Ontario, a major production hub for studios and streamers, has set its sights on new climate control technologies to electrify, decarbonize and reduce waste on local film sets.
And accelerating that industrywide push for real change to reduce Hollywood’s local carbon footprint as it shoots across the province is the job of Ontario Film Commissioner Justin Cutler. As part of Ontario Creates, he and his team market the province to American and other foreign producers as part of a growing global locations business.
That’s no easy feat, since coming to grips with environmental destruction is overwhelming and anxiety-inducing for most people and reducing climate impacts on film sets, where time is money, calls for balancing expectations with reality.
“We’re trying to build a greater level of comfort for new technology,” Cutler explains. “It’s a scary project to make that change, because it’s new technology. But once people get their hands on the equipment and get used to how it works, it’s amazing how quickly that changes in terms of the comfort level.”
That’s after Ontario Creates launched an Ontario Green Screen collaboration to cut back on food and materials waste and carbon footprints on sets across the province. Key to helping productions support their environmental programs, where possible, and to achieve goals is the increasing use of sustainability coordinators to educate and introduce best practices and plans to manage climate impacts.
“We navigate that space between knowing and trying to practice the most absolute sustainable production possible,” Samantha Leigh, a sustainability consultant with the Green Spark Group, which brings sustainability coordinators onto Ontario sets, tells The Hollywood Reporter. How much producers want to reduce carbon emissions and waste depends in part on production budgets — but also on learning best practices.
“A lot of what we do is education, talking to people,” Leigh explains. “We do not encourage getting into garbage bins and sorting, because that’s how things used to be done and it doesn’t really tip the scale for emissions reduction. Our value comes in being able to share with crews higher level sustainability initiatives and collecting data.”
Ahead of TIFF, THR talked to Ontario Create’s Cutler about his province’s decarbonizing initiatives, clean energy technology and using the right tools to help transform film sets across an increasingly global industry.
Can you talk about Ontario as an industry leader in green tools and technologies to attract more foreign productions to the province, while doing your part in achieving climate sustainability?
Our dream for Ontario’s film industry is all productions have those tools, those resources and the educational opportunities to go green. That’s specifically in the areas of reducing carbon emissions and material reuse. If we can start to take steps to achieve those two goals, then we will make a systemic change in how green our productions are across the province. That’s why we formed Ontario Green Screen, a coalition of 27 industry and government partners to really think about that problem and to develop those tools. Because it needs to be a holistic change. It can’t just be on a per-production basis. So we formed that group with our unions and our suppliers and our trade organizations, and also producers. We have producing partners like the CMPA [Canadian Media Producers Association] and companies south of the border such as Netflix, Sony and Amazon to make changes that are scalable, depending on the type of production you are. So if you’re a smaller, independent Ontario production, you can take advantage of these resources. And if you’re a blockbuster project, you can also take advantage of resources that will scale appropriately.
That includes helping the industry ditch diesel generators on film sets and locations and tap into an expanding network of clean-energy electricity kiosks or tie-ins?
Our primary goal with fuel reduction is to make electrical power more accessible across the province. We have collectively done the research to understand where there are grid tie-in points across the province. We’ve worked with location managers and producers and municipalities to identify areas where there’s a high use of locations where base camps typically are, and then we’ve done work with the locations that are adjacent to those sites to figure out if they have those industrial connection points to tie into the electrical grid. We have now identified more than 90 points across Ontario where those grid tie-in points exist. And we’ve created a grid tie-in map integrated into our locations library for any local manager to go in and see where those points are. We have all the technical details associated with those points. And we enable the productions to work directly with the locations to figure out how to meter that power use.
How do the electricity tie-ins work practically?
Once the location manager knows where they’re filming, they go to our library, identify where may be tie-in points close by. Then their generator operator will approach that building, talk about the power demands of the production. And then they will use cam locks to tie in their cables into those points and work out with the property owner what that power usage looks like. Finally, the property owner bills the production for the electrical power they use from that point.
And productions are taking up the technology?
We’ve seen buy-in because the locations are often being used for filming. And if they have these tie-in points, that becomes a value add for the location to attract productions. So it becomes a virtuous relationship that works for both parties.
And there are budget savings for producers?
Absolutely. The Directors Guild of Canada has a tool on its website to help productions calculate
traditional fossil fuel usage versus electrical usage to understand what the power savings might look like, and so the cost savings. And we’ve trained a lot of union members on how to use those tools and how to use electrical generators, which are basically industrial sized battery packs. We’ve shown the advantages, the safety concerns, how much power you can pull from those units, because the power conversion is different between traditional generators and electrical generators. We’ve trained more than 110 union members and operators, cinematographers, who draw a lot of power from these units. We’re trying to build a greater level of comfort for new technology.
Can you talk about Hone, which aims to replace diesel generators with zero emission hydrogen power generators?
The first hydrogen generator that was built for the industry in Canada was built in Ontario. This is the company Hone. They have done a few demos of that technology. So, looking into the future, we may have additional technological offerings to go green. This will take time — crewmembers and technicians to get up to speed — and time is money on film sets.
