211 - The Green Film Set Episode

Gary C:

Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewable electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we'll be looking at going green, and electrifying the film and TV industry.

This season the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap the free to download app that helps EV drivers search, plan, and pay for their charging. Before we start, I wanted to plant the seed about the season ending roundtable show. Last season the women in EV Roundtable was very well received, and was one of the highest listened to episodes overall. So what do you want to see at the end of this season, more topics should be discussed. Who do you want on there? Let me know info@evmusings.com

Now our main topic of discussion today is the film and TV industry and sustainability, therein. Many of you won't know but I do other things outside the podcast and one of them involves me spending quite a lot of time on film and TV sets and around Film Unit locations. They're fantastic and interesting places especially when you're working on something where they've thrown a lot of money on production. I did some work on Ridley Scott's Napoleon film recently where we had hundreds of background artists, horses, special effects, visual effects, and a massive film crew shooting with four cameras at the same time. Smaller productions are a little different, you might be one of only three people working on the shot with the cameraman and the sound guy. But the one thing that's pretty much constant across all film and TV sets, and the unit bases, which is where all the trailers and the catering is located - often miles away from where the filming actually takes place - is it in order to power everything up, they tend to use generators. These generators are usually diesel powered. And in fact, if you check the credits of some of the bigger films out there, you'll see someone credited as 'Genny operator', his and it's usually a guy, his whole job consists of making sure that the generator always has enough diesel to keep it going. The last thing you want on a production spending a quarter of a million dollars a day is have to wait half an hour while the Genny operator runs down to the nearest garage for some more diesel. Now these generators can run 24/7 and on larger films there might be several running at the same time. When I worked on Napoleon at Blenheim Palace, the unit was so large, it was split into several sub sections, each of which was located in a different section of the palace grounds, and each of which had its own generator. To provide power to all the vehicles, productions will hire usually a minimum of two high powered diesel generators, consuming an average of 80 litres of diesel for each 12 hour period of use. In more recent times, in an effort to appear more environmentally friendly, the generators are starting to be run on HVO Hydrotreated vegetable oil. This is essentially chips out with a bit of hydrogen and kerosene. It burns cleaner than diesel, it reduces CO2 emissions in particulate matter. But he doesn't remove it totally. It falls under what I call 'Still bad, but not as bad as the alternative". The irony is that the generator is there for one thing, and one thing only: creating electricity. All the lights, the actors trailers, the production office, the camera units, the makeup and costume trailers, everything runs on electricity. So it would seem that this is a prime opportunity for someone to come in and provide a solution that removes the need for running huge generators. Well, there are moves afoot to do just that and we'll talk about them a little bit later. Remember, for every one hour of TV made in the studio, almost 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide is produced. That's a lot. Now the other aspect of this is transportation.

Now you may not be aware of this, but there's huge transportation needs on a film shoot. Usually, this falls into two separate pieces, transporting people and transporting everything else. Now, in a typical film shoot you'll have a unit base as I mentioned earlier, this is a place where the cast trailers, costume trucks, makeup trailers, catering, lighting department are all located for a location or at a studio. They still use these generally if they're not shooting on location. Now these trailers are usually pulled on the back of articulated lorry cabs which run on diesel or a typical film, each time a shoot changes location, a fleet of these lorry trucks come in and pull everything trailers, toilets, production offices, costume trucks, generators, from one location to another. This can happen two or three times a production if it's set in relatively few locations, or it can be very regularly if it's a much bigger production. I worked on a couple of seasons of Netflix's production The Crown and at one point, they were averaging a move between locations every one and a half days. That was with something like 20 different trucks. In the UK alone, the Crown moved between locations as wide ranging as Wilton house in Salisbury, Belvoir Castle in Grantham, and locations in the Highlands of Scotland. Not only that, it was such a huge shoot, they were actually running two complete separate units between these locations at various different times. For people moving, from that point of view, this is usually accomplished either through limousine type vehicles, so high end Mercedes or BMW if you're a top level cast, or mini bus if your rest of the crew or background supporting artists. Now these mini buses - of which a large production could have half a dozen or more - are diesel powered, usually in fairly poor condition due to high mileage, and they follow the production from location to location. They can spend several hours a day just shuttling people from the unit base to the filming location, which is generally a short, inefficient run of anything from 300 yards. Yes, 300 yards! To a couple of miles, often at peak traffic times. Now the next time you watch a Hollywood movie, stay and watch the end credits. There'll be a whole section there about transportation. Look at the names of the people who are in the transportation crew. They'll all be driving vehicles, which for the most part will be diesel driven, as that is the most fuel efficient and cheap. Now, in winter, these cast and crew vehicles will be running for most of the day, even if the cars are not used. This is because the drivers will stay in them to keep warm and leave the engines on to heat the vehicle. Then on top of all this, we have catering. Now production runs on the catering. If the food is bad, you get an uprising from the crew. So generally film catering is pretty good. We will come back talk about this a little bit later. But despite the fact that this can be a multi million dollar production with the likes of Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Dame Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, all working their catering has changed very little for decades. The main catering is usually done from a relatively old van which looks like it was a removal truck in a former life, which has been converted to a large kitchen. It has a big range of usually propane gas fired burners, which run for the morning breakfast for the midday lunch. And if you work in a particularly long day, for a late meal of pizza or similar. On top of that they will have a separate vehicle used as a cold store, which will usually run either via that vehicle's engine or via the generator to manage the temperature. On very big films, there will be a catering marquee where the food will be served. This will have the large stainless steel catering buffet tubs where the food is placed in metal trays atop paraffin heaters to keep the food warm.

