Sustainable Scenes: Greening Your Production (Webinar)

Spada and Greenlit webinar about Greenlit's sustainability initiative for the screen industry. Topics include practical strategies for integrating sustainability into your projects, inspiring success stories from those working in the area of sustainability for the screen industry, and an introduction to the tools and resources Greenlit offers to help productions reduce their environmental impact.

Panelists are Rose Archer, Sustainability Manager, Ilai Amar, Producer, and the session was hosted by Greenlit's J9.

- Watch a Captioned Version of this webinar HERE
- Visit www.greenlit.org.nz for more information on Greenlit. 
- Visit www.spada.co.nz for more information on Spada, New Zealand Screen Producers Guild.

Transcript

0:01

Kia ora, nau mai haere mai, welcome to our webinar on sustainability for screen production. Ko Ness Simons toku ingoa, my name is Ness Simons and on behalf of Spada we're proud to host this webinar alongside Greenlit, who are a fantastic organization created to support the screen sector in Aotearoa New Zealand to develop environmentally sustainable production practices. Spada encourages our industry to embrace sustainable practices, and we hope that this discussion helps our members and others across the sector to understand what steps they can take to make that happen. Our host position is J9 Russell. So J9’s career as a project management and PR and includes organizing the New Zealand TV Awards, the Big Screen Symposium. Her LinkedIn profile states that “Art is life” and from the chats that we've had so far in prepping for this webinar, I can tell she's equally as passionate about sustainability. So I'll hand over to you now, J9, I'll drop into the background. I'll be fielding questions and supporting the panel. So kia ora J9. Kia ora Ness, Thank you very much. Kia ora koutou katoa. Ko J9 toku ingoa and yes, that is J9, not Janine. I prefer J9 letter J number nine. I would just like to start with a karakia to begin this meeting. Please forgive any mispronunciations. Tūtawa mai i runga Tūtawa mai i raro Tūtawa mai i roto Tūtawa mai i waho Kia tau ai Te mauri Hui ē! Taiki ē! Thank you, everybody, and welcome. Thank you for joining us. I love seeing tiny round faces in rectangle boxes fizzing about sustainability. So let's get into it. Today it's my privilege to introduce Greenlit, which is an incredible initiative of practical tools to help productions across the motu to adopt eco friendly practices. As Ness indicated, I recently joined Greenlit as the comms and fundraising manager, and I am honored to champion the work of this passionate team and the impactful mahi that is happening across the industry. So Greenlit launched just over a year ago. Happy birthday us. With the vision of empowering our industry to reduce its environmental impact. And thanks so much to the hard work of the founders, the committee, the sustainability managers, and with support from New Zealand on Air and the New Zealand Film Commission, we have already supported over 50 productions and helped establish 15 sustainability managers who are regularly employed across Aotearoa when A year ago it was a handful at most. So there's demand, which is fantastic. Greenlit tools and resources are all free for you to use to make it easier for productions to minimize waste, conserve energy, lower carbon footprints, etc., etc. and some of those tools include a carbon calculator. There’s a sustainability checklist and emissions estimation tool. We're also building supplier databases. We have a live donate and redistribute group on Facebook. And of course there is crew list of sustainability managers. So if you're looking to hire one or kōrero with one or more, if you haven't already, therefore please go and have a dig in a click around our website. There is a quick start guide in there giving you literally step by step advice on how to implement sustainability on your productions. It is a wealth of information and also where we're all here to help. Just think of me as the cheerleader for sustainability and Greenlit in the industry. And if you have any questions, we're always eager to to, field those. hello@greenlit.org.nz is how you'll find me. But today we are joined by two outstanding sustainability champions. We have the wonderful Rose Archer with over a decade in the screen industry and three years as a full time sustainability manager, Rose has actually been pivotal in developing Greenlit tools and resources. We wouldn't be who we, without Rose’s input. She will share insights from her own experience of how these tools have made an impact on her work. We also have Ilai Amar. He is a creative producer, passionate about sustainability. Ilai will discuss his experiences implementing sustainable strategies on productions, the budgetary benefits. I know you've all got budget in your mind, so we'll talk about that hopefully, and the broader impact of collective change in the industry. Yeah. Really excited to, to have these two on board. Thank you both. And there is a opportunity to ask questions. So, drop them in the chat and will either address them immediately if they're burning and we're passionate about answering it immediately, or we'll do it at the end of the session. With that, thank you all for being here. Thank you for the support. Let's start greening the screen. And over to you, Rose. Kia ora, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction, J9. Yeah. So, hi, I'm Rose a sustainability manager. I'm going to talk a bit about my experience, using the Greenlit tools and just implementing sustainability in the screen sector. So, yeah, just starting off thinking about, like, what the tools are that Greenlit have and how they've been useful. So, yeah, one of the major tools that Greenlit has is a carbon calculator that is, has been made to specifically serve the New Zealand screen sector. It's also been designed, to facilitate a little bit more ease of use around carbon footprinting. So a few of the processes that have in the past been very laborious are automated through this tool. And essentially this is an iterative tool. We want to just continue to improve it as it as people use it. So we'll continue to, automate more and more of the processes, as we go and we get feedback on it and things like that. And yeah, what's really great about that is it means that we have we spend a little bit less time stuck behind our computers on spreadsheets and a bit more time actually being able to think about “Cool, So what are some of the strategies that we can do to actually reduce our carbon footprint as well”, which has been a really really awesome aspect of using this. Also. So yeah, so you, you use the calculator by logging in through the portal, and this is what it looks like. I on the projects I've worked on have mostly really been the hands on person who manages inputting all of the data into the carbon calculator. I work quite closely with accounts in particular, and with certain other crew members. Transport. Unit to get the data that I need. But mostly so far it's been me that on my productions me that's really managing the portal. But I really, really encourage producers in particular to have a look around at the portal, see how it works, because the more familiar that you are with it, the more that you have the opportunity to kind of support your sustainability manager and kind of just understand how these processes work. Yeah, you the top stuff is all just like places to put in information about the production. That kind of helps to calibrate it and, automate some of those processes. And then that bottom section there is where you actually put in all of the data. One of the really, really important aspects of this carbon calculator, though, and the reason why we wanted to develop it, is because it's important to us to be able to create an entire footprint for the whole of the New Zealand screen sector. And if anyone's looking closely at this slide, you might be able to tell that I had a little bit too much fun using the AI image generator making these slides. Yeah. So, you're welcome. And, enjoy that as we continue to go through because I've got some weird images in here. So yes. But basically kind of what I'm trying to express here is that what we're able to do with this tool is that we take all of the data, from all of the productions and make it all anonymized, and then we can create a baseline and a footprint for the whole screen sector in New Zealand, which is really, really awesome because it means that over time, we can actually measure our progress as an industry in New Zealand about how much we're actually able to reduce, which is just really, really important in terms of empowering our local industry with that data that can help us to be really informed about where we're putting our effort and our main focus with our decarbonization strategies. Something that J9 mentioned, in the intro was about just coming and having a look around on the Greenlit website. And I really, really recommend that, producers and heads of department and even crew do do that. And there are a couple of pages I'm going to point you towards here. So we've got, the under the tools you've got, downloads and templates and a couple of the key things that I think are really, really worth crew members looking at here are the Sustainability Action Plan, which is a like really comprehensive guide of how to implement sustainability on your production, for any given production, the specific sustainability strategy might look quite different. And I think one of the huge advantages of working with a sustainability manager is that they will have the expertise to know where it makes sense to focus most of your attention for your particular production. But if you're looking if you are a producer or an HOD or anyone working in the film industry and you kind of just like want to get a sense of like, what might a sustainability strategy for a film production look like? I reckon that starting with a sustainability action plan is quite a good place. It's a long document, but if you have just like a look through your kind of get, idea of, where to start with it. And then the other thing that I would recommend in particular for HODs, is to look at the departmental guidelines that we've got there. So those departmental guide for strategy and sustainable, practice in the role. These also like the calculator itself, I would say they're sort of iterative tools. So we're always looking to kind of develop them a bit more. But it gives you some ideas about like what could I specifically be thinking about and focusing on for my department in particular, the other page that I would say is really, really worth looking at. And sorry, actually, I'm going to go back to that page for a second. And this is a really, really key part of what I do in my job as a sustainability manager. You know, I, I can do a certain amount by myself, but actually my job is to work with crew who are the experts in their specific area of the film to support the implementation of more sustainable practices within every department across the film. And one person in a department, whether you're an HOD or an assistant or anywhere in between, one person can honestly make all of the difference if they're a really, really strong advocate for sustainability. And so these are and yeah, and so these are the tools that we use. And that's kind of the general approach of what a sustainability manager is doing. It's really important that the sustainability manager is not trying to implement every process themselves. They need crew members to be working with them and collaborating on changing workflows. And yeah, another really another great area of the website to look at. And another really important area, I think for sustainability managers is thinking about, is all right, bit tongue tied. I've had a hot day of, wrapping, which has been physical. But, yeah. So on the news and events page, I would recommend to producers if you're and anyone, any crew who is interested in just like starting to think about starting to learn about sustainability. Come and have a look at the news and events page on the Green Lit website. It's got some really cool articles about various different sustainability initiatives that are happening in the screen sector. And I think that this is a really, really important aspect of the work that we do as sustainability managers as well. It's to share the work, share the successes, share the progress that we're making, and a question that comes up when we start to talk about this is, but what about greenwashing? Which is a really, really good question. You know, it's really legitimate. We want to avoid greenwashing, of course. But I do think it's also really important to talk about our successes and our progress, because we need inspiration and hope and practical examples of how to improve in this space. So how do we avoid it? Well, for for the first part, like, I think narrowing down into