By Wendy Mitchell

The Going Green webinar, presented on June 23 from the Scandinavian Films umbrella group, welcomed six experts.

Ronny Fritsche, producer and environmental strategist at Sweden’s Film i Väst, recently authored the report A Study in Green: The Detective, The Film Industry & The Eco-Villains, based on the shooting of TV drama Bäckström. That series’ biggest CO2 emissions came from not 63 days of shooting in Sweden, but from the air travel for 10 days of shooting in Thailand.
 
Fritsche explained: “It is important that the film industry begins exploring the potential of the alternatives visions needed for how film and TV drama can be produced with less or without air travel.” He also hopes the film industry will embrace storytelling that addresses climate change.
 
Fritsche was emphatic that the film world has to make big changes, now. “Even though we work with something fantastic -- art and entertainment -- we are no exception from taking part in the necessary societal transformation. But I haven't heard of anyone in the global professional film industry that does enough… production companies receive public funding in the Nordic countries without any environmental restriction on how to use it.”
 
He continued, “The industry has to cut down 15% [of emissions] every year. We need to follow up on the Paris Agreement, and to achieve that, the financier needs to demand working methods that track down our emissions to that level.”

At Film i Väst, he added, “I really hope that we will launch requirements before the end of this year to requirements that must be increased over time.”
 
Finnish filmmaker Saara Saarela is planning a lot of green measures when she shoots her dystopian drama Memory Of Water later in 2020.
 
The film’s theme has an ecological connection – “it’s about a world where fresh water is running out. So it already has quite an environmental issue that I'm very concerned about, and want to talk about through this film,” she said.
 
Saarela said the biggest green measure would for all filmmakers to only shoot locally or only with green screens – this isn’t possible with many productions, including for Memory Of Water, which will shoot mostly in Estonia. “We need the locations,” she says.
 
But one silver lining of the COVID pandemic has been less travel during pre-production. “Coronavirus has actually made this production a little bit greener because we can't get to those locations for recces. And still it works just fine.”
 
Saarela was one of the experts that helped create Ekosetti, Finland’s guidebook for sustainable production. It covers anything from production offices to shooting to financing and post-production. She said the guidelines don’t offer all the answers, as options will be different for every production. “It doesn't give you solutions, it just raises questions.”
 
Icelandic director Ásthildur Kjartansdóttir spoke about the eco-friendly measures on the set of her 2019 feature The Deposit. She said even simple steps like reusable coffee cups and water bottles helped the crew think much more mindfully about the production’s overall consumption. Using real plates and cutlery instead of plastic for craft services meant a more “cosy” atmosphere too. All these measures meant “we saved money….we didn’t believe it would (save costs) in the beginning but it turned out very well,” Kjartansdóttir said. Making transport as ecologically friendly as possible was also crucial – “some people cycled to work” she noted, or at least carpooled. Some of these measures turned out to be simpler than the old ways – it’s easier to email a call sheet than to print out copies.
 
Anne Ahn Lund, the Head of Production and Teaching at new Danish eco-consultancy Jordnær Creative, noted, “We offer three services. The first one is eco management, where we work setting a strategy with sustainable goals, together with the production; linking them with sustainable suppliers. We execute that by sending our trained green runners to set, to make sure materials are sorted corrected and tools are implemented. We also offer reporting, which is crucial right now to measure the impact on each production and create a report.”

Just one example is supplying leftover catering from sets to local food banks. She also hopes Jordnær can do more training work so that knowledge can be spread and spread across workers on many productions.

Oslo-based Mads Astrup Rønning, Founder and Creative Director at Babusjka, has been ramping up sustainable actions on their productions, mostly commercials. They have taken steps like clearly marked waste containers on set, using solar lamps or equipment that uses less energy, or serving mostly vegetarian or vegan food on sets.
 
Just doing a few specific measures wasn’t giving them the big picture of change, he realised. “After some time, producing by this list, we've got in third party consultants to validate points and develop a climate calculator, in order for each production to get a climate score.”
 
They soon recruited like minded production companies to join the Green Producers Club (which is mostly Norwegian companies for now but open for all.) “The checklist is in English and we want to expand and make it a kind of industry standard.” It’s not just a feel-good organisation, as he noted that the producers in the club can come together with “big purchasing power….there is a chain reaction.”
 
Mikael Svensson, Film Commissioner, Southern Sweden Film Commission (part of regional film fund Film i Skåne), noted that Film i Skåne requires its applications for the past three-plus years to have “some kind of sustainability plan” and the commission has also done case studies on local productions like the TV series Sisters 1968.

Southern Sweden has taken part in Cine Regio’s Green Regio report, and plans to join the Green.Film rating model being discussed now. “It’s being developed in Italy, in Trentino, with Green.Film, and can adapted to Nordic conditions. Hopefully we can create a common education for consultants,” Svensson said.

Fritsche is not sure that a global international standard for sustainable production will be possible, as the situation in, say, Scandinavia, will be very different than in India. He said, “The green infrastructure is so different in our countries, so the requirements for an international standard would be very low. In Sweden, we have a lot of suppliers with electric cars, for example we, and it's very easy to find plant-based food catering, but that's harder in other countries. So, we, we cannot have the same rules in Scandinavia as in other countries.”
 
Sometimes co-productions are necessary for financing European films, but that can sometimes not be the most efficient way to make films, Sareela noted. “This is something that I have been struggling with is that we can use exceptional talent from different parts of Europe. But at the same time, that can impossible in terms of when you think in terms of sustainability. Using crew from somewhere else, just because we need to cut spending in one country, etc. There are many examples of this and this is something that we need to tackle.”
 
Resources and further reading

• Babusjka
• Cine Regio
• Ekosetti: A Guidebook to Sustainable Production in Finland
• Film i Skåne
• Film i Väst’s A Study in Green: The Detective, the Film Industry & the Eco-Villains
• Global Green Media Production Network
• Jordnaer Creative
• Green.Film
• Green Producers Club
• Green Regio Report