Sustainable
Digitalisation:
Ensuring a
sustainable digital future for UK film and television
Hunter Vaughan & Pietari Kääpä
October 2023
This report is authored by:
Hunter Vaughan,
Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy,
University of Cambridge
Pietari Kääpä,
Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies,
University of Warwick
Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy
The Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy is an independent
team of academic researchers at the University of Cambridge, who are radically
rethinking the power relationships between digital technologies, society and our planet.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.101504
Table of Contents
Digitalisation in the
film and television industry
The film and television industry, as with all industries, should
work toward mitigating the impact of the climate crisis. The question is what
works.
This report from Hunter Vaughan and Pietari Kääpä
brings together evidence from their extensive ongoing conversations with
industry stakeholders. Their report lays out what digital practices work for
environmental and social sustainability.
The answers are not easy. The film and television industry
generates a significant environmental impact due to transport, energy use, and
waste production. Now, factors like data processing and storage, along with
technology infrastructure, contribute to the industry’s environmental
footprint. This report reminds us that digital is not always the answer to the
question of how to make industries greener.
This report calls on industry to design frameworks for sustainable
digital practices. It also argues that policymakers should put requirements and
incentives in place to encourage good digital practices across the industry.
With the Hollywood strikes around artificial intelligence (AI), we
see more attention on the challenges the industry will face with AI and new
kinds of technologies. It is really important for
industry to get this right for workers, society and the planet.
At the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, we study how
digital technologies impact people, societies and the
planet. We work to ensure that there is public and democratic accountability
for the choices about technologies. Our research looks to build society’s
capacity to create a just digital future.
We hope this report will be useful to those both inside the film
and television industries, and to wider stakeholders in policy and academia, in
driving conversations about a sustainable and fair future that benefits all.
Prof. Gina Neff
Executive
Director, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy
Despite significant efforts by the industry, digital approaches to
sustainability have had only modest results, and these strategies
unintentionally mask profound environmental and social costs. This report
presents pathways towards sustainable digitalisation.
Film and television studios and industry organisations have
introduced sustainable production strategies over the last two decades. These
changes have often focused on sustainability solutions through digital
strategies including digital shooting and editing, LED lighting, and shifting
to electronic documents. Digital strategies can bring creative and practical benefits, and have become central to industry efforts around
environmental protocol.
Despite significant efforts by the industry, digital approaches to
sustainability have had only modest results, and these strategies
unintentionally mask profound environmental and social costs. The larger scale
shift incurred through emerging virtual production (VP) planning will only
magnify such challenges.
This report, resulting from ongoing collaboration with industry
stakeholders and policy makers, focuses on the environmental and social costs
of these efforts and presents pathways towards a more environmentally robust
and socially fair digital transition - or what we call
sustainable digitalisation - for the sector. Digitalisation—that
is, the adoption of digital technologies and practices as a business model and
practical strategy in the sector—comes with environmental and social costs.
The rise of online streaming culture has embedded film and
television within a wider set of technological industries, connected devices
and infrastructures – as well as their socioenvironmental ramifications.
The UK stands to play a crucial leadership role in addressing
these concerns due to its global prominence as a film and TV production
location and the increasing levels of investment in its creative industry
capacity. It is imperative that industry and government work together to ensure
this capacity building is premised on sustainable digitalisation.
Industry has demonstrated the will and foresight to pursue
sustainability strategies, yet faces a new
technological frontier. Sony’s 2022 Memorandum, ‘Comparison of GHG Emissions
from Scenes of On-Location and Virtual Productions’, lays out markedly lower
emissions for digitalised production.[1]
However, the report acknowledges in closing: ‘Expanding the scope
of future studies to include the life cycle of materials such as set
construction materials, the LED panel array, and the reuse of stored virtual
filming locations and set pieces would be valuable.’
We invite industry and policy stakeholders to join us in
developing such future studies, and lay out pathways
here for expanding the scope of understanding sustainability.
As environmental preservation and social equity should no longer
be seen as distinct but as tandem priorities of a sustainable future, this
report aims to draw critical visibility to the environmental and social
challenges of digitalisation across film and television and to promote
industry-government pathways to incentivise best practices for the digital age.
Based on the findings of the report, we recommend:
For Industry:
·
The film and television industry should lead
on designing stringent life-cycle environmental assessments and policy
frameworks on sustainable digitalisation.
·
The film and television industry should
develop a Charter for Sustainable Digital Work to enhance social sustainability
and labour protections against the threats of increased workplace
digitalisation.
For Government
·
Governmental and public incentives for virtual
production (VP) studios should include requirements for clean energy sources
and local community impact assessments.
This report lays out the state-of-the-art understanding of both
digitalisation and sustainability across the film and television industry;
identifies government and industry levers for positive change; and recommends
areas for future policy action.
Film and television production leads to a significant
environmental footprint due to carbon-intensive infrastructures, energy
dependencies, and waste production. While the past two decades have seen a rise
in stakeholder discourse around sustainability and in critical attention to the
industry’s environmental impacts, there is still a way to go to reach the level
of impact sought.
To help identify a path forward, this report critically assesses
the industry’s current sustainability strategies, and advocates for more
ambitious environmental and social policy development around the use of new
technologies in the sector.
Digitalisation is the key battleground for these developments. On
one hand, the digital transition has provided further benefits to both the
corporate and individual members of the film and television industry. Online
operations, non-linear (computer-based) editing and CGI effects have provided
for greater efficiency in creative practice and communication.
Yet, on the other, digitalisation - from replacing paper with
electronic documents to substituting analogue celluloid with digital filming,
both of which can manage far more data in far smaller objects - has made it
difficult to scrutinise the environmental impact of these developments.
This report builds on two underlying conclusions based upon
ongoing collaborative work with industry experts in the public and private
sectors:
1.
Digitalisation carries as-of-yet
under-appreciated resource costs and unexplored socioenvironmental threats; and
2.
Sustainability as a policy and practice
paradigm must be understood in terms that connect environmental protection to
social inclusion and wellbeing both in the workplace and for surrounding
communities adjacent to studios and on-location production sites - ie social as well as environmental
sustainability.
Digitalisation—that is, the adoption of digital technologies and
practices as a business model and practical strategy in the sector—has the
immediate effect of streamlining communication and practice across stages of
film and television production.
However, it relies on life-cycle manufacturing, operation and
disposal that require widescale metal mining, vast energy dependency, and
e-waste outsourcing to digital dumping grounds in lower-income nations. These
processes are currently under-regulated and consequently are leading to
ecosystem degradation and increased emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs)
responsible for global warming, among other harms.
Operation of largescale digital infrastructures drive energy
inequity, digital dumping grounds are responsible for public health crises, and
the use of AI-driven technologies have proven to embed social biases and
inequalities. Consequently, a holistic approach to sustainable digitalisation
must include not only environmental but also social considerations.
The UK film and television industry has committed many resources
to sustainability both as a practice-based goal and as a public relations
strategy, yet the current approach focusing on digital practices risks limiting
the effectiveness of these strategies as they miss key perspectives.
Though it is a creative industry based on storytelling, the scope
of sustainable practices goes beyond what happens on the screen, and as such we
encourage the industry to develop strategies that integrate workplace
protections, and social responsibility recognising the need for global progress
on climate action and social justice.
Doing so will require critically informed approaches to digital
technologies that might pave the way for similar measures in other industries
that have or are in the process of digitalising.
By most metrics, the UK film and television sector is in good
health. Numbers released in June 2022 indicate promising growth, with projected
2025 total value growth of nearly 30% over 2021 and the addition of over 20,000
new jobs, largely fuelled by the 2013 HETV Tax Relief and rapid recovery from
the COVID lockdown.[2]
As a global hub for high-end screen content (estimates project the
UK will be the 4th largest market in the world for investment in film
production by 2025[3]), the UK industry
stands as a global leader. UK government's Creative Industries Sector Vision
plan targets an industry expansion of £50bn and plans to support a million more
industry jobs by 2030.[4]
This is therefore an important moment of transition for an
industry with unique influence over local and international cultural values and
social norms: how this growth takes place, in relation to sustainability
protocol and new technological adaptation, stands to have formative and lasting
effects within and beyond the sector.
This is also a crucial time to reposition the film and television
sector as a leader in diverse national and international strategies for
combatting climate change, promoting labour fairness, and issuing an energy
revolution for a population in energy crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic in many ways enabled the film and television
industry to reset its approach to sustainable production.
This reset provides an ideal opportunity to have an open and
constructive discussion about the environmental impacts of film and media
practice, especially concerning the role of digital services in coordinating
these measures. Recent industry studies promise high levels of growth for a
sector which is increasingly enmeshed in a widescale transition to digital
practices and systems. Members of an expanding workforce will enter into an industry in a state of transformation, if not
already transformed by a combination of new technologies and sustainability
strategies.
Thus far, the green reset has involved many digital solutions,
with growing financial incentivisation and creative support behind a second
phase digitalisation centering around virtual
production (VP). This strategy is exemplified by the industry strategy document
A Screen new deal: a Route map to sustainable production, a
collaboration between the British Film Institute, BAFTA albert, and the
engineering firm Arup.
Published in spring 2020, the report provides a comprehensive
analysis of the advances made in sustainable practices in the UK, from specific
tools such as the BAFTA albert carbon calculator to more general development of
innovative practices for waste management and studio space use. It presents a
systematic vision for addressing the most pressing areas for film and
television production’s footprint (travel, energy and
material networks) by highlighting digital infrastructures and virtual content
development platforms.
Indicative of current dominant thinking in the sector, A Screen
New Deal acknowledges potential environmental costs of full infrastructural
revamping but fails to go into detail or provide adequate mitigating options.
Though promising green streamlining especially in terms of
adaptable infrastructure, A Screen New Deal does not address the massive
resource burden and GHG emissions of building these new constructs. It mentions, but does not clarify how to mitigate the profound
environmental impacts of global digital infrastructure growth, operation, and
maintenance.[5] It also bypasses
any pressing concerns about the social equity pitfalls and racially[6] and gendered[7] discriminatory
patterns of data-driven and machine-learning surveillance management[8] such as facial
recognition software.
Such technologies are not currently central to the film and
television workplace operations – however, with a full-scale digitalisation of
production facilities and practices, they will likely become more present.
For the time being, A Screen New Deal remains a futuristic
blueprint. However, Wales’ national film office, Ffilm Cymru, announced in early 2023 its pilot
participation in the Screen New Deal: Transformation Plan. Release news on both
Ffilm Cymru’s and BAFTA albert’s websites indicate
only that this will entail ‘plans to decarbonise TV and film production’.[9]
No specifics are given regarding digitalisation, but the BFI’s
Research and Statistics Fund’s awarding of up to £80,000 National Lottery
funding to support this next stage indicates a broader commitment to A
Screen New Deal as a guiding blueprint for future sustainability.
