German Producers to Share Carbon Film Quote's Road Test Results

German Producers Meet to Share Carbon
Film Quote's Road Test Results
 
BBDO Proximity's Steffen Gentis hosts a roundtable in
Dusseldorf to review the impact of production
houses estimating their carbon footprint.
 
By Anthony Vagnoni

A group of German production company executives will be meeting in Dusseldorf on 22 September to take part in what's being billed as the Carbon Film Quote Road Test Report. 
 
The event is a roundtable presentation in which a variety of production company EPs will talk about their experiences testing the Carbon Film Quote on their TV spot bids, as well as other stakeholders who will comment on the efforts to make TVC production more green.  It's being organized by the Head of TV Production at BBDO Proximity in Dusseldorf, Steffen Gentis, in cooperation with a group of industry executives and organizations.

The Road Test roundtable will be followed later that evening by yet another BBDO Directors Lounge event, at which a select group of directors will screen their work and discuss it with a group of agency producers and creatives. Both events will be streamed on the web; the Carbon Film Quote roundtable will be available on the Carbon Film Quote Facebook page, which can be found here. It takes place at 14:30 Dusseldorf time (or 12:30 GMT, 8:30 EDT in the US) and is scheduled to run for two hours. The event will be conducted in English, Gentis says.
 
The Carbon Film Quote (CFQ) is a process by which production companies are able to work in estimates of the amount of CO2 that's generated by their productions and include these figures in their bids.  The pilot program was launched earlier this year by Gentis among a group of German production houses, which have been beta testing it.  The event on the 22nd will give many of them an opportunity to discuss what impact it's had on their ability to produce work.

BBDO's Steffen Gentis has been leading the agency's efforts in green production.

Gentis has also been conducting an online survey of production companies around the world, inquiring about their views on green production and what they feel about the value of working CO2 estimates into their bids.  The survey is called the Global TV Commercial Producers Sustainability Survey and the deadline for taking part is Wednesday, 21 September. It can be found online here.
 
Gentis will be presenting an overview of survey results at the Carbon Film Quote event. So far, he says he's getting a surprising amount of response (the survey has been posted on the Carbon Film Quote Facebook page and shared by other groups of producers around the world).
 
SourceEcreative first reported on Gentis' efforts to measure a commercial's carbon generation factor earlier this year.  (Click here for that article.)  Since then, Gentis and BBDO in Germany has been doing continued research into the issue, while waiting to report back to the industry on what effect using the Carbon Film Quote has had on production.
 
As the article explains, the CFQ is designed to give producers a sense of what the carbon footprint would be for various ways of producing a job. It takes into account numerous factors, such as travel, where the spot is being shot, what kind of gear is being used, the numbers of people on the shoot, what kinds of fuel are being used to generate the power used during the spot's production, etc.

Among those speaking at the Carbon Film Quote Road Test event will be Francois Melon, Integrated Production Manager for P&G, who's based in Paris. He'll be speaking about P&G's sustainability efforts and how it can relate to commercial production.

Mick Ebeling, CEO of The Ebeling Group, has canvassed agency Heads of Production about the CFQ.

Also speaking will be Mick Ebeling, CEO of the US-based visual effects, design and animation company The Ebeling Group, who will be giving a presentation on his informal survey of US agency Heads of Production; Dadi van Eedenburg, the former German production executive who developed the Commercial Movie Calculator,  a software formula for estimating carbon generation that was incorporated into the Euro version of the CFQ; and Jacob Bilabel of Thema1, the environmental consultancy that Gentis enlisted in the development of the CFQ.
 
Among the German production houses that have been testing the CFQ since earlier this year and are expected to share their observations on its use are Big Fish, Markenfilm, Who's McQueen, Twin Film and Neue Sentimenal. The roundtable will also hear from reps from the post production industry, the Producers Alliance and more.
 
Gentis says that the results of the companies using the CFQ are encouraging. The initiative is meeting with growing acceptance, and he's found that production houses are welcoming the ability that the CFQ provides them to try and measure as precisely as possible the carbon output of various ways of producing spots.
 
The other goal he has here to generally raise awareness of the movement and to get more producers around the world to focus on how they can cut carbon emissions.  He's reached out to other production organizations around the world, such as APA in London and AICP in the US, in an effort to not only share knowledge, he noted, but also to avoid the need to duplicate efforts. 
 
"It's really about changing mindsets in our industry and finding a new way of thinking about how we do things," Gentis says.  "We believe that you can only manage what you measure, which is why we developed the Carbon Film Quote in the first place. It's based on the simple idea; that the data you enter into any film production bid is almost all the data you need to calculate the carbon footprint of your production. The moment your carbon footprint enters the competitive arena, it becomes serious."
 
Regarding the Producer's Survey, Gentis gave us a preliminary peek at what he's been learning.  "Results are coming in from all over the world, from Asia, South America, North America, Europe, even Africa," he notes.  Many of the respondents have been in the industry for over a decade, he says, which he finds encouraging.  "We think the discussion of this topic is already starting to change the way people think about this," he notes.
 
Ebeling says that in his informal Head of Production poll he sought to find out what they thought of athe CFQ, how much they're willing to support its use, how they feel their clients will view it and whether they'd be willing to advocate for it in the face of resistance, either from clients or from within their own agencies. The effect could be quite impressive should they buy into it, he adds.  "Together, I'd say that these heads of production represent easily between a hundred and two hundred million dollars worth of production annually," he notes.

Linking the event to the Directors Lounge is a way to both maximize people's time and be as efficient as possible, Gentis says, pointing out that companies and agencies are beginning to schedule meetings about the increasingly popular event.  Gentis says the events, which are showcases for directorial talent, typically feature a handpicked group of directors who screen and discuss their work in person before an audience of up to 1,000 from all over Germany and other Euorpean countries.

The upcoming Lounge, the 39th that BBDO has held (fore more on the event, click here),  will include Adam Bonke of Joschmid, Felipe Ascacibar of Element-e, Luzian Schlatter or Markenfilm, Kai Sehr of Who's McQueen, Job van As of Doppelganger, MK 12 of The Ebeling Group, Saam, who's independent, and Hein Mevissen of Film Deluