European filmmakers go green behind the scenes

Film crews in Europe are seeking ways to reduce the carbon footprint of a film or a TV episode. The European Green Screen project shares best practices in sustainable audiovisual production.

This pilot project, which ran from 2014-2020, has been tested in the UK, Sweden, Belgium, France, Romania, Spain, Poland and Slovakia. The partnership continues to be active in several of these countries.

In Čertižné in north-east Slovakia, the feature film Flood by Martin Gonda is being shot. Almost 50 people must be housed, fed and moved around with lighting and catering. The team is nomadic and committed: they follow the Green Screen project's guidelines to reduce its carbon footprint. Transport is one of the areas they are targeting.

"You can compare one average European production (feature film), to ten households in terms of the amount of CO2 that it can create (per year)," said Zuzana Bieloková, a film commissioner at the Audiovisual Slovak Film Commission.

"We prefer trains to cars or planes. And also, if it's inevitable to take cars, we try to carpool," revealed producer Katarína Krnáčová. 

"The other is catering, definitely. So we try to avoid red meat and meat in general. We are trying to use props and costumes which are either rented or they are second-hand."

The total cost of Green Screen is €2.6 million, 85% of which comes from the EU Cohesion Policy and the remaining 15% from eight audiovisual companies associated with the project.

Before the cameras are rolling, Green Screen holds awareness-raising meetings and advocates the use of carbon-calculating tools.

The Bratislava Film Commission, in collaboration with Propmálaga, from Spain and the Flanders Audiovisual fund, is behind Eureca, the free online instrument which helps