Harvest Films Sustainable Shoot Case Study.
Case Studies are a great way to see how people get Green done.
Los Angeles-based Harvest Films tracked carbon emissions from a 1-day commercial film shoot in September and shared this insight to the Green The Bid community.
Shooting During Covid
iPad streaming live camera feed from set to agency + clients based in Chicago. Live stream also feeding to crew members outside of set due to covid protocols.
This case study highlights the dramatic effect of how newly adopted covid-safety filming procedures can affect carbon emissions. Most notably, the absence of all air travel and accommodation for client and agency personnel resulted in significant reductions in carbon output.
It was calculated that flying eight members from the agency and client (roundtrip from Chicago to Los Angeles) would have resulted in 14.9 tons of carbon emissions.
Air travel alone would have accounted for 79% of total carbon emissions for this particular shoot.
Through establishing an on-site virtual station on the day of filming, Harvest Films was able to facilitate agency and client dialogue throughout the shoot while eliminating the need for in-person interaction.
A visual representation of carbon output by sector.
The figure above depicts a breakdown of carbon output from this production. Mobility, defined by the movement of people to and from set, as well as various production ‘runs’ is the largest contributor at 33% of total carbon emissions.
This was calculated using average gas mileage, number of vehicles used, and average distance between crew home and set. Transport (not to be confused with Mobility) is in reference to large truck and load transportation (i.e. camera trucks, art department trucks) and accounts for only 3.9% of carbon emissions. This total is likely to be much higher for larger scale productions.
Energy, 28% of total carbon emissions, is the second largest contributor in this case study. The primary source of energy for this shoot was a singular 500 Amp generator. To determine energy consumption a conversion was made from amps to kilowatt hours (500 amps x 120 volts / 1,000 x 14 hours of usage) = 840 kWh.
Additionally, we calculated average energy consumption for running the air conditioning of a 3,562 sq foot home (the square footage of our shooting location in Pasadena, CA).
The 3rd largest source of carbon emissions comes from catering. We calculated 126 total meals served (2 meals per day for each of the 63 persons on set). We are operating under the assumption that 30% of persons chose vegetarian food options and 70% of persons chose meat options. Water, soda, snack consumption is also factored into this total.
Utilizing the MyClimate carbon calculator (https://co2.myclimate.org/en/event_calculators) they determined that the shoot emitted 1.9 tons of carbon dioxide during the principal day of shooting.
When including 3 additional prep days and one wrap-day, total carbon emission estimates to be 4.2 tons. To provide context (although not a perfect comparison), studies suggest that “the production of just one hour’s worth of TV content now produces 13 tons of carbon dioxide” (Albert Consortium / BAFTA).