The film and television industry’s shift to VP, signalled by
Disney’s use of virtual production for nearly half of The Mandalorian
(2020- ), is gaining momentum through the financial support of studios,
government, and universities. Reports on the benefits of VP have been very
positive regarding cost savings and decidedly selective regarding their
contribution to sustainability.
Forbes, publishing an assessment by digital
solutions corporation SAP, conflates digitalisation with new sustainability
measures, noting that VP helps to generate costs savings by laying out the
sustainability value of on-set material and corporate practices – in short, it
frames cost benefits as environmental benefits.[10]
Variety has highlighted cost savings of VP and
emphasised its carbon mitigation through lowering travel needs, while leaving
out the greater footprint costs of VP in terms of materials and waste.[11]
The most thorough studio report on the topic, Sony’s 2022
Memorandum, ‘Comparison of GHG Emissions from Scenes of On-Location and Virtual
Productions’, lays out markedly lower emissions for VP than on-location
shooting, but this is mostly linked to reduced travel and lodging for cast and
crew.[12] The report
acknowledges in its final paragraph: ‘Expanding the scope of future studies to
include the life cycle of materials such as set construction materials, the LED
panel array, and the reuse of stored virtual filming locations and set pieces
would be valuable. Another area to include in a future analysis is
post-production.’
The large-scale transition to VP facilities and digital practice
will be accelerated by a new government programme from the UK Research and
Innovation (UKRI) Convergent Screen Technologies and performance in Realtime (CoSTAR) department, funding the construction of VP movie
labs at four UK sites.
These projects reflect growing commitment to VP facilities and
training in film and television education, such as the Studio Ulster plan
recently developed in partnership between Belfast Harbour, Ulster University
and NI Screen, which will bring £75.6m of government funding and £63m of
industry investment to build a lab specialising in VP techniques,
computer-generated imagery (CGI), augmented reality and motion capture.[13]
Echoing the Sony report, these government-industry-education
partnership plans show no indication as to environmental consideration or
protocol for life-cycle material costs, operational energy demands, or
end-of-life waste processes. Additionally, aside from their claims to jobs
creation, they do not mention the social challenges of digitalisation either in
infrastructural or workplace terms.
With the prominence of digitalisation as the future of work in the
film and television arts, more diligence on environmental stringency and social
protections will be helpful in ensuring more robust sustainable practices and
policies that are comprehensive and holistic.
Interventions shepherded through industry-government collaboration
are urgent considering persistent questions over the UK Government’s climate
commitments. For example, The Climate Change Committee United Kingdom (CCCUK)
suggested in 2022 that: ‘current government policies “will not deliver net
zero” as only 8 of 50 key indicators are on track, with 11 significantly off
track. No credible plans exist for 61% of required emissions cuts’[14] across all
national industry – the film and television sector is
no exception.
The Environmental Act of 2021 provides the sector with an
opportune moment to develop specific policies in tandem with the Government’s
revisioning of environmental protection and energy planning.
As of yet, though, the strategy of sustainable
digitalisation has not kept pace with the pressing calls of climate science. In
the face of accelerating climate destabilisation such a transition in fact
expedites the already expanding practices of rare metal mining using tactics
extremely detrimental to the environment.[15]
It threatens to increase infrastructural building with materials
such as cement still largely unsustainable and with an alarming carbon
footprint.[16] It will also
deepen energy dependency on what are still largely dirty grids and heighten the
generation of electronic waste that has in only a short time proven to lead to
global inequities of public health and ecosystem risks.[17]
To illustrate the scale of the problem confronting any attempt to
bring in more environmentally sensible legislation of the digital economy: in
March 2019, the House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee produced a
report on Regulating in a digital world which called for a new approach to the
regulation of technologies during this transitional moment. It concludes
importantly: ‘the challenge is not how to regulate digital companies, but how
to regulate in the context of the changes brought about by rapid developments
in digital technologies’.[18]
This could be rephrased as a problem of sustainable
digitalisation. The remit of Regulating in a digital world focuses on
the personal and legal threats of the Internet instead of its adverse
environmental and societal impacts; the latter two facets need be more broadly
connected to governance approaches to digital regulation.
Considering that such approaches continue to be the norm for
digital policy, further work should be done to push this initiative forward
according to the logic of sustainable digitalisation. To do so would require
engaging key institutions and developing comprehensive strategies and norms in
conjunction with government oversight bodies.
These strategies would benefit from building upon takeaways,
including the recommendations explained below, from ongoing research and
academic-industry and academic-governance collaborations which offer a strong
foundation for potential pathways of impact.
Global Green Media Network: Potential Sites of Intervention
One such multi-level collaborative incentive is the Global Green
Media Network (GGMN), launched in 2019 as an AHRC-funded network grant directed
by Pietari Kääpä and Hunter Vaughan.
To now, the GGMN has entailed a series of in-person and virtual
workshops with stakeholders ranging from on-set procurement specialists to
green consultants, film commissioners and cinematographers, film office
sustainability managers, creative executives and
former Ministers for the Environment.
It has created international dialogues in the context of unique
national film cultures, putting into conversation experts in digitalisation in
film and television with experts in sustainable media practices.
In these multilateral conversations between practitioners and
policymakers we have identified ongoing best practices and connect to policies
that help cultivate understanding of needs and levers to facilitate positive
change.
Major recommendations include:
Raise awareness to drive prioritisation
Sectoral stakeholders are increasingly concerned about
environmental sustainability, and view digitalisation as a creative and
efficiency boon, but have yet to consider the broader environmental
ramifications of digital technologies.
When led to do so, they are deeply concerned; however, this is
still a low priority because very few entities – mainly big budget production
companies and studios in few high-income countries – have managed to fully
convert creative and production processes to digital.