a question of like what actually is greenwashing can really, really help us to avoid it. And these two images that I generated, sort of trying to create like that physical representation of the idea of greenwashing. So if you have something that is inherently unsustainable that you're doing and you're kind of literally trying to kind of paint it green by just putting like a little bit of a spin on it, then you're in your danger territory. Then you're thinking that what you're doing might be greenwashing. So, you know, if you're trying to like, talk about having green coal, green diesel, you know, those are quite inherently unsustainable things and we can have more efficient energy. You know, we can have more efficient diesel engines. We can have more efficient, coal burning plants. But ultimately, like, those are not really green solutions. So just having like a bit of a awareness around that. The other thing that I would really flag as being problematic when it comes to greenwashing is really like big grand statements about what you're doing. So something like this product is sustainably made or we are a green film production. Well, like, okay, I've been working in the industry in this role for three years now. I've worked on a variety of different film productions where we have, you know, really worked, backsides off to try to make as much of an impact on how we're working. But I would not describe any of the productions that I've ever worked on as green, because we're just not that's not where we are as an industry. It's just not really realistic. So with that in mind, then how do we actually talk about it? So if we want to avoid greenwashing, like this cute frog that's trying to get out of the bath here. So one of the things that we can do is we can just actually acknowledge where we are. We can acknowledge when we talk about things, the problems, the challenges, the limitations. Also being really specific, talking about facts and figures, you know, it's not just, oh, we did composting. It's we were actually able to divert 50% of our waste away from landfill with composting. And I think really, really importantly, making it so that other people can replicate what you are doing. Things like naming your suppliers, you know, so the other productions can actually do the same thing that you're doing. It's this area is really, really about radical collaboration. You know, we're not protecting our IP. We're not kind of being like, well, I'm the best sustainability manager, so I'm not going to share how I work. Like it's the exact opposite of that kind of approach. We want to really, really share our successes. The other thing that comes up when we think about this idea of greenwashing is sustainability on screen. And the stories that we're telling, and I just really want to emphasize here that seeing people take sustainable actions normalizes care for the environment. And it can be a driver of change. So just emphasizing here things like having heat cups in your like on screen, using electric vehicles and your storyline, that kind of thing. Those things are a good way to promote sustainability, and I would not consider those things to be greenwashing either. And also particularly really wanting to emphasize to the producers in the room hopeful stories about the environment and sustainability are desperately needed. We need stories that are more than just the like, “doom and gloom, catastrophic, everything's so bad” climate change stories. We need those hopeful stories that do highlight some of the good stuff that is happening. And there actually is a lot of really good stuff happening. So yeah, I just really, really want to encourage all of the producers in the room to think about how they can support, like, climate justice storytelling with their work, because I'd say that that is, you know, one of the really big, impacts that we can have in our industry as well. Co so going to talk a little bit about just like some of the specific things that I've done, on different productions. I'm not that's what, what I'm talking about here is just going to be a couple of little highlights. I'm not going to be giving a comprehensive 101 of how to do a sustainability strategy because, there have been some really awesome sustainability seminars already. This year that have done a bit more of that. And also, you know, sustainability in our sector is a big, complicated puzzle, and we just need to think about all of the different pieces of it, as much as possible. So that's what I'm going to talk about. So one of, one of the initiatives that we did, on one of my previous projects was to, recycle our fabric scraps. Well, upcycle actually is probably a better word for it. And this was a really awesome initiative because we just reached out to a local, community group, called Fashion Rebellion Aotearoa. I was, you know, already in touch with, through other avenues. And basically just like asked them, hey, is this something that you would be willing to collaborate with us on? And they took, and with over 200, kgs of fabric scraps and turned them into, yoga bolsters like cushions, couch cushions, all of that sort of thing to, not just recycle, but upcycle those fabric scraps. This I would I really want to emphasize here that I think this is a sort of initiative that you get working with a sustainability manager specifically because it's like, I think that our role is to come up with some of those really creative, slightly more out of the box ideas and use the work that we have to, create a new way of working. One of the challenges here is, as it is with all forms of waste management that we do in the sustainability department is that we did have challenges with contamination, you know, people putting food and that kind of thing into the fabric scrap bins. This is an ongoing problem, and it's something that we can use every single crew members support to just encourage people to use waste streams correctly and just change how they think about waste. It's a resource that we can continue to use. It's not just this gross thing that someone else deals with. Something that we're doing on the project that I'm currently on is, a, we've been working with a zero waste hub, the Glen Innes Zero waste hub. And basically, I'm not exactly sure what the number is, but I would say, like, roughly maybe half ish of our kind of set decoration. Furniture, all of that kind of thing was sourced from the Glen Innes Zero Waste hub. And we set it up to work similarly to the way that other