Greening the Film Industry?

Twenty-first Century films rely more fully on CGI and digital production, but even when the films blatantly address the detrimental effects on our basic needs or the dire consequences of meeting them, they still struggle with maintaining the realism expected by both Hollywood and its audiences while encouraging environmentally friendly production practices. With a budget of $200 million and a gross profit of $586 million, Quantum of Solace, a blockbuster with a blatantly environmental message against commodifying water, serves as an apt example of the dilemma filmmakers face: How can a film company provide an effective and lucrative film product and limit negative environmental externalities? 

In many ways this Bond film failed to achieve the “green” message of the story in its production practices. According to Randee Daniel of Hollywood Reporter, for example, Quantum of Solace was shot in six countries, and this on-location film is, according to RPS Group “among the most expensive and carbon-intense stages of film production. Large crews and quantities of equipment must be flown abroad, and diesel generators are used to power the lighting and heating of temporary sets.” In Bregenz, Austria during the scenes of the performance of Tosca and its aftermath, 1500 extras were used, and for a later scene, the Palio di Siena at the Piazza del Campo in Siena was recreated in Italy; for a scene where Bond emerges from the Fonte Gaia, 1000 extras were hired, according to the film’s production diary on the MI6 website. Bill Dawes of FX Guide also reveals that a full-scale replica of the hotel building’s exterior was used for the exploding segment in which Bond and Camille escape in South America. 

Yet efforts were made to “green” this film production, as well. Although six Aston Martins were destroyed during the making of Quantum of Solace, the film also featured environmentally friendly Ford Motor Company cars: A Ford Ka EV, which seems to be electrically powered, and a fleet of Ford Edge Fuel-Cell EVs. The film also relied heavily on CGI, with over 900 visual effects shots stirring up adventure, according to a VFX World interview recorded by Bill Desowitz. Like other James Bond films, Quantum of Solace was produced at Pinewood Studios, whose carbon footprint was recently evaluated by RPS Group to support its plan to build a “1400 unit residential development – that also doubles as a giant 15-location film set for Pinewood Studios.” The assessment report suggests that between 60% and 90% reductions of greenhouse gas emissions may be possible if the development is approved, and using “streetscapes for filming will achieve a 44% annual reduction over business-as-usual location shooting abroad.” 

 These changes to the studio seemed to bode well for future James Bond productions until the carbon footprint-heavy Skyfall (2012), but other action adventure films have more successfully implemented “green” production practices. With a budget of $90 million, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) for example, “exemplifies eco-friendly filmmaking,” according to Gerri Miller of the Mother Nature Network, and still has already grossed $543 million. Because the film was part of Warner Brothers’ Green Initiative, the studio brought in Greenshoot as a consultant to “assist the production in lowering the carbon footprint [of the film] and to help implement more sustainable production practices in conjunction with and to complement the Green initiatives already set out by Warner Bros.” According to Co-producer Lauren Meek, “Construction set waste and food waste were key issues for us” (quoted in Miller). As Meek explains, “We diverted 756 tons of film waste from landfill with a recovery rate of 98.6 percent which was a zero landfill achievement. We saved 2500 tons of CO2 form being emitted by using Greenshoot and adopting green practices throughout the production, and saved money through Greenshoot's services into the productions” (quoted in Miller). Some of this was achieved by making the film digitally, but “visual effects enabled the production to cut down on travel and shoot everything in England, except for a few establishing shots” (Miller).

The Film Industry and Environmentalism

 

Even though oil drilling films we examined in Film and Everyday Eco-disasters attempted to show us that oil and water can mix, at least if appropriate safety precautions are in place, the filmic representations of everyday eco-disasters explored throughout this book all highlight the negative consequences (externalities) of fulfilling our basic needs. They also demonstrate that, more often than not, these eco-disasters also jeopardize those needs. Total Recall, for example, illustrates the repercussions of oxygen deprivation, but it also emphasizes the cause of unequal distribution of air: turning resources into commodities. Quantum of Solace, despite its James Bond action-adventure genre, demonstrates similar consequences, this time in relation to water as a necessary resource. Our Daily Bread, The Cove, Norma Rae, Blue Vinyl: The World’s First Toxic Comedy, The Last Mountain (and the other eleven mountaintop removal mining documentaries), and Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez primarily emphasize the eco-disasters associated with fulfilling our basic needs, yet they also effectively illustrate how these everyday eco-disasters threaten the needs of both human and nonhuman nature. 

