What audiovisual sustainability is and how to apply it on a shoot

What we mean by audiovisual sustainability

Every production uses energy, moves people and equipment, generates waste and buys goods and services over weeks or months. Audiovisual sustainability applies environmental criteria to those decisions to reduce their impact without compromising the creative project or the crew's pace.

In practice it combines three things: concrete measures in each department, data collection during the shoot and well-organised documentation. On that basis you can calculate the carbon footprint, report to funders or platforms and, if the project aims for it, apply for certification.

Why it has to start in pre-production

The decisions with the greatest environmental effect are made before shooting: which locations are chosen and how close they are to each other, how the shooting schedule is organised, whether there will be grid power or only generators, where the crew stays and which catering company is hired. Once the shoot has started, many of those decisions are hard to change.

Starting early also makes it possible to include environmental criteria in budgets and supplier contracts, and to explain to each head of department what is expected of their team before the pressure of the set kicks in.

The main areas of impact

• Transport: production vehicles, equipment vans, crew and cast travel, and flights or train journeys.
• Energy: grid supply in studios and offices, generators on location and lighting.
• Accommodation: hotel or apartment nights for travelling crew.
• Catering: menus, food origin, packaging and food waste.
• Materials: set construction, props and costumes, and what happens to them afterwards.
• Waste: separation on set, reuse and final treatment through licensed waste contractors.
• Purchasing: criteria for choosing suppliers, hiring versus buying, and single-use products.
• Water: consumption on set and in catering, and alternatives to plastic bottles.

The weight of each area varies widely from one project to another. A feature film with several locations depends mainly on transport, accommodation and energy; a series on a fixed stage, on electricity use and sets; a commercial shot in a few days, on logistics and purchasing. That is why measures must be tailored to each production rather than copied from a generic list.

How to turn general goals into concrete measures

“Reducing the shoot's impact” is an intention, not a measure. To work, each goal has to be translated into actions that someone can carry out and that can be checked.

Some examples

• Reduce generator use → request a grid connection at locations where it is feasible and log the litres used where it is not.
• Reduce travel → group locations by area in the shooting schedule and organise shared transport.
• Reduce catering waste → remove single-use bottles and order meals matched to the actual headcount.

This work is organised in a sustainability plan, which sets out the measures, who is responsible for each one and how it will be checked.

Why monitoring and real data matter

A measure that is not monitored usually stays on paper. During the shoot there are location changes, extra days or new suppliers, and someone has to check that the measures are still being applied. That role usually falls to the EcoManager.

Real data (fuel invoices, electricity readings, rooming lists, transport orders, waste contractor delivery notes) is what shows what has worked and makes it possible to calculate the carbon footprint with reliable information rather than estimates.

Where to start?

1. 1

   Review the project

   Script, shooting schedule, locations and crew size, to see where the greatest impact will be.

2. 2

   Choose a few realistic measures

   Start with the areas that weigh most in your production and with measures the crew can actually meet.

3. 3

   Assign owners

   Every measure needs a person or department in charge of it.

4. 4

   Decide what data to collect

   Define from the outset which documents and records you will need and who keeps them.

5. 5

   Review during the shoot

   Check regularly how the measures are going and correct whatever is not working.

If you would rather have support in this process, our services page explains how we work with productions from pre-production through to wrap.