Broaden sustainability across procurement
Procurement (from props to craft services) and fuel remain the
most prominent practical sustainability challenges. Major initiatives are in
the planning, for example, for transitioning from diesel to hybrid or renewable
generators. Production managers are increasingly able to employ localised green
procurement channels and recycling systems.
Materialise the immaterial of post-production
Material impacts and costs are still high even as the stories we
watch consist of computer graphics generated in post-production – a phase that
has complex environmental costs but is only present in sustainability
discussions as a technological solution, largely due to big tech discourse
around the immateriality of the digital.
Include the “social” into “sustainability”
Sustainability experts position sustainability at the intersection
of two important points of social discussion: social and global equity.
Social sustainability and inclusion are thought to be supported by
digital systems, with remote work and meetings allowing more broadened access
and providing workers less commute time and more time for family and self.
Meanwhile, digital technologies have levelled some of the playing
fields of cost-based creative demand. However, little consideration has been
given for the creative and collaborative obstacles of extended
online-communication, though studies elsewhere conclude that remote teamwork is
detrimental both to productivity and individual psychology.
Three Potential Sites of Intervention have emerged from the GGMN
workshops to design and enforce more sustainable digitalisation:
· Production
life cycles
· Production
cultures
· Energy
futures
With the advent of computer-generated images (CGI),
computationally connected workflows and digitally equipped movie theatres, all
stages of screen content production, distribution, and exhibition have slowly
shifted over to digital services.
Paper memos and petrol-based studio buggies have been replaced
with binary code and e-vehicles, with such substitutions splashed across PR
announcements, website campaigns, and industry documents. Film and television
studios have also begun to communicate their early digital transition according
to the increasingly popular language of climate change-oriented corporate
responsibility.
Two decades of this narrative has allowed the coupling of these
story arcs – the digital turn and the green movement – from studio marketing
teams to production sets.
As these narratives provided various solutions for creative
development and logistical execution, such technologies have been embraced in a
piecemeal fashion with no comprehensive industry regulatory oversight or policy
mandates. This shift has been expedited and made more systematic by pandemic
protocol and by the recent heightened predominance of streaming services that
have become highly competitive content producers.
The film and television industry should lead on designing
stringent life-cycle environmental assessments and policy frameworks on
sustainable digitalisation.
We recommend increased critical attention to and assessment of the
supply chain and life-cycle of digital devices and
processes being adopted for film and television production. Digital practices
can be sustainable but are not inherently so. Studios require a vast digital
network that relies on intensive rare metal mining and heightened levels of
energy consumption. They produce heat in abundance in mostly urban data
centres, as well as digital waste for which there is currently no proper system
of management.
Accordingly, industry stakeholders should address the challenges
to the sustainability of digitalisation by developing life-cycle environmental
assessments of their digital systems.
Government can support, push and regulate
this monitoring and reporting so that the impact of digital systems is more
transparent.
These environmental assessments could include:
·
Assessing initial materials for digital
infrastructures and parts, using environmentally sound and fair labour-based sourcing;
·
Auditing manufacturing and installation
protocol to avoid unneeded construction impacts and high toxicity material use,
including socioenvironmental impact audits on the selection of locations and
communities affected;
·
Reporting on long-term preparation and the
life expectancy and durability of digital infrastructures and parts, with a
focus on minimising replacement and waste.
Such large-scale infrastructural concerns require governmental
coordination, including collaboration between the Office for Environmental
Protection (OEP), the Communications and Digital Committee, and the Department
for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), and Department for Science, Innovation
and Technology (DSIT).
Adaptation of more stringent measures into the media sector
requires specialist guidance not only from DCMS but also leading industry
organisations like the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and
the British Film Institute (BFI), which allow for the necessary buy-in from
industry on the ground.
This would potentially benefit from a joint regulatory body made
up of representatives from private studios and public broadcasters,
collaborating to deepen industry commitment and standardisation of sustainable
practice.
A substantial part of the industry’s footprint, increasingly the
concern of environmental experts, relates to Scope 3 emissions, or the
emissions created through the systems, energy use and emissions that make those
direct practices and processes possible – which includes emissions arising from
both the supply and value chain of film and television products.
Consequently, Scope 3 emissions are as significant to corporate
practice in their environmental and social implications as they are elusive to
research understanding and government oversight. Currently, policy and
governance frameworks are confounded by the complexity of Scope 3 emissions,
leading to an easy evasion of responsibility since they do not fall under
direct sectoral mandates.
However, film and television sustainability reports are
increasingly include some version of them, and they
are of central concern to the metrics being developed for the emerging
UNFCCC-backed Entertainment and Culture for Climate Action global initiative.
For Scope 3 emissions to be constructively considered,
collaboration between the film industry, procurement services, government,
infrastructural organisations, and interdisciplinary academic research is required
to leverage multi-sectoral pressure and create awareness of the implications of
procurement decisions in the supply chain.
The production stage is a crucial testing ground for the film and
television industry to facilitate an environmentally sustainable and just
technological transition.
Currently, sustainability professionals are increasingly required
on set and are being formalised as permanent and influential positions at
studios. Many UK film offices have introduced this position as a permanent
post. The UK’s Production Managers Association has introduced specific emphasis
on media manager training in sustainability, referencing the 2018 IPCC report
and including detailed examples such as carbon mitigation and supply chain
metrics.[19]
Yet, needs for shooting efficiency, prioritisation of creative
mandates for getting ‘the perfect shot,’ and a lack of understanding or
training of sustainable practices, reduces some of the potential positive
impact of these positions.
Such concerns around the adoption of on-set and managerial
practice need to be addressed on a systemic level, requiring the reorientation
of the value systems and norms – ie. the production
culture – of film and television organisations and operations. In many cases
this has successfully been orchestrated through a top-down method, by protocol
and values crafted at the executive (or producer) level. In some cases,
sustainability professionals have found it productive to engage in ongoing
discussion with crew and to let such values and practices evolve gradually as
part of collective decision making.
Sustainable management and practice, and the place of such
workers, will be crucial to shoring up best practices amidst further
technological change. It also indicates the importance of social facets in
broader sustainability strategies. Addressing the production culture impacts of
digitalisation requires a more holistic understanding of sustainability that
includes greater social inclusion and justice, and
increasing planned social protections for a more digitalised workplace.
As with other environmental challenges, sustainable digitalisation
across the screen industry also has profound ramifications for the social
fairness and future equity of digital technologies’ life-cycle labour and the
creative industry workforce.
Though expected to swing the pendulum slightly back towards the
pre-pandemic norms of in-person work, the film and television industry
generally professes an embrace of online-based (remote) work.
Current broader numbers indicate a 30% rise in hybrid and online
dependency for UK work in general.[20] Yet this
transition also carries with it potential dangers. With regards to the future
of work, civil rights, and human wellbeing in the screen industry, Government
and industry should collaborate to enhance worker access, equitable representation and labour rights. Furthermore, such concerns
for social wellbeing should be integrated into mainstream narratives around a
more sustainable digital future of the industry.
There remains much to be understood regarding the psychological
and social ramifications of virtual interaction and how this work format might
impact creativity and productivity. Despite post-pandemic normalisation of the
Zoom-based workplace, recent studies challenge the long-term benefits with
regards to creative thinking and constructive problem solving.[21] Similarly, the
creative and sociological impacts of virtual production have yet to be tested,
though early celebrations of the connectivity of virtual life 2.0 were quickly
overridden by studies of their anti-socialising and negative psychological
effects.[22] Such studies offer
much to the social sustainability for a future of work designed around virtual
production and ‘smart studio’ operation.
A primary threat confirmed across a range of technology studies is
the adoption of machine-learning and surveillance-based AI mechanisms such as
facial recognition software.
The inter-personal and justice pitfalls of these technologies,
mentioned earlier in this report, do not feature in film and television
industry discussions on achieving a more sustainable approach to production in
the digital age. Such decision-making algorithms and models are themselves
operating within and according to existing structural inequalities along lines
of race, gender, and sexuality.
Before deploying such systems as an unquestioned part of their
sustainability efforts, industry should test and verify justice protections
concerned with such technologies, resisting their integration until such
threats are eradicated.
Government and industry should assist this process by partnering
to support research and regulation surrounding the social biases and
inequalities perpetuated by these devices and systems.
The film and television industry should develop a Charter for
Sustainable Digital Work to enhance social sustainability and labour
protections against the threats of increased workplace digitalisation.
We recommend the development of a Charter for Sustainable Digital
Work to combat the potential threats posed by digitalisation across the sector.
Such a document would assist industry stakeholders in pursuing social
sustainability as a necessary companion to environmental sustainability.
A Charter for Sustainable Digital Work should address five key
principles:
1.
Equal demographic representation in the
technological skill training and executive hiring of a digital workforce;
2.
Intentional deployment of digitalisation for
the social benefits and accessibility of workforce members (such as remote
meetings to minimise transport and maximise time with family);
3.
Community assessment to guarantee that the
construction, use, and pollutants of digital infrastructures in studios and on
location do not disproportionately harm already-marginalised neighbourhoods and
communities;
4.
Industry taskforce for critical inquiry into
digital machine-learning and AI systems and requirement of basic standards for
their non-prejudicial social operation;
5.
Life-cycle assessment to minimise global
contracting of digital technologies that rely on unethical labour practices and
environmental destruction.
Questions of an environmentally sustainable creative industry
future cannot be disconnected from its adjacent future social sustainability.
Thus, considering the justice fault lines of digitally mechanised
monitoring, decision-making and community impacts is essential for developing a
path toward environmental and social sustainability and wellbeing.
As many of the daily actions and decisions enacted in the
digitalised workplace will be executed by human workers, they will be largely
dependent on the norms and protocol of their respective production culture.
Expediting the systemic normalisation of green practice should be supported by
policy expansion for socially equitable education, training, and placement with
a growing industry green workforce.
A large part of the film and television industry’s environmental
impact – and potential socioenvironmental benefits – lies in its increasing
energy use.
Further digitalisation will only exacerbate this problem as this
sector’s content circulatory system extends across data centres, subsea cable
networks, affects houses, and directly into the homes of streaming audiences.
Over the past decade many scholars, policymakers and industry stakeholders have
acknowledged the rapidly growing energy stake of digital screen media
technologies.[23]
While such devices are used to run a number of different
applications, social media and entertainment platforms, there is no question
that a sizeable piece of this pie comes through the streaming of film and
television content.[24] Industry leaders
such as Netflix claim to combat such concerns with net zero campaigns and
carbon offset plans while the sector largely shifts the blame to audience
demand and pushes accountability onto the shoulders of individual consumers.[25]
Instead of relying on strategies such as offsets, industry and
Government should collaborate to generate concrete solutions to mitigate the
environmental impacts of the supply side of content production and
distribution. With regards to energy dependency and use, this could entail
legally binding standards for sustainable production and international
protocols for ensuring digital communication infrastructure.[26] Furthermore,
organised industry strategies around energy could offer benefits for the
support of renewable energy infrastructure and capacity growth and repurposing
of heat generated through this power use.
