The BFI is to fund dedicated sustainability consultants on all features receiving production finance from the BFI Filmmaking Fund, as part of a new Independent Film Sustainability Handbook, published today with BBC Film and Film4.
The Handbook, described as a ’sustainability toolkit’, is designed to help the UK independent production sector move towards a more sustainable output.
It outlines achievable ways for low- to mid-budget features to offset the three biggest environmental impacts: travel and transport, materials, and temporary power. It provides actions, initiatives and practical objectives, ranging from departmental and subject-specific guides through to advice on effectively engaging cast and crew.
The guide highlights links between cost efficiencies and reducing environmental impact, offering frameworks and timelines for planning ahead. It also provides guidance on data collection and reporting, offering a deeper understanding of environmental impact and how to produce more robust data for applying for Bafta Albert certification.
Production roles
The BFI will provide up to £6,000 to fund the sustainability consultant. Additionally, fiction features supported by the Filmmaking Fund will be required to budget for a sustainability assistant role to implement the work on the ground.
It is optional for projects backed by the UK Global Screen Fund’s international co-production funding, acknowledging such awards make up a lower percentage of a film’s overall budget than the Filmmaking Fund and are often shot outside the UK.
The guide has been developed with Picture Zero, a provider of sustainability services to the film and television industries, to help the UK production industry work towards net zero, the point at which carbon emissions from a particular human activity are balanced with the amount removed.
Picture Zero piloted the use of the Handbook by working with recent BFI, BBC Film and Film4 productions including A Town In Nova Scotia, Daughter Of Eden, Everybody Wants To F*ck Me, Stuffed, Sugar and To Make Ends Meat. It looked at how productions can reduce their environmental impact by reducing high-impact emissions, improving supplier scrutiny, looking at practical circularity successes, including second-hand sourcing and reuse of scenery flats and props, making low-impact catering choices, improving data capture, and improving sustainability communications.
“Working with Picture Zero on developing and trialling the handbook clearly demonstrated an uplift in sustainable practices and huge positive benefit to our productions in the pilot,” said Keir Oldfield-Lewis, head of environmental sustainability at the BFI. “Following our work last year to formalise sustainable production in new National Occupational Standards, we are now taking an important next step to ensure our productions have the right skills and necessary funding to prioritise sustainability on set.”
“We hope this handbook is a useful tool for producers to enable more sustainable productions,” said Tori Parry, head of production at Film4. “Coming together with our peers at the BFI and BBC Film to help benefit the UK film industry is very important to us and it’s been great to see the positive outcomes from the productions that took part in the pilot.”
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