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TV And Film Companies Are Working Toward A More Sustainable Industry

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By Newsy Staff
August 16, 2022

Film and TV companies can leave a large carbon footprint, but some large companies are working to improve their sustainability efforts.

From materials to labor and other equipment, TV and film production can often have a huge carbon footprint.

A recent report found that big-budget feature films had a carbon footprint of over 3,000 metric tons each, which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, is equal to more than 7 million miles driven by a regular car. On the other end, small films have a carbon footprint of nearly 400 metric tons, equivalent to about 1 million miles driven.

That report comes from the Sustainable Production Alliance, a group of TV and film companies committed to making the industry more sustainable. Their report factors in housing, air travel, fuel and utilities to reach the overall carbon emissions total. For all sizes of films, the biggest contributor to emissions was fuel, mainly used for vehicles and generators.

This is true for TV series, too. It accounts for nearly 60% of emissions for one-hour scripted dramas and half hour single-camera scripted shows.

Since the Sustainable Production Alliance report was released, the organization has prioritized transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, including electric and hybrid cars and battery powered generator technology. There are some limitations though; it may be hard to find charging stations, for example, but it’s a work in progress.

Earth Angel is a company that helps make TV and film production more sustainable by providing a strategy and the staffing needed to help crews reach their environmental protection goals.

“There’s a lot of different actions that you can take, and I think it can feel overwhelming to people,” said Emellie O’Brien, Earth Angel CEO. “But really dialing in on: Okay for this project, we want to focus on eliminating single use plastics for this project. We want to focus on getting as many hybrid and [electric] vehicles as we can onto this project, like really zoning in on what’s available to your project.”

Companies like Amazon studios, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix and Sony Pictures Entertainment are part of the Sustainable Production Alliance, and they’re working on these efforts as they bring us more of our favorite content.

Netflix has set a goal to reduce internal emissions by 45% below 2019 levels by next year, NBCUniversal has a plan that will make them carbon neutral by 2035 and Sony is working to have no environmental footprint throughout the life cycle of their products and activities by 2050.

“We’re guests in the communities that we’re filming in, and I think that there’s a real responsibility for our industry to leave these communities better than how we found them as well,” O’Brien said. “So, not just a do less harm, but also a do more good component.”

Production companies are also taking steps to cut back on travel by using virtual reality to create production studios and sound stages. They use LED walls and green screens to bring different locations to a set and help replace physical props.

“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is a good example of a film that was applauded for its sustainability efforts. Earth Angel worked on that set, and the movie won a Green Seal award from the Environmental Media Association in 2014.

The movie’s production team had 49 tons of materials that could be donated or reused, avoided using plastic water bottles on set and gathered materials for the costumes from farmer’s markets — keeping 52% of production waste from going to the landfill. They were also able to give back to the community by donating nearly 6,000 meals to shelters.

All of this saved over $400,000, proving that sustainable productions don’t have to be expensive.

“I think that in terms of like barriers to acceleration here, there’s a few different factors at play,” O’Brien said. “One of which is that there are no fiscal incentives that are encouraging people to take these actions currently. The other thing is we don’t have the consumer demand factor, unlike the fashion industry for example or food industry, where people are demanding more sustainable. And then I think lastly, it’s just a conversation around like how is who whose job is this like? And that’s always been something that I think the industry has really struggled with.”

: newsy.com

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Scrounging for Hits, Hollywood Goes Back to the Video Game Well

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LOS ANGELES — For 28 years, ever since “Super Mario Bros.” arrived in cinemas with the tagline “This Ain’t No Game,” Hollywood has been trying and mostly failing — epically, famously — to turn hit video games into hit movies. For every “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001), which turned Angelina Jolie into an A-list action star, there has been a nonsensical “Max Payne” (2008), an abominable “Prince of Persia” (2010) and a wince-inducing “Warcraft” (2016).

If video games are the comic books of our time, why can’t Hollywood figure out how to mine them accordingly?