productions have worked with this group, which is basically the we take it, we borrow it, and everything that we return, we don't pay for. So, the, the, the people at the Zero Waste Hub really, really like this way of working with film crews. Because they can, because often what we'll do is we'll take something that's a little bit broken or a little bit kind of dusty around the edges. The so a film crew will come in, they'll fix up those things. And then the zero Waste Hub gets it back in a condition where they can actually sell that and get it back into the community again. So it's a really, really awesome way of working there are zero waste hubs all over Auckland now, and there are just like growing as we are continuing to push our like our nationwide strategies of reducing the amount that we're sending to landfill. So those community recycling centers and zero waste hubs are an awesome, awesome resource for film productions to use. And I really, really encourage some productions to work with them. Something else that is becoming an emerging really awesome technology in the screen sector is things like hybrid generators. Also like just the battery packs by themselves. And really simple, but really, really effective and awesome is plugging into power. So some of the good things about this are there are opportunities to save, but also it can be expensive. So yeah, what I mean by that is that, there's opportunities to save on diesel in particular, but some of this technology is still quite expensive. So it's not necessarily, you know, there's still we're still approaching a tipping point with this technology where it's going to become like way more affordable than the alternatives. The battery packs in particular. So the the second image here is of, smaller battery pack that has a solar panel on top. And I've heard from a lot of crew members that this is really, really awesome for their personal kits to avoid using, like the smaller generators that you might just take out on location with you to boil and jog or whatever. Plugging in, we still have some challenges, on our production that I'm on now. It's a small in New Zealand production. We were able to plug into power, to supplement the lighting department, but we weren't able to do all of the lighting needs by plugging in. And this is an area that I think we really just want to bring our film industry creativity to. This question of how we can make more use of our grid, which is 80 to 85% renewable Electricity rather than, burning diesel all the time. One of the areas. So, we are still quite limited, when we're talking about carbon specifically, is transport. Transport remains a bit of a sustainability pickle. And yeah, I just again want to encourage all of the awesome creative minds in our sector to think about how can we how can we solve this pickle? How can we, how what are the things that we can do to reduce our trans transport footprint? Because it is really the lion's share of our carbon, of our direct carbon emissions at the moment. Three things that you can do right now. I think I've talked for too long, so I'm gonna try to wrap it up as quickly as possible. Hire a sustainability manager - we’re awesome. Do your carbon footprint thing. It's really, really awesome to contribute towards that big picture decarbonization for our screen sector, and ask about sustainability when you're having conversations with crew, you know, a few great questions are how can we reduce, how could we do this in a lower carbon way? How could we do this in a lower waste way, or using less toxic materials? And that's me. I'm going to hand over to Ilai now. And yeah, sorry about going a little bit over time. Kia ora koutou, thank you very much, Rose. And thank you, Ness and J9 for for having me. My name is Ilai, and I'm a film producer based here in Tāmaki Makaurau and I'm just wanting to share some very fresh, insights that I've gained in the last few months working on my first feature film with the wonderful Rose Archer as our sustainability manager, trying to give a perspective from a from a producer's point of view. Really. But first I just want to rewind and just give a very brief, you know, recap on who I am and where I came from, because it's sort of relevant at times. But when I was young, I was, I kind of had the the importance of looking after our natural world quite firmly instilled in me by my mum. And I was quite passionate about, advocating for the natural world and giving a voice to, you know, the environmental issues. And, and at the time it was like were still working out how to describe the word sustainability before it kind of became a big trend and then became morphed into kind of what it is now. And, you know, this was sort of before we described the climate challenge as sort of climate justice work. And and it was an interesting time. And I became quite active after high school and, then kind of doing direct action work actually in the sector. So it's a passion of mine. I then went into storytelling in the film industry, and I spent a lot of, my earlier years working with the someday story. Someday, The Outlook for Someday project, which is now called Day One, which had a focus on sustainability, storytelling, and, I found myself sort of fusing my two loves. And it was an amazing time and we did a lot of great work. I think, encouraging people to tell stories about sustainability. And then when I morphed into more of a commercial producing career, which has led me now into the filmmaking, I do sort of started to realize that the way we were making films was kind of, of a concern, to me, or I'd started noticing some, yeah, just some kind of anomalies, I suppose, of how we did, you know, you could tell a great story about sustainability, but there was sort of this inherent wastefulness, I suppose, in the industry that I observed, and especially in the commercial sector, I found myself adopting even myself, adopting this kind of, mindset that it's like, you know, the job just needs to get done. It's sort of more important to just get it done. And next time I'll use less cups or waste a little bit less or whatever the thing might be. But it did start to kind of yeah, it started to trouble me more and more. And and then fast forward to watching Craig and Rose, you know, formed this, this, organization and kaupapa Greenlit, piqued my interest. And I sort of watched the journey a little bit from afar. And then now I've had the absolute privilege of making my first feature film and being able to actually engage a sustainability manager Rose and, and put into some of the practice more meaningfully, you know, and to implement, a sustainability strategy and to utilize Greenlit resources and notably, the carbon calculator. I will just caveat, though, and say, I mean, this new, new to me, you know, but I think that might be useful in this, forum to kind of talk to, like, you know what I mean new to me is the Greenlit ecosystem and the carbon calculator and that sort of thing, but I think that might be useful to hear that perspective. You know, I'm not an expert, and I haven't done ten years of production and started to integrate, you know, the stuff from from way back. I'm just sort of getting into it now, but I'd love to share some of the some of the things that I've learned along the way in the last few months. We actually just wrapped last Friday, so it's very fresh. We're in a wrapping period at the moment, but, so yeah, it's kind of like some of the stuff I'm still learning and emerging and, you know, still working with Rose in this period to, to see what sort of outcome we can have and insights and learning we can have from the carbon calculation, part of the stream of work and, and others. So that's me. So we just made this film. You might have heard of the weird alien pregnant feature film. That's us. Myself, along with my co-producers Morgan Leigh Stewart and Alix Whitaker, have, shot was my first feature, but it's not their first feature. And here are some of the things that we learned. Do you to just move to the next slide, please? Rose will help me. Yes. Oh. Cool. That's what I just said. Let's go to the next one after that. So I forgot that I had slides. So I think one of the things that has been most useful for us, and one of the like insights I'd love to have left as a lasting impression on people, I hope, is the earlier that you can engage in this, with a sustainability manager, or just by reading the resources yourself and preparing yourself the better. We actually, through knowing Rose personally, we actually started conversations like quite a long time ago. And, and I know there was some early conversations between Alix, my co-producer, and Rose, right when we got our New Zealand Film Commission finance greenlit. You know, that was last year, late last year, but certainly in pre pre we already had Rose on the ground even, you know, starting to help us open up the office and starting to work through some of the, the strategies, the early strategies that we were going to put in place. And I found that that meant that we could have a good lead time into things, be prepared for things, but not to feel like, oh shit, we've got to kind of get that role in place. And I suppose when you rush a decision like that, it starts to self-fulfilling into what could be described as maybe a box checking exercise or something, you know, and, and I would note that in our particular case, we didn't have an obligation from any funding to to have this in place. But it was something that was important to us as producers. All three of us, actually, felt very strongly that we wanted to have this element running alongside the work that we did. And that segue into the next kind of, strand or impression I want to leave, which is that we quite carefully and strongly communicated to our HODs as they were onboarded and and some of our crew members that this strand of work via Rose and her work as a sustainability manager on the production was important to us as producers and to the directors. The five of us. And Rose had a good session early on to kind of verbalize and talk about what the work looks like and how does it, how does it manifest in production, and what can we be doing and thinking about so that the five of us understood what was going on? And it wasn't just this thing that our sustainability manager was doing off to the side, and we could all feel great about it. And I think that made a difference. And, you know, talking to Rose, I think we can confirm that if we're sitting up and signaling with people that it's important to us, they kind of take it a little bit more seriously. I don't know. I mean, you all, there's a lot of experience producers in the room. I've noticed. And I know there's the the concept of like from the top down it it does that is a thing. You know, I've learned that even, in the last few months, I've learned the power that you wield. Even though one of the things I have learned in this process is that I feel more in the center than from the top. But anyway, that's another story. But even still, if you're in the center and you're radiating outwards, the kind of, the intention and the commitment and you want to demonstrate that to others, then they sort of following along. So that was important. We set up meetings between Rose and some of the key HODS that she described earlier in her talk. You know, specifically it's like unit and transport. And, you know, there's very and the art department, you know, when it comes to construction and whatnot, we set up those meetings and kind of and really asked those actualities to be really open and come with like a really good open mind and a willingness to collaborate and to really listen, not to just feel like they had to do this one meeting and then kind of get on with their work. But and because Rose had kind of given us this really interesting perspective that at the end of the day, you know, she's there to help and serve to not just to make them do something. And often the result is like there's sometimes even budget, wins and benefits. There's, you know, there's kind of like approaches that the HODs might not have been thinking about themselves and the kind of like really interesting side benefits, you know, for the whole production and for these people who have a big job to do, you know, and like, because, you know, Rose has worked on many productions now and has seen, you know, lots of things that she can also bring as an experience to people that, can be really useful. So that's our second big one. Oh yeah. This last one is just more of a kind of like example of something we did. But I realize that's very specific that I might as well say it because we're here, but we made a call to, give as a crew gift, like, you know, really good, drink bottles, water bottles and coffee cups in the hope that. And they were labeled with people's names engraved in them so that people would bring them to sit and really use them. But. Oh, no, that's right. I remember why I keep the