All these films, to a greater and lesser extent provide an environmental reading based on everyday eco-disasters associated with our everyday lives. Some focus on how our acquisition of our needs sometimes causes an everyday eco-disaster. Others highlight how our drive to commodify those needs endangers both the resources and ourselves. And still others show how our consumption practices risk the resources that sustain us. Yet, because these are all products of the film industry, whether made independently or as a Hollywood blockbuster, they all also contribute to the environmental degradation that translates into an everyday eco-disaster when it affects our ability to meet our basic needs. 

To illustrate, Total Recall was one of the last major blockbusters to make large-scale use of miniature effects rather than computer generated imagery, a carbon-heavy approach that draws on multiple resources, leaving behind waste that is typically disposed in landfills rather than recycled. According to Eric Lichtenfeld, five different companies were brought in to handle the film’s effects. The only CGI sequence was a 42-second scene produced by MetroLight Studios that showed the x-rayed skeletons of commuters and their concealed weapons (258). In contrast only a year later, blockbusters such as James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) moved almost entirely to CGI. In spite of its message about the negative ramifications of turning oxygen into a commodity available to the privileged rather than the “commons,” Total Recall integrated production practices with a heavy carbon footprint. 

The Rhetoric of Overfishing

 

The focused rhetoric of The Cove succeeds where the environmental ethics perspectives of Darwin’s Nightmare and The End of the Line fail to convey the same emotional power. Ultimately, even though animal liberation arguments may privilege some elements of the natural world over others, such an individualized approach has been shown to have more effective results. According to Ric O’Barry, the Taiji dolphin slaughter was suspended in September 2009 because of the publicity surrounding the film, The Cove (“Save Japan Dolphins), and as late as March 2, 2011, Taiji fishermen were returning to traditional fishing practices rather than dolphin slaughter. Even though dolphin killing continues, it has “drastically decreased compared to previous seasons,” O’Barry explains (“Save Japan Dolphins”). 

Today O’Barry is continuing to garner support from Japanese journalists and local students and community members in Wakayama City, Tokyo, and other towns throughout the country. O’Barry sees this response to The Cove as a major victory because, “Our Save Japan Dolphins Team and I have been meeting with media for years about the dolphin slaughter in Japan, but now the Japanese media is coming to us!” According to O’Barry, they opened The Cove in Japan despite intense opposition and a press conference after the film’s release “was attended by over 100 media representatives, including every major broadcast outlet” (“Save Japan Dolphins”). Because of the continuing success of The Cove, dolphin slaughter is on the wane. 

Perhaps, then, films taking an organismic approach to eco-resistance might learn from the strategies invoked in a powerful animal liberation film like The Cove. As Holmes Bolston, III explains, “Development in the West has been based on the Enlightenment myth of endless growth…. [Yet] none of the developed nations have yet settled into sustainable culture on their landscapes” (528). By moving from an animal rights perspective to an animal welfare approach, environmentalists may find a way to individualize environmental issues without diluting the need for a biotic community. An animal welfare approach can provide an emotional center missing from both Darwin’s Nightmare and The End of the Line and, perhaps, facilitate an eco-activist response that culminates in the powerful eco-resistance that is central to The Cove. The End of the Line could, for example, “humanize” selected species of aquatic life, demonstrating that they, like humans, have rights. A film similar to Darwin’s Nightmare might both highlight aquatic biospheres in which environmental changes might address species disruption and highlight native species worth saving because of their sentience. Such a focus on both individual species and their biotic communities could have the same result as the animal rights focus of The Cove: more than two million signatures on a petition that will, it is hoped, end dolphin slaughter for good.

The Cove Documentary and Sentience

 

The slaughter Ric O'Barry and his crew capture on film becomes the climax of The Cove, serving as the strongest animal rights argument in the film. Before all cameras have been planted in the hidden cove, from a distance the team films a dolphin trying to get away, leaving a trail of blood in the water in its wake. After the team plants the audio equipment, they listen to the dolphins scream in the cove. The sounds demonstrate that each dolphin is aware of its coming death. They anticipate their own slaughter, O’Barry explains. 