This change requires a complete culture shift. We have to consider the supply of whether it’s hydrogen fuel or renewable diesel or these electrical generators to sets, and that’s exactly the work that Ontario Green Screen is doing to help crewmembers be more comfortable with this technology. I just mentioned renewable diesel, or a diesel fuel where suppliers can collect food waste with which to make a synthetic diesel fuel. That means we’re basically reusing food, whether from a set or various purposes, to power diesel generators and the fleets that are required for transporting crew to set, and also our moving vehicles for production. We’ve heard of a fantastic pilot program that’s used this, and now we’re going through the steps of working with studio operators to help them understand what safety requirements are needed to put renewable diesel tanks on their lots and to make that more accessible to the industry.
Are the major studios and streamers calling for these new green technologies, thus accelerating your initiatives?
Absolutely. Companies like Amazon, Sony, Netflix are leaders in this space. They take sustainability quite seriously. They’re working on a number of pilot programs to help crews understand what steps are required
to go green. And they’ve been ambitious and thought a lot about how projects like renewable diesel or electrical generators can work on set. That shows by the fact they’re part of our advisory committee. They’re very exciting partners to work with, and we’re hoping their practices can then be scaled down for use on any project in the province.
The idea is, if a Netflix production embraces sustainability, those practices can then be learned by crewmembers and adopted on other productions they work on?
What I’m excited about is when a large production is filming in the province, they’re hiring hundreds of crewmembers. And when they enable sustainable best practices on set, that trickles down to all those crewmembers who inevitably work on shows of different sizes and scope and productions that might not be as well-resourced. So we have seen a lot of gains from smaller productions, mid-sized productions. We’re encouraged to see that the [public broadcaster] CBC mandates carbon calculation on all its in-house production of a certain value.
Another sustainability choice is food rescue, where leftover meals on sets feed those in need, right?
One of the most efficient changes we’ve seen in material reuse is for food rescue. We have a partnership with Second Harvest. And since 2020, the industry has saved 32,000 meals, which have gone to local agencies in need across the province. That’s all done through a very simple, easy-to-use app and at no cost. This is an area where smaller productions really choose to go green because it’s very easy to do.
How does the app work?
A production will have an account on the Second Harvest app and will see which local agencies are in need of that food in their area. The production will post the quantity of meals, the types of meals. And local agencies in need can say, hey, yes, we’re interested in those meals. And then they will connect with the production directly to receive that food. Second Harvest provides the training for the productions on food handling. There are protections in place for anyone donating food to reduce their liability, provided donations are done in good faith. That’s something a lot of people don’t know, or they’re worried about that liability. But there are a lot of protections in place for any Ontarian who’s donating food.
As with electrical generators, I assume the more training and use received with new initiatives and technologies, the better the adoption down the road?
The more people do this work, the more it becomes second nature and becomes built into the typical production process. This is an area where, conceivably, productions see cost savings because there are tipping fees at landfills or for disposing these meals. So that’s an area where there’s cost savings and raised crew morale, and it contributes to community stewardship, which is very important because we are filming in communities across the province.
Does cost savings from cutting down on waste extend to reuse of surplus lumber for set building or fabrics from costume making?
Ontario Green Screen partnered with Telefilm Canada a few years back to complete a waste audit for productions of varying sizes, both foreign and domestic. And the waste that a production can produce could range between 3,600 kilograms for a small independent feature up to 300,000 kilograms on a blockbuster series. An example is Ready, Set, Recycle, which does prop sales. They will take props and costumes and other materials that are set for reuse and practically create a marketplace, online and in person, for the sale of those materials. Then there are other companies like Rethink Resource and Habitat for Humanity and also prop houses that receive reusable materials like lumber and vinyl and other building materials that could be reused, and again creating either a market for reuse or recycling those materials sustainably. So it’s a bit of a matchmaking initiative. It’s not always a production on the receiving end. It could be just another local agency that needs to use those construction materials for building. But it keeps those materials out of a landfill and reduces the carbon footprint for a production overall. And that means cost savings from avoiding those tipping fees. And diverting and redirecting waste from landfills, whether through recycling or reusing, boosts crew morale on film sets.
What we’re excited about is these changes snowball into more changes made by everyone who’s working on set. Success stories help. Netflix had a recent feature project shoot in Ontario, and they had a 91 percent diversion rate from their materials going into landfills, just because they made very simple decisions in the prep process on where those materials were going to go. They also built their sets thinking about disassembly and reuse. Those are simple changes that need to happen for major gains to come into play.
Lastly, can you talk about the use of sustainability coordinators to help productions support their environmental programs and achieve sustainability goals?
Hiring sustainability coordinators has become commonplace in Ontario. There’s a fantastic roster of people trained by leading consultancies like the Green Spark Group. Amazon provided training. And Ontario Green Screen hosts a lot of these individuals as ambassadors of our program, people who have taken all of our training, have participated in our quarterly community meetings and really understand what resources are available.