sun and Rose and I talked about this is because when we had this idea, we didn't just pat ourselves on the back and be like, cool. Well, crew gift is a sustainable thing. We actually talked to Rose about it, and she kind of gave her input and her perspective on it, which was, you know, make sure you try and get really good quality, cups and water bottles, not just sort of cheap stuff that you can just get printed somewhere random and, and chuck it to people because often that stuff isn't doesn't last. It's not durable. And might end up in the landfill anyway. Whereas we decided to really invest and get some good stuff. And, you know, it's a nice thing, nice win when the crew are kind of happy to walk around with a bright green alien themed drink bottles. But, also it helps, you know, it helped reduce the amount of kind of, waste in the, in the production. So that's just one little specific thing. Could you go to the next slide, please, Rose? Thank you. I mean, yeah, here's so here's a little bit that I think is specific to us. And our role is as producers, we just, you know, we obviously engaged Rose and had a conversation around the role. Like we would a lot of different crew members. How long you going to work for? How many hours, how many weeks. What's what phases of production will you be there for and what does your work like work look like in any of those phases? Additional to that, once we'd work that out, we'd also committed, a little budget for Rose, the sustainability manager, to work with while she was working, which meant that she could actually have a little bit of, resource to meaningfully help some of the departments that she's engaging with and that she didn't have to kind of keep coming back to us to enable this and kind of have to make a case each time we put the trust in in that in Rose to be able to, to give, you know, to make the decisions around that. Now, it must be said, it was a it was it was a modest amount. You know, we're not we weren't you know, we're not a huge budget level film, but any anything I think has kind of like with while I think in this space to that sustainability manager with, with the resource to be able to kind of meaningfully help that also helps, I think Rose create good rapport with those HODs. She's sort of got, the goods to back up some of the talk that she's having with those people. You know, she can really, like, offer an idea or a strategy or an approach and kind of even back that up with, well, let's do like this, let's do that and let's set up the system and let's. So we found that worked really well. And that would be one of the key learnings I would say, I learned on this and that I'd love to share with others. Yeah. Those two points kind of relate to the ones on the screen. Both of them. I'm just having a look to my notes. So the next two things I wanted to mention briefly were Rose kind of touched on them, but I'll just sort of mention them. One is kind of like, I think what I'd consider a success story from my production. And one is something that was a challenge and kind of was left a little bit unrealized, to a certain extent, but I find that could be interesting to talk about. The first one was the kind of art department and construction waste concept. As Rose mentioned, we got a lot of our dressing and props and decoration from, you know, the zero waste hub in Glen Innes, which was really interesting our film and called for it like a it worked and sometimes won't, and not all film productions kind of have that aesthetic, but for ours it worked for a lot of our dressing. So that was a bonus. And even though we shot on location most of our film, we did have to construct a few set pieces here and there and a few sets. And in that element, Rose did some really interesting work with the art department to create, an approach and a stream that we could either receive a good starting point from maybe a previous production, like flats or construction materials, and then on the other end, we put the stuff. We put a lot of the waste back into a kind of recycling, like a recycled construction waste stream, rather than just straight to landfill. And the bonus was that it was actually cheaper to do it like that rather than to just send it to landfill, which again, it's like if you can have a win on the budget and a win on the planet. I mean, I mean, you know, that's just wonderful in our minds. Yeah. Double thumbs up too. So that was one of the areas that, worked for us. And the other one that was a little challenging was Rose mentioned. Like we did have some opportunity to plug into the into house power to the grid to leverage this. You know, the the fairly renewable grid we have in New Zealand, but there's still a very strong prevailing ideology from the technicians from especially in lighting around the way they receive power. And you just like can't avoid these, but diesel generators that you're towing around everywhere for the unit base and then for your tech and I think like when I think on it, you know, I'd like to take a learning from that to my next project where we dig a little deeper and we try a little harder to create dialog, you know, I think Rose did a wonderful job to engage with HODs, as I said. And then I think with some of them who work on more of the kind of more traditional departments, I suppose, I don't know if that's not the right word, the traditional department, but there's some departments that are a bit more kind of need it done in the way that they used to more than others. Right. And I think they're we could have probably come along side roads a little firmer and just and really try to engage and interrogate that discussion a little bit further to see if there were any innovations that that we present. Because the diesel generator thing is like the all or no, it's producers. It's just a thing. Right? It's like the they need the reliable, consistent power to be delivered to their lights so that things aren't cutting mid-season or that they're not, you know, they're not stressing out, knowing the the variable quality of power that that's coming to them. And we didn't quite overcome that. I think in some instances Rose’s right. There were some locations where it suited and we were able to, you know, to to connect to the grid. But I think we could have done some of the, done a bit more on that. So I just kind of wanted to name that is something we learned as a challenge or could have done better, which I think is also useful. Yeah. And then the next slide here, it