PROFILES SUSTAINABILITY
production plan in place,” describes Pilcher. “They’re the only studio with the policy. It’s innovative, and was taken on by the chairman and CCO, Donna Langley. She embraced it and said: ‘We’re doing it.’ That’s what needs to happen; the buy-in must happen at the top.” Climate storytelling, for Pilcher, ‘has been an underutilised solution’ in the film industry. “Telling stories is what we do,” she states. “Stories are the way people connect to culture and the world we’re living in. It can also encourage people to think about things they hadn’t before – or think about them differently.” Pilcher emphasises that climate storytelling doesn’t have to be over- the-top obvious. “It can be layered into the world-building of any story,” she argues. “It can be a narrative plot twist, a heightening of stakes for characters, a subplot or even on-screen behaviour. I find there’s almost no movie where you can’t figure out a way to incorporate a character’s relationship to nature and human agency.” There’s a whole subgenre of films about extreme weather events, but these tend to be dystopian thrillers rather than genuine reflections of our climate’s current state. According to Pilcher, these stories leave us feeling helpless and psychologically distanced – generally failing to spark productive conversations. “We’re trying to understand what we can do to bridge that gap.” Over the years, Pilcher has found that most people genuinely are interested in sustainability. “I always say – and we talk about this with our guilds and unions – any set you’re on, if you start talking about it and put it out there that you’re interested in talking about it, the allies will come forward,” she assures. “People want to know what they can do.” STORIES ARE THE WAY THAT people connect TO CULTURE”
GREEN THE SILVER SCREEN Educating production teams on sustainability, Price engages with suppliers to implement eco- friendly practices
AMELIA PRICE Amelia Price is
(‘I was a member of the WWF from the age of seven’), this realisation came as quite a shock, leaving Price with ample cognitive dissonance. “I went off and retrained – I have an IEMA accreditation in environmental management – and then said, ‘Right, that’s it. I’m not going to take any more locations jobs.’ I threw myself into sustainability.” About three years ago, Price co- founded Sustainable Film – a UK-based sustainability consultancy – with former colleague Jimmy Keeping. “We decided to join forces to take on the industry and get a bit more support,” Price admits. “It’s fairly lonely in sustainability.” Working in the environmental sector comes with its fair share of challenges. “The main pushback is that people don’t really understand what we do,” says Price. Like Pilcher, Price notes that “people were used to the environmental department being a runner on-set, physically sorting the waste – which is not a good use of anybody’s time.” She stresses the oft-forgotten ‘bigger picture’, which
the co-director of Sustainable Film and co-founder of The Generator
Project. She is also the chair of the Sustainability Working Group for the Production Guild of Great Britain (PGGB) A melia Price’s career began in production, but – declining to choose between work and motherhood – she switched to location management, as this provided greater flexibility. It wasn’t until then that she truly realised “how wasteful and destructive the industry is,” she says. “You see exactly what’s left behind. It was eye-opening.” As someone who has been keenly environmentally aware since childhood
29
definitionmags
Powered by FlippingBook