New initiatives, such as the Grid Project, demonstrate the ability
of public and private sector stakeholders to work towards such ends. Led by
Film London, with funding from the Mayor’s Good Growth Fund supported through
the London Economic Action Partnership, NBCUniversal, Interreg Europe’s Green
Screen and the British Film Commission, the Grid Project provides a pilot study
to supply renewable energy to on-location productions in the nation’s capital.[27]
This project will offer an open-source scalable blueprint to be
reproduced at other locations nationally and internationally, providing a model
for localised renewable energy support and setting the UK industry up as a
global leader in sustainable adaptation to new technologies.
Governmental and public incentives for virtual production (VP)
studios should include requirements for clean energy sources and local
community impact assessments.
We recommend greater scrutiny on the power sources fuelling
energy-hungry digital systems and accelerated incentivisation for innovation of
alternative energy generation and deployment.
Industry and policy decision makers should collaborate to employ
filming licence allocation and fee reductions to drive reduction of fossil fuel
dependency, as have proven elsewhere to be greatly successful. Public and
private funding bodies should require cleaner energy use and leverage high
production locales to build local renewable energy capacity.
In collaboration with Government and national-level environmental
and energy oversight, industry members should conduct extensive grid analysis,
or scientific assessment of the companies, origins and processes that power
them, to determine the ‘cleanliness’ or ‘dirtiness’ of their energy source.
They should consequently prioritise optioning for renewable energy
where possible and position new systems in locations where clean energy sources
are readily accessible.
Furthermore, socioenvironmental studies should be performed to
select locations where energy scarcity and injustice do not disproportionately
affect marginalised socioeconomic groups or add to already-existing poor health
conditions and energy crisis. Industry operations should not be permitted to
place undue strain on local grids that consequently expand reliance on
fossil-fuel sources or inflate the price of energy to local community members.
While such collaboration should continue to be conducted with
consultancies like Julie’s Bicycle, Arup and Carnstone,
it is vital that more understanding and critical attention is paid to the
societal impacts of digital technologies instead of uniquiely
prioritising efficiency metrics and cost savings.
As has been proven in highly popular locales for on-location
shooting such as British Columbia, aggressive municipal policy measures and
film fee incentives can successfully leverage productions to make use of local
renewable and alternative energy sources as opposed to the current norm of
diesel generators.[28]
Deploying the model of the Grid Project mentioned previously,
positive change could be expedited in various high-interest production cities
and regions by municipal and concerted national programs to convert increases
in film production permits into increased support for renewable energies.
Such actions would not only benefit the mitigation of sectoral GHG
emissions but also provide for local renewable capacity building to local
grids, drive green measures and economic investment[29] and reduce
collective and systematic fossil fuel consumption.
Meanwhile, UK producers could take note from creative engineering
practices in France and elsewhere to redistribute heat generated through server
operation to local services such as public pools. Such strides would make an
important intervention in the energy cost crisis sweeping across the UK over
the past year and which has been projected to escalate expediently into 2024.[30]
Responsible and transparent Scope 3 reportage for the film and
television industry, discussed in Recommendation 1, would require industry
stakeholders to provide deeper due diligence and promote greater accountability
in the wider consequential world of their decision-making regarding supply
vendors, logistics, and material sourcing.
It would also extend environmental and social consideration of the
sector’s digitalisation to the energies and emissions generated by digital
technologies, including questions about the energy grid, server protocols
enabling the transmission of communication and content, the devices of
end-users and the industry’s overall reliance on an increasingly faster, and
interconnected broadband infrastructure.
Studios, producers and broadcasters will
continue to embrace the digital transition due to its operational and economic
efficiencies.
That such technologies are deployed under the guise of
sustainability deflects from their resource costs and potential social threats.
Consequently, more must be done to ensure that digitalisation of the film and
television industry is a sustainable one designed to mitigate its environmental
detriment and protect the rights and wellbeing of employees and surrounding
communities.
Specific strategies must be designed and enacted regarding the
life cycle and on-set culture of such technologies, with critical attention
paid particularly to energy use.
More substantive regulatory measures, such as supply-chain
environmental metrics, critical machine learning social assessments and
financially incentivised renewable energy mandates, would provide long-term
benefits and important social values.
Increased research and action around connection points between the
environmental and social costs of digitalisation will enhance environmental
sustainability and the future of work in the sector.
In so doing, through a responsible and responsively sustainable
digitalisation, the film and television sector may play a leading role in
mitigating the environmental and social damages of technological change and
industry growth.
This report was supported by the funding received from the Minderoo Foundation via the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, part of Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, at the University of Cambridge. It benefits from research and collaboration generated by the [AHRC-funded] Global Green Media Network.
We would like to express sincere thanks to those who informed the work behind this report through feedback, discussions, and ongoing collaborative work with the Global Green Media Network. These include: Laurence Johnson (Film London), Louise Smith (Neptune Sustainability), Mairi Claire Bowser (BECTU Vision), Gareth Kirkman (British Film Commission), Keir Powell-Lewis (British Film Institute), Karl Liegis (60forty Films), Mette Hjort (University of Lincoln), Ann Kristin Glenster (University of Cambridge).
We are extremely grateful to Professor Gina Neff and Jeremy Hughes for their support across many drafts of this report, and extend our thanks to Irene Galandra Cooper, Tom Lacy and the entire team at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy for their support.
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Browne, S. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015).
