio really know about what takes place during the making of a film is an open question. I know that it gets either scant attention, or is entirely absent from the various industry eco-activist websites (like 11thhouraction.com). Access to actors/directors/producers is, of course, limited, so we have the unfortunate circumstance where the people who know the most about what needs to change have no direct way to communicate with the people most able to make that change happen. Perhaps that is an environmental blind spot in most large corporations. But the film business has not just profit, but art, entertainment, and even education as goals, and it is clearly not just the viewing public, but the filmmakers and actors themselves that need to become fully aware of the irresponsible recklessness endemic in their industry.
There are some signs of change. New York, California and New Mexico are developing (voluntary) green production guidelines for film, complete with vendor lists for everything from organic craft services to zero voc paints. The Environmental Media Association has created the Green Seal Awards to acknowledge productions that make environmentally conscious choices. Films like Syriana and The Day After Tomorrow invested in offsets, in an attempt to address their carbon footprint. The two Matrix sequels hired the nonprofit ReUse People to repurpose and recycle the sets and The Evan Almighty crew donated trees and shrubs, lumber, and money from recycled steel to Habitat for Humanity. Hopefully, films like these (and Future Weather!) will lead the way towards a more sustainable film future.