kind of just sums up, what I have just said. Yep. That was the one I just did. And the last one, I mean, I didn't talk for so long. I hope that you'll still remember these things, but bringing in a sustainability manager early to have good planning and meaningful all kind of conversations and have the lead time for it to really be effective, signal to your crew and your HODs, and some of them more than others, that it's a priority. And that's important to the producers and the directors. And the creative team worked really well for us. And the last one I just wanted to say, which is something that Rose mentioned too, is, it's like it can feel really big sometimes to try to do this thing where you want to make the greenest production ever, or I don't know if other people have that ambition, but sometimes I had I had wondered about how to make this opportunity of my first feature film and put all these things into practice, and it can feel overwhelming at times. But through Rose's guidance, we kind of discovered that doing a lot of good, tried and true and tested things in the background, and knowing that Rose had those covered, while also having the discussion around what's unique to our production. Like I said, in our case with the art department and construction was kind of like, that's enough. I mean, there's a lot of other things that we do as producers, obviously, that fight for our attention. But if we know that we have these baseline things going where we can feel we're moving in the right direction, I hope. And if we if more of us doing, doing it and then we're continually improving, then that's that's the way I see us, us winning, you know, and like I said, with that lighting generate a power type situation that's like, if I can crack that, we can crack that on our next one, then I'll feel like we're moving in a good direction. So anyway, I hope that was somewhat useful. An observation from a newly freshly minted feature film producer, but yeah. Thank you. If there's any questions, I'll. I'll try to answer. Kia ora, thank you Ilai. There are a couple of questions in the chat. Helen is asking, do we know if any film studios use roof space to generate solar energy? Do either of you to know the answer to that? Off the top of my head, I don't think so. It definitely is one of those things I'm like, really feel like it should be happening. It's something that I have talked to a few people about and gotten sort of various different reasons why it hasn't happened. And it was it is something that I kind of tried to push forward a couple of times before, but I think, again, it's one of the things that we just need lots of people asking that question to the right people as often as possible to kind of get to that point where it's like people are, are realizing that it's something that people want, and it's worth putting the time and effort into making it happen. Yeah, yeah, I agree, be a squeaky wheel for the planet, squeaky wheels get greased, so let's be the planet’s squeaky wheels. I am probably going to flub this a little bit, but I do know that there are a couple of chaps down in the South Island who are currently working on, if not already have, a battery van, solar power battery vans that can, function as lighting, source, you know, energy for lighting. So there's a couple of I've asked them for more information because that's the type of thing that we will share on Greenlit’s website as part of news or in EDMs or I'll just send it to the sustainability managers. As Rose mentioned, we are not gatekeepers. We want to share all of this information with all of you, you know, squeaky wheels, gate gatekeepers. So Denesa to answer your question about EVs, do any of you have experience using EVs as mobile battery units to replace diesel generators? I don't think yet. No, I don't think Rose and Ilai have yet. But again, I know that there are some people, passionate people in our industry who are working on that space specifically. So, yeah, just to jump in very quickly on that one, I saw, a Facebook group, the other day, film Facebook group that someone basically had come about that hack quite by accident, they’d hired an EV vehicle that just required one cable and was then able to charge all of the, to work all of the lighting required for that shoot at a fraction of the cost of a diesel generator. So it may be worth everyone looking into that. So it's a great question. Thanks Denesa. I’ll just jump in because like, I agree. Like I have a domestic fascination with, you know, electrifying, you know, our homes and our machines, and I drive an EV myself. But, you know, this is where it met with some kind of challenge in our production. Is that it? It might work on some smaller scale, shows or, you know, productions if they're doing kind of smaller commercial work. But as soon as you have a major lighting, Gaffer, truck situation, a bigger show, it's like the amount of power that they need sort of varies. Right. And then and it's it's at that point that they struggle to try to put together what is this emerging technology, this kind of vehicle to load thing where you can get out of an EV? It's still quite new. It also kind of will give you, you know, the equivalent of plugging into a house, one wall of the, you know, of, of the circuitry. It's not quite going to work to power a big thing, but it is interesting to start to see it on smaller productions, I think, because it's the way that we'll learn more about it. But I think the the little van, electronics or electricity generator thing is probably the, the, the thing that sounds like the most like it could replicate a diesel generator, you know, because it's, it's likely that it can output what they need on the tail end. And as long as it's getting fit in either by solar or even from the house power, because to go back to the solar on the roof of a studio, if you're at a studio, you're you're connected to the grid there anyway, because we're in a fortunate position to have a lot of our energy being renewable via the grid. You know, it would be great, but it's sort of like you're already there. But the mobile thing, you know, like putting it in a van and being able to take it on location, that's kind of key. Anyway. Yeah. I think I'd like to also, kind of tautoko what Ilai was saying about, like, trialing this technology. And add to that not just maybe on smaller shoots, but some of the ways that I've seen people kind of starting to bring this in and trialing it is to, is to section off certain of