Greening the Film Industry, Continued

 

Warner Bros. Pictures (the studio that brought us both Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II (2011) has made an effort to obtain carbon neutrality and nurture conservation initiatives on its movie productions. According to their website, “All Warner Bros. Pictures Productions use a carbon calculator to measure their footprint and inform future green production initiatives.” They note the success of the 2005 film Syriana and 2010’s New Line Cinema film Valentine’s Day as films that have “implemented numerous sustainable practices, including a first-of-its kind hybrid base camp utilizing solar power and bio-diesel-fueled generators; reusable water bottles, to eliminate the use of single-use plastic water bottles; clean-air vehicles, for both talent and equipment transportation; recycling and composting efforts; and biodegradable food ware.” According to the site, eight of the studio’s last 25 films were carbon neutral, including Due Date (2010), Flipped (2010), Green Lantern (2011), Inception (2010), The Town (2010), and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Warner Bros.’ animated films also lessen their carbon footprint (as well as their production costs) by implementing digital cinematography and distribution. 

Other studios have made the move to digital cinematography for their live-action films, such as Paramount Pictures’ Hugo (2011), or live-action/animated films, such as Twentieth-Century Fox’s Avatar (2009). Since 2007, sales of film cameras have rapidly declined, and all new cinema cameras introduced since 2007 are digital, a change that contributed to Eastman Kodak’s bankruptcy in January 2012. The success of this move to digital is demonstrated by the preponderance of digital films winning the Academy Award for cinematography. Slumdog Millionaire (2009) and Avatar’s digital production is seen by most as a large step towards “greening” Hollywood, a move that has not negatively affected either film’s profits. The success of digital blockbusters creates an even more inviting atmosphere for digital filmmaking and video digital projection. The ultimate goal is that all theatrical projectors will be digital video. 

This goal of transforming all theatres to digital projection will mean the end of using film in the production process. Computer-generated video production and exhibition, like that produced for Hugo and Avatar, ends the chemical links of producing film prints, eliminates the need to create and deliver thousands of prints for exhibition, and ends the need to destroy the prints after their theatrical runs. This transformation also means millions of dollars will be saved on every major release, while also substantially reducing the carbon footprint that creating, delivering, and exhibiting films has caused since their invention in the late nineteenth century. In Greening the Media, Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller provide a detailed description of the environmental destruction associated with celluloid film (71-75).