Carbon Trust, ‘Carbon Impact of Video Streaming’, (2021),
<https://prod-drupal-files.storage.googleapis.com/documents/resource/public/Carbon-impact-of-video-streaming.pdf> [accessed 13 October 2022].
Climate Change Committee, ‘The 2022 Progress Report to Parliament’, <https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/2022-progress-report-to-parliament/> [accessed 12 October 2022].
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Crawford, K., Atlas of AI (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021)
Cubitt, S., Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017)
Dams, Tim, ‘21000 More Crew Needed in the UK by 2025’, Screen Daily, <https://www.screendaily.com/news/21000-more-crew-needed-in-the-uk-by-2025-says-report/5172007.article?fbclid=IwAR3c47RFPAOKwS1RDdmeu7gzLIRiuy1KUqUK1qZZYocCHBlUhPwY7WrYQ7w> [accessed 12 October 2022].
Deniz, M. Seydi Engin, Ahmet Satici, Ceymi Doenyas and Mark Griffiths, ‘Zoom Fatigue, Psychological Distress, Life Satisfaction, and Academic Well-being’, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Vol. 25, No. 5 (2022).
Fauville, G.M., A.C.M. Luo, J.N. Queiroz, J. Bailenson, ‘Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale’, Computers in Human Behavior Reports, Volume 4, August–December (2021).
Film London, The Grid Project’, <https://filmlondon.org.uk/latest/grid-project-launch> [accessed 23 June 2023].
Ffilm Cymru Wales, ‘BFI and albert Announce Wales to Develop Screen New Deal Production Sustainability Plan’, <https://ffilmcymruwales.com/news-and-events/bfi-and-albert-announce-wales-develop-screen-new-deal-production-sustainability> [accessed 11 August, 2023].
Gabrys, J., Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011).
House of Commons Library, ‘Research Briefings’, (2022), available at <https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9491/> [accessed 13 October 2022]
House of Lords, ’Regulating in a Digital World’, (2019), <https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldcomuni/299/29903.htm> [accessed 13 October 2022].
IRENA ‘Renewable Power Generation Costs 2021’, <https://www.irena.org/publications/2022/Jul/Renewable-Power-Generation-Costs-in-2021> [accessed 13 October 2022].
Kääpä, P. & H. Vaughan, eds., Film and Television Production in the Era of Climate Change: Environmental Practice, Policy, and Scholarship, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2022).
Naomi Klein, On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal (London: Penguin Books, 2020).
Nature (editorial), ‘Concrete Needs to Lose Its Colossal Footprint’, 28 September 2021.
Neill, Sara, ‘Belfast to get Belfast to get £75m state-of-the-art movie lab’, BBC News, 15 June 2023 <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65916027> [accessed 23 June 2023]
ONS, ‘Is Hybrid Working Here to Stay’, 2022, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/ishybridworkingheretostay/2022-05-23 [accessed 13 October 2022].
Pitron, Guillaume, The Rare Metals Way (London: Scribe, 2020)
PMA, Green Wing, <https://www.pma.org.uk/green_wing/> [accessed 13 October 2022].
SDIA ‘The Roadmap to Sustainable Digital Infrastructure by 2030), 2022, <https://sdialliance.org/roadmap/> [accessed 13 October 2022].
Sony Pictures Greener World, ‘Comparisons of GHG Emissions from Scenes of On-location and Virtual Production’, 2022, <https://sonypicturesgreenerworld.com/sites/sonypicturesgreenerworld.com/files/2022-09/Sony%20Pictures_Virtual%20Production%20GHG%20Analysis_2022_2.pdf> [accessed 23 June 2023].
Statista, ‘The UK Film Industry’, <https://www.statista.com/topics/1854/the-uk-film-industry/#topicOverview> [accessed 11 August 2023].
Tancay, Jazz, ‘How Virtual Production Is Helping to Cut Costs and Reduce Carbon Footprint,’ Variety, April 20, 2022, <https://variety.com/2022/artisans/news/virtual-production-small-budget-1235236717/#!> [accessed 25 June, 2023].
Turkle, S., Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
Turkle, S., Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011).
United Nations Institute for Training and Research, ‘The Global E-waste Monitor 2020’, <https://ewastemonitor.info/gem-2020/> [accessed 13 October 2022].
Yossman, K.J., ‘U.K. Film, High End TV Production Spend Forecast to Hit $9.3 Billion by 2025, further squeezing skills shortage’, Variety, 24 June 2022 [accessed 12 October 2022].
Vaughan, Hunter, ‘Policy Approaches to Green Film Policy: Local Solutions for a Planetary Problem’, in Kääpä, Pietari and Vaughan, Hunter, eds., Film and Television Production in the Age of Climate Crisis: Towards a Greener Screen (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2022): pp. 43-78.
Walker, J. and N. Starosielski, eds., Sustainable Media (New York: Routledge, 2015).
Whittington, Richard, ‘How Film Production Is Becoming More Sustainable and Profitable’, Forbes, 28 February, 2022. <https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2022/02/28/how-film-production-is-becoming-more-sustainable-and-profitable/?sh=1399737f5bad> [accessed 25 June 2023].
Zuboff, Shoshana, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (London: Profile books, 2018).
