NEAL ROMANEK: Companies will eventually need to drastically reduce emissions, rather than rely on slow, incremental change. What do you think will force them to make the necessary big leaps?
BRANDON COOPER: There’s no question that it’s difficult. We see in our industry that nothing changes unless it’s forced. A tsunami had to occur before we moved off physical tape-based recording to file-based (1). And now a pandemic has finally pushed us into remote production. First Mile Technologies is a company that works with Dejero to introduce ways of using connectivity to enhance production, and it took the pandemic to get us there. It’s tough. I don’t know if it’s incentives or sanctions, or just absolutely new rules that have to be implemented – the question is by whom. But forced change is the only thing that ever amounts to anything in the part of the business I’m in. IAN MCDONOUGH: You’re absolutely right. People have to know what to do first. It’s good to have fines or incentives – yet at some point forced change needs to happen. But I think a practical guide should be issued, so people know what they have to do – not move media around, or not send a planeload of people to Japan or Brazil. If they can see practical steps, then people can adhere to them. Firstly, someone has to decide those steps. LIAM HAYTER: We’ve got the technology and components to help reduce carbon emissions. Can we go completely to zero? There’s been little analysis on the carbon
footprint of TV productions, or the impact of remote production versus on-site. We need to focus on that to navigate the best combinations. IAN MCDONOUGH: We put a report out in the spring, called ‘Video Shouldn’t Cost the Earth’. It analysed on-premises and cloud-based editing workflows, and then cloud-native. It was surprising. Shifting that content around is very costly from a carbon point of view. The cloud- native solution was actually 91% more carbon efficient than an on-premises installation.
PETER SYKES: Sony Professional is a product and solutions supplier. And there’s
nothing like pressure from the end user to change behaviour. We know that a lot of media companies have sustainability high on their agenda. As a supplier, we take that on board. This will determine, to an extent, our activities. The other part is awareness
“WE SEE IN OUR INDUSTRY THAT NOTHING CHANGES UNLESS IT’S FORCED”
of where the problem lies. Guidelines from Bafta’s sustainability organisation, Albert, is a good resource. There’s analysis based upon genre and where in those production chains the problem areas lie. As has been said, movement of equipment and people has a huge impact, certainly in things like drama production and factual, especially if it’s international. At the Digital Production Partnership Leaders’ Briefing last year, media companies were asked to identify three strategic priorities. Sustainability came up over and over again.
WATCH THIS CLIP AT FEEDMAGAZINE.TV
(1) The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 interrupted the global supply chain for videotape – and has been credited with accelerating the media industry’s move from tape-based to file-based workflows
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