the power needs that we have, because I think that actually at the moment in New Zealand, we have two major barriers to electrifying our power for film. One of them is the availability of the technology. You know, there are some really big battery packs that you can get that can power a whole lighting set up that are available, like in the US currently. But we don't have that same level of power available here yet. But the other issue, which Ilai was speaking to is, like, a fear and anxiety about adopting the new technology. And so I think that we need to sort of be like pushing on both things a little bit at the same time. One of the big successes that we had on a previous production that I was working on this year is just plugging into the grid at the studio, like it's actually so mind boggling that we don't plug into the studio for more of our power needs when we're based at some of the really great studios around Auckland. And there are a lot of myths that fly around about the reasons why we don't do that, or we definitely don't have the, you know, it's not going to be reliable enough, all of this kind of thing. We did it for a massive unit base and it did the whole production really, really well. And so I think that it's just continuing as Ilai was also saying, again, just following on supporting that, continuing to have those conversations, asking those questions of the technical departments of why can't we plug in, you know, is there something that we could do? Could we just plug in for part of our needs? You know, and I think that it's it's not just to reduce the carbon on our specific production. It's also to make those steps of culture change, of getting people to be comfortable with adopting those lower carbon strategies. We have another question. Does sustainability get involved in making sure productions take Kauri Dieback seriously? Does is it outside the scope? I would assume it's not outside the scope. I would assume it's very nestled in the midst of the scope. But I'm not a sustainability manager. So, Rose, can you talk to that? Kia ora, Thank you. That's a really great question. The the honest answer for me is that it's not something that I personally have been involved with yet on any of the productions that I've been on. That, that, you know, one of the, one of the departments that we collaborate really importantly with is locations and, baked into the locations Department is already a remit to look after the environments that we're shooting. And, and I would in general tend to hope that a lot of the locations, managers and crews that I've worked with have been really awesome at that role of looking after the environment. And I would tend to hope in general that they are, that they are taking that kind of thing seriously. And that there and that they are generally across that aspect of their job. Having said that, though, you know, I know how busy all crew are and how that stuff can kind of fall off the end of the wagon all the time. And I would basically, if any crew member or producer or anyone is ever noticing that there's some thing that is really important like that that's not getting covered, I would always really encourage you to bring it up with the sustainability manager, and kind of having the sustainability manager step into that conversation sometimes can help us to sort of lift those practices up and just bring a bit more Problem-Solving into that conversation sometimes as well. So yeah. Thank you. Good question. Okay. And final question, if you don't mind just nodding to this, you two, did you hand out those fabulous engraved cups at the start of the shoot? Yeah, that makes sense. That was that that really worked. You know, we had pre-planned it and I had the crew engraved in it, which is difficult because, you know, six weeks shoot. You know, people come and go and, but, but we did our best to kind of create this nice package for people as they started on their shoot day one. And it was nice to be able to give out a gift early, like a welcome pack. And it had that bottle in it, and it was just beautiful watching throughout the different locations, all the bottles and coffee cups around, you know, that had people's names on it. Really handy to you knew who you knew, who left their coffee cup in the back of shot when we changed directions, you know, and the art department could call people out, which was kind of fun. But, yeah. So we gave that out at the beginning, which really worked. Yeah. I love I think, and it makes people feel cherished and important. And, you know, when people feel cherished and important began to work harder. And the production is going to be better. So I'm just going to do a little wrap up of a few key points that we, discussed, even though it's 5:00. I'll just zoom through it. Producers, please go and have a look at Greenlit’s tools as specific to Aotearoa. Just honestly, the webs... I could have taken this whole hour taking you through the website like it is a wealth of knowledge. Get in there, click away. Every step you take is a step in the right direction, no matter how small. Okay, we've we've were world spinning on the same rock. And so we've got to look after this rock. I said before as Rose said also no gatekeeping. It's a team effort. We also need hopeful stories. Brian Holland, if you're still on here, I think you were. You're working on something at the moment. I think make it hopeful. But we need hopeful stories. Hope feeds hope. And so we are also we creatives. We can come up with solutions. We can put our heads together and we can we can do this. And the earlier the better. Just to to, tautoko Ilai, the earlier the better. When you're, when you're talking about these productions, get a sustainability manager as early on as possible. Budget for sustainability even it's for the small budget. Like I say, small steps, small budgets. It's all in the right direction and communication. Let's be the squeaky wheel and talk to each other and share everything with each other, because we love it. And I'll just, finish with a karakia. Kia tau ngā manaakitanga a te mea nui. Ki runga ia tātou katoa Hui e, Tāiki e! Kia ora. And on that note, thank you very much for hosting us today, J9 for Rose and Ilai, for your sharing your expertise, and for everyone that attended and asked some great questions at the end. like you said, J9 - 50 productions in the first year for Greenlit. Let's build on that, build on that, build on that with all those great resources. And, everyone's great intent.