Between the gas cooking and the paraffin heaters to keep things warm while serving, there's a lot of fossil fuel being burned, and a lot of particulate matter being produced. Now so far, we've only looked at aspects such as the unit base, and physically supporting a film crew. We haven't talked about things such as the huge amount of paper that gets produced for a film shoot. As an example, every day, the production will produce what are called 'sides'. These are a five documents which will detail all the particulars of the day's shoot and include the specific pages of the script that had to be filmed. These can be These can range from around four pages of A5 to as many as 15 pages of A5. And each day hundreds of these are printed out distribute.. distributed to the cast and crew. So they know what's happening, what needs to be filmed. And these are literally like newspapers in that every day a new one is published, and yesterday's becomes trash. We also haven't even talked about some of the special effects that can be used on set which are less than environmentally friendly. In the past, I've worked with flaming torches, flares, open fires, manufactured smoke alley to make things look misty and ethereal, and most egregiously devices which are deliberately lit to create thick, acrid black smoke to dark in the background of a distant shot. This is a favourite of directors shooting war films where they want to show destroyed buildings in the back of a shot.

a unit base tends to use. In: 2023

Duncan Jones:

And I do think it comes from the top down so look when you're making choices on a budget. There's always going to be pressures to squeeze it down, squeeze it down, squeeze it down. But I think you know, I know I will be putting that pressure on producers to to try and find ways to do our bit on the environmental side of things. With any luck if I if you know if things go the way We're hoping we'll be making Rogue Trooper next and that will be built in UK. And I'll certainly be pushing for for us to do whatever we can as far as EVs and you know things that are least biodegradable when it comes to catering and things like that. And I can't imagine the hit being too huge in comparison to the, to the rest of the budget. But you know, like I said, everyone's, every department is often forced to squeeze their their budgets down. And you just got to find a way to take a stand on certain things and say, Look, we really need to do the right thing here.

Gary C:

So it can be done If the will is there, it takes a good production manager who can make sure that things like this are in the budget. Mandate, the cast transport be 100% electric, use alternatives, such as Allye Instacharge, and the central London high powered couplings for locations and push the Alfred initiative to be genuinely applied, rather than just paid lip service to. Now as a side comment, it's nice to see that there are a number of shows using electric cars on screen as vehicles in the story. Fans of the show Good Omens will have realised that all the cars in season two of that show are electric. Other than the car that main character Crowley a fallen angel rides around in, which I think is quite appropriate. Recent shows such as Vigil on the BBC and 'Fool Me Twice' on Netflix have shown main characters discussing or driving around electric vehicles as part of the plot. And all this is very encouraging. This season, we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. And one way we're doing that is with the carbon fact as read by carbon literacy trainer, Anne Snelson:.

Anne Snelson:

We're currently using the Earth's resources are 1.7 times what it can bear. So the next time you want something, ask yourself if you really need it. Could you cope with what you've got, or repair it instead? If there's things you don't want, use, or need, why not put them to better use, you can sell them online or donate them to a charity shop. You'll be helping the planet, the person who buys them, and potentially a good cause, too

Gary C:

It's time for cool TV or renewable things share with your listeners. British Airways is embarking on a multimillion pound investment programme to overall its ground support equipment at Heathrow Airport to decarbonize its ground fleets and equipment. It will be gradually replacing its ground vehicles at Heathrow such as vans, cars, cargo transport passenger sets, moving towards hybrid (boo) are electric alternatives, quote, whre available close quotes.

mission flights in service by: 2030

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Duncan Jones:

And I do think it comes from the top down

Gary C:

Thanks for listening. Bye