It may finally be happening, powered in part by the proliferation of streaming services and their need for intellectual property to exploit. “The need for established, globally appealing I.P. has naturally led to gaming,” Matthew Ball, a venture investor and the former head of strategy for Amazon Studios, wrote last year in an essay titled “7 Reasons Why Gaming I.P. Is Finally Taking Off in Film/TV.”

Sony Pictures Entertainment and its PlayStation-powered sibling, Sony Interactive, are finally working together to turn PlayStation games into mass-appeal movies and television shows. There are 10 game adaptations in the Sony Pictures pipeline, a big leap from practically none in 2018. They include “Uncharted,” a $120 million adventure based on a 14-year-old PlayStation property (more than 40 million copies sold). “Uncharted” stars Tom Holland, the reigning Spider-Man, as Nathan Drake, the treasure hunter at the center of the game franchise. It is scheduled for release in theaters on Feb. 18.

post-apocalyptic game of the same title. Pedro Pascal, “The Mandalorian” himself, is the star, and Craig Mazin, who created the Emmy-winning mini-series “Chernobyl,” is the showrunner. Executive producers include Carolyn Strauss, one of the forces behind “Game of Thrones,” and Neil Druckmann, who led the creation of the Last of Us game.

Sony games like Twisted Metal and Ghost of Tsushima are also getting the TV and film treatment. (Contrary to speculation, one that is not, at least not anytime soon, according to a Sony spokesman: God of War.)

In the past, Sony Pictures and Sony Interactive operated as fiefs, with creative control — it’s mine; no, it’s mine — impeding adaptation efforts. When he took over as Sony’s chief executive in 2018, Kenichiro Yoshida demanded cooperation. The ultimate goal is to make better use of Sony’s online PlayStation Network to bring Sony movies, shows and music directly to consumers. PlayStation Network, introduced in 2006, has more than 114 million monthly active users.

“I have witnessed a radical shift in the nature of cooperation between different parts of the company,” said Sanford Panitch, Sony’s movie president.

Halo,” a series based on the Xbox franchise about a war between humans and an alliance of aliens (more than 80 million copies sold), will arrive on the Paramount+ streaming service early next year; Steven Spielberg is an executive producer. Lionsgate is adapting the Borderlands games (roughly 60 million sold) into a science fiction film starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Buoyed by its success with “The Witcher,” a fantasy series adapted from games and novels, Netflix has shows based on the “Assassin’s Creed,” “Resident Evil,” “Splinter Cell” and “Cuphead” games on the way. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the duo behind HBO’s “Westworld,” are developing a science-fiction show for Amazon that is based on the Fallout video game franchise.

And Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment, the Universal Pictures studio responsible for the “Despicable Me” franchise, have an animated Mario movie headed to theaters next year — another new collaboration between a game publisher and a film company.

Still, Hollywood’s game adaptation track record is terrible. Why should the coming projects be any different?

For a start, the games themselves have evolved, becoming more intricate and cinematic. “Games have stories that are so much more developed and advanced than they used to be,” Mr. Panitch said.

first major game adaptation in three decades to receive a “fresh” designation on Rotten Tomatoes, the review-aggregation site. Since then, two more adaptations, “Sonic the Hedgehog” (Paramount) and “The Angry Birds Movie 2” (Sony) have been critical and commercial successes.

“Quality has definitely been improving,” said Geoff Keighley, creator of the Game Awards, an Oscars-like ceremony for the industry.

The most recent game-to-film entry, “Mortal Kombat” (Warner Bros.), received mixed reviews but has taken in $41.2 million in the United States since its release last month, a surprisingly large total considering it was released simultaneously on HBO Max and theaters were still operating with strict coronavirus safety protocols.

Mr. Panitch acknowledged that “video game movies have a checkered history.” But he added, “Failure is the mother of invention.”

Game adaptations, for instance, have often faltered by trying to rigidly replicate the action and story lines that fans know and love. That approach invites comparison, and movies (even with sophisticated visual effects) almost always fail to measure up. At the same time, such “fan service” turns off nongamers, resulting in films that don’t connect with any particular audience.