But it is after cameras are planted that the most shocking evidence against such slaughter is revealed. Ric and the team watch monitors showing fishermen on shore around a fire telling stories about whaling missions around the globe. Other shots show fishermen standing in boats and placing barriers across the cove. The fishermen herd in dolphins, disorienting them with constant tapping noises. Once they herd in the dolphins, fishermen begin the slaughter, stabbing dolphins repeatedly with harpoons. The water turns red with blood. Dolphin screams fill the soundtrack. The harpooning continues until all the dolphins are dead. The water is ruby red, but dolphins caught in nets are pierced again and again. They try to escape but are caught in this cove fortress. Carcasses are ripped on board the boats, but fishermen smoke nonchalantly, even diving into the bloody water in search of more bodies. The dolphins are dragged like harpooned whales. These images contrast with majestic shots of dolphins swimming freely in the sea. 

 The footage of the slaughter becomes O’Barry’s proof of dolphins’ sentience. Their suffering is clear on the video screen he shows a town spokesman and the members of the International Whaling Commission. And these shocking images get results. Small countries paid off by the Japanese leave the IWC, and dolphin meat is no longer allowed in school lunches, for example. By building an argument that first demonstrates dolphins’ equality because they, like humans, are both sentient and self-aware, The Cove draws on animal rights arguments. It also effectively takes that argument one-step further. Because dolphins are sentient and self-aware, their slaughter must end.

Groundhogs at the End of Polk Avenue

 

Groundhogs at the End of Polk Avenue 

like brown balloons of fur 

roll across asphalt

tumbleweeds

meandering toward brush

and those milkweed 

left by a mower 

last week 

before the rain

chew toys 

for a dog 

grown too large 

for that pigtailed 

 

woman 

marching 

over the bridge

The Cove Documentary and Logical Reasoning

 

 

The Cove asserts both logical and emotional reasons why the dolphins should be saved. For example, the film provides practical reasons why humans should avoid dolphin meat, if they value their health, explaining that dolphin meat has toxic levels of mercury; yet, it is donated to area schools for lunch programs and disguised as whale meat in Tokyo markets. 

A history of problems with mercury poisoning is shown to support this claim, especially those recounting mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan in 1956, where the government covered up toxicity levels caused by industrial dumping. Fetuses were most affected, so children were born deformed, losing sight and hearing. Dolphins’ connection with humans is also used as a reason to stop the dolphins' slaughter. 

As perhaps the most intelligent sea creature, dolphins have been known to protect humans, are self-aware, and have the ability to learn language, skills only intelligent creatures can achieve.

The Cove as Rhetorical Documentary: Part I

 

The Cove establishes the worth of dolphins but also assumes, because they have historically been viewed as sentient creatures, that viewers will immediately call for action, once the slaughter at Taiji Cove is revealed. “We tried to do the story legally,” we’re told at the opening of this documentary revealing this dolphin slaughter in a cove in Taiji, Japan, “A little town with a really big secret.” 

Ric O’Barry’s attempts to film the slaughter are continually hampered by local authorities until he partners with the film’s director Louie Psihoyos. O’Barry never planned to be an activist, he explains, but after one of the dolphins he had trained killed herself in his arms by cutting off her own oxygen supply, he became a dolphin advocate, freeing as many as possible and preventing their slaughter. But dolphins are such great performers they have become a huge commodity worth $150,000.00 apiece for Sea World shows. Because thousands of dolphins come to Taiji each year, dolphin trainers collect dolphins there, bringing 2.3 million dollars a year to the area. The remaining dolphins herded into the cove are slaughtered for food, O’Barry explains, but he needs filmic proof to present to the world, so he can stop the catastrophe. 

Filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and Netscape CEO Jim Clark join forces with O’Barry to accomplish this mission, helping him build a team of experts to plant cameras and microphones, even hiring George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic to construct artificial rocks in which they can hide cameras in the cove. They bring in world-class divers, a military expert, and a rock concert organizer to facilitate the mission, and the film documents the process these experts follow to plan and execute their goal to film the slaughter in two stages: they first plant audio equipment, and then, in Mission 2: The Full Orchestra, the team hides cameras around the cove.