Nine telemovie turns green

How much harm to the environment takes place when filming a television production?

That’s a question that is rarely considered, but was measured for the filming of Nine’s virus telemovie Panic at Rock Island last year.

Producers Goalpost Pictures commissioned a sustainability audit of the shoot filmed in Sydney, looking at waste management, water usage, office systems, power usage, health and safety.

Set at a rock concert in the middle of Sydney Harbour, the telemovie required hundreds of extras and a full live concert rig to be transported to an island as well as crew, equipment and actors.

Goalpost already had policies to manage traffic, noise, waste, protection of the land while sets were deconstructed to be recycled or donated.

But GreenShoot Pacific found that the shoot resulted in a total of 63.85 tonnes of carbon emissions, attributable to powering the production (24%), hotel nights (4%), and travel and transport of cast, crew and equipment (72%).

Goalpost Pictures Managing Director Ben Grant said, “There are some things in there that I’m very proud of but, to be brutally frank, there are some other outcomes that are quite disturbing.

“For us, commissioning this analysis was a way that we could accurately determine exactly what kind of impact our film and television production has on the environment and identify ways that, going into the future, we can do better.

“There’s been a lot of talk about ‘greening’ the industry over the past couple of years but there hasn’t been a lot of clear direction on the best way forward. At Goalpost, we decided the best way to genuinely review our practices was to have a thorough and professional analysis done during production under real-time conditions, when everyone is in the thick of things and operating at lightning speed and under pressure.”

Panic at Rock Island starring Grant Bowler, Damian Walshe-Howling, Jessica Tovey, Vince Colosimo will air on Nine this year.