“It’s not just about adapting the story,” said Michael Jonathan Smith, who is leading Sony’s effort to turn Twisted Metal, a 1995 vehicular combat game, into a television series. “It’s about adapting how you feel when you play the game. It has to be about characters you care about. And then you can slide in the Easter eggs and story points that get fans absolutely pumped.”

“Uncharted” is a prequel that, for the first time, creates origin stories for the characters in the game. With any luck, such storytelling will satisfy fans by giving them something new — while also inviting nongamers, who may otherwise worry about not knowing what is going on, to buy tickets. (The producers of “Uncharted” include Charles Roven, who is known for the “Dark Knight” trilogy.)

“It’s a question of balance,” said Asad Qizilbash, a senior Sony Interactive executive who also runs PlayStation Productions, an entity started in 2019 and based on Sony’s movie lot in Culver City, Calif.

Unlike in the past, when Sony Pictures and Sony Interactive pledged to work together and ultimately did not, the current collaboration “has weight because there is a win for everyone,” Mr. Qizilbash added. “We have three objectives. Grow audience size for games. Bring product to Sony Pictures. Showcase collaboration.”

The stakes are high. A cinematic flop could hurt the game franchise.

“It’s risky,” Mr. Qizilbash allowed. “But I think we can do it.”

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Cyberattack Forces a Shutdown of a Top U.S. Pipeline

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A cyberattack forced the shutdown of one of the largest pipelines in the United States, in what appeared to be a significant attempt to disrupt vulnerable energy infrastructure. The pipeline carries refined gasoline and jet fuel up the East Coast from Texas to New York.

The operator of the system, Colonial Pipeline, said in a statement late Friday that it had shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which it says carries 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel supplies, in an effort to contain the breach on its computer networks. Earlier Friday, there were disruptions along the pipeline, but it was unclear whether that was a direct result of the attack, or the company’s moves to proactively halt it.

Colonial Pipeline has not indicated whether its systems were hit by ransomware, in which hackers hold a victim’s data hostage until it pays a ransom, or whether it was another form of cyberattack. But the shutdown of such a vital pipeline, one that has been serving the East Coast since the early 1960s, highlights the huge vulnerability of aging infrastructure that has been connected, directly or indirectly, to the internet.

In coming weeks the administration is expected to issue a broad-ranging executive order to bolster security of federal and private systems, after two major attacks from Russia and China in recent months caught American intelligence agencies and companies by surprise.

the SolarWinds intrusion by Russia’s main intelligence service, and another against some types of Microsoft-designed systems that has been attributed to Chinese hackers — underscored the vulnerability of the networks on which the government and corporations rely.

announced sanctions against Russia last month for SolarWinds, and is expected to issue an executive order in the coming days that would take steps to secure critical infrastructure, including requiring enhanced security for vendors providing services to the federal government.

The United States has long warned that Russia has implanted malicious code in the electric utility networks, and the United States responded several years ago by putting similar code into the Russian grid.

But actual attacks on energy systems are rare. About a decade ago, Iran was blamed for an attack on the computer systems of Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest oil producers, which destroyed 30,000 computers. That attack, which appeared to be in response to the American-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, did not affect operations.

Another attack on a Saudi petrochemical plant in 2017 nearly set off a major industrial disaster. But it was shut down quickly, and investigators later attributed it to Russian hackers. This year, someone briefly took control of a water treatment plant in a small Florida city, in what appeared to be an effort to poison the supply, but the attempt was quickly halted.

Clifford Krauss and Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting.

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The Week in Business: Amazon Defeats the Union

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Good morning. Here are the top stories in business and tech to know for the week ahead. — Charlotte Cowles

Credit…Giacomo Bagnara

Large companies are often good at dodging taxes to maximize profits for their shareholders. But President Biden wants to make that harder with a new tax code that would raise tax rates and close loopholes for American corporations with annual incomes exceeding $2 billion. The plan is intended to bring in enough tax revenue to fund Mr. Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure proposal. If it gets through Congress (and that’s a big if), what’s to stop companies from moving profits overseas to tax shelters like the Cayman Islands? The Biden administration has a plan for that, too: a global minimum tax rate that would apply to multinational corporations regardless of where they’re located.