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[1] Sony Pictures Greener World, ‘Comparisons of GHG Emissions from Scenes of On-location and Virtual Production’ <https://sonypicturesgreenerworld.com/sites/sonypicturesgreenerworld.com/files/2022-09/Sony%20Pictures_Virtual%20Production%20GHG%20Analysis_2022_2.pdf> [accessed 23 June 2023]
[2] Tim Dams, ‘21000 More Crew Needed in the UK by 2025’, Screen Daily, https://www.screendaily.com/news/21000-more-crew-needed-in-the-uk-by-2025-says-report/5172007.article?fbclid=IwAR3c47RFPAOKwS1RDdmeu7gzLIRiuy1KUqUK1qZZYocCHBlUhPwY7WrYQ7w [accessed 12 October 2022]; K.J. Yossman, ‘U.K. Film, High End TV Production Spend Forecast to Hit $9.3 Billion by 2025, further squeezing skills shortage’, Variety, 24 June 2022 [accessed 12 October 2022]
[3] Statista, ‘The UK Film Industry’, available at: https://www.statista.com/topics/1854/the-uk-film-industry/#topicOverview
[4] Sara Neill, ‘Belfast to get £75m state-of-the-art movie lab’, BBC News, 15 June 2023 [accessed 23 June 2023] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65916027
[5] Naomi Klein, On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal (London: Penguin Books, 2020)
[6] Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015).
[7] Sasha Costanza-Chock, Design Justice: Community-led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. (Boston: The MIT Press, 2020).
[8] Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (London: Profile books, 2018).
[9] Ffilm Cymru Wales, ‘BFI and albert Announce Wales to Develop Screen New Deal Production Sustainability Plan’, <https://ffilmcymruwales.com/news-and-events/bfi-and-albert-announce-wales-develop-screen-new-deal-production-sustainability> [accessed 11 August, 2023].
[10] Richard Whittington, ‘How Film Production Is Becoming More Sustainable And Profitable’, Forbes, 28 February, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2022/02/28/how-film-production-is-becoming-more-sustainable-and-profitable/?sh=1399737f5bad [accessed 25 June 2023]
[11] Jazz Tancay, ‘How Virtual Production Is Helping to Cut Costs and Reduce Carbon Footprint,’ Variety, April 20, 2022, https://variety.com/2022/artisans/news/virtual-production-small-budget-1235236717/#! [accessed 25 June 2023)
[12] https://sonypicturesgreenerworld.com/sites/sonypicturesgreenerworld.com/files/2022-09/Sony%20Pictures_Virtual%20Production%20GHG%20Analysis_2022_2.pdf [accessed 23 June 2023]
[13] Sara Neill, ‘Belfast to get £75m state-of-the-art movie lab’, BBC News, 15 June 2023 [accessed 23 June 2023] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65916027
[14] Climate Change Committee, ‘The 2022 Progress Report to Parliament’, https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/2022-progress-report-to-parliament/ [accessed 12 October 2022]
[15] Guillaume Pitron, The Rare Metals Way (London: Scribe, 2020)
[16] Nature (editorial), ‘Concrete Needs to Lose Its Colossal Footprint’, 28 September 2021.
[17] United Nations Institute for Training and Research, ‘The Global E-waste Monitor 2020’, https://ewastemonitor.info/gem-2020/ [accessed 13 October 2022]
[18] House of Lords, ’Regulating in a Digital World’, 2019, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldcomuni/299/29903.htm [accessed 13 October 2022]
[19] See PMA’s Green Wing programme: https://www.pma.org.uk/green_wing/ [accessed 13 October 2022].
[20] ONS, ‘Is Hybrid Working Here to Stay’, 2022, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/ishybridworkingheretostay/2022-05-23 [accessed 13 October 2022]
[21] G.M. Fauville, A.C.M. Luo, J.N. Queiroz, J. Bailenson, ‘Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale’, Computers in Human Behavior Reports, Volume 4, August–December 2021; M. Deniz, Seydi Engin, Ahmet Satici, Ceymi Doenyas and Mark Griffiths ‘Zoom Fatigue, Psychological Distress, Life Satisfaction, and Academic Well-being’, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Vol. 25, No. 5. 2022.
[22] S. Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011)
[23] See J. Gabrys, Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011); J. Walker and N. Starosielski (eds.) Sustainable Media (New York: Routledge, 2015); P. Kääpä & H. Vaughan, (eds.) Film and Television Production in the Era of Climate Change: Environmental Practice, Policy, and Scholarship, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2022).
[24] S. Cubitt, Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017); Carbon Trust, ‘Carbon Impact of Video Streaming’, 2021 https://prod-drupal-files.storage.googleapis.com/documents/resource/public/Carbon-impact-of-video-streaming.pdf [accessed 13 October 2022].
[25] Will Bedingfield, ‘We Finally Know How Bad for the Environment Your Netflix Habit Is’, Wired, 15 March 2021, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netflix-carbon-footprint [accessed 13 October]
[26] See SDIA ‘The Roadmap to Sustainable Digital Infrastructure by 2030, 2022, https://sdialliance.org/roadmap/ [accessed 13 October 2022]
[27] See Film London’s 12 June 2023 press release https://filmlondon.org.uk/latest/grid-project-launch [accessed 23 June 2023]
[28] Vaughan, H. (2022). ‘Policy Approaches to Green Film Policy: Local Solutions for a Planetary Problem’, Kääpä, P. and Vaughan, H. (eds.) Film and Television Production in the Age of Climate Crisis: Towards a Greener Screen, London: Palgrave MacMillan 2022): pp. 43-78.
[29] See IRENA’s report on renewable energy cost reductions 2021: IRENA ‘Renewable Power Generation Costs 2021’, https://www.irena.org/publications/2022/Jul/Renewable-Power-Generation-Costs-in-2021 [accessed 13 October 2022]
[30] See House of Commons Library (2022), Research Briefings, available at https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9491/ [accessed 13 October 2022]