Amazon won its fight against the biggest push for unionization in the company’s history. The tally of votes showed that workers at its giant warehouse in Alabama had decided against forming a union. The results will need to be certified by federal officials. But it’s a big blow to union organizers and Democrats who believed that the timing was right for organized labor to gain momentum around the country. It’s also a major victory for Amazon, which has been accused of union-busting in several states.

New jobless claims were up for the second consecutive week, a sign that employment gains, while still promising, will be uneven for a time. Even though employers added an impressive 916,000 jobs in March, the economy is still 8.4 million jobs short of where it was before the pandemic. And many sectors that were almost totally wiped out — like travel, restaurants and bars — are only now starting to come back.

Credit…Giacomo Bagnara

Coinbase will become the first publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange in the United States when it posts its shares to the Nasdaq this Wednesday. It has become the biggest American cryptocurrency company by making it easy for people to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital tokens. (The firm charges a fee each time a customer places a trade order.) Last week, Coinbase said it expected a first-quarter revenue of about $1.8 billion. That’s a whopping increase of about 847 percent from the previous year, mostly thanks to Bitcoin’s recent rally.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is suing the federal government to allow cruise ships to resume sailing from the state’s ports. The boats must meet requirements put in place last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before they can take passengers, but the industry says that the directions lack clarity. Separately, several cruise lines have announced plans to resume operations from other ports in the Caribbean and Bermuda, often with requirements that all passengers be vaccinated. But Mr. DeSantis has prohibited Florida businesses from asking patrons to show proof of vaccination.

As the coronavirus pandemic caused shutdowns, undocumented immigrants were hit especially hard. Their communities suffered disproportionately from high death rates, and they were largely ineligible for unemployment insurance and other pandemic aid. Until now, that is. In New York, the government is offering one-time payments of up to $15,600 to undocumented immigrants who lost work during the pandemic and could not get access to other jobless benefits. The money will come out of a $2.1 billion fund in the state budget, which critics say should have gone to legal New Yorkers who are struggling.

struck a five-year deal to give the streaming giant exclusive rights to its films once they leave theaters. In France, Ikea is facing a new lawsuit over a decade-old case in which its executives spied on employees and customers. And more bad news for Boeing: The company has told airlines to ground some of its troubled 737 Max jets — the same model that was grounded for over a year after two deadly crashes — because of an electrical issue.

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Netflix and Sony Sign Four-Year Streaming Deal

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In another sign of Netflix’s growing dominance, Sony Pictures Entertainment has signed a five-year deal that will give the streaming giant the exclusive U.S. rights to Sony’s films once they leave theaters and premium video-on-demand services.

The deal, which begins with the studio’s 2022 releases, builds on Netflix’s existing partnership with Sony Pictures Animation and replaces the agreement Sony, one of the few major studios without its own streaming service, has had with Starz Entertainment since 2005.

That means that upcoming films like “Morbius,” which features Jared Leto playing the Marvel vampire, and “Uncharted,” starring Tom Holland in an adaptation of a Playstation game, will become available on Netflix after they complete their theatrical and on-demand runs. As part of the deal, Sony will make two to three direct-to-streaming movies a year for Netflix, expanding Sony’s slate and giving Netflix exclusive films for its service.

“This not only allows us to bring Sony’s impressive slate of beloved film franchises and new I.P. to Netflix in the U.S., but it also establishes a new source of first-run films for Netflix movie lovers worldwide,” Netflix’s head of global films, Scott Stuber, said in a statement on Thursday.

Sony emphasized that the arrangement would not alter its theatrical strategy. Before the pandemic, the studio released 15 to 20 films a year in theaters, a plan it intends to resume now that theaters are reopening. Films made for Netflix will be in addition to the theatrical releases, it said.

With the pandemic shutting down movie theaters for much of last year, Sony Pictures, like most studios, pushed many of its films into 2021. It also sold a handful to streaming services, including “Greyhound” with Tom Hanks to Apple and the upcoming animated comedy “The Mitchells vs The Machines,” from the creators of Sony’s Oscar-winning film “Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse,” to Netflix.

(An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Sony signed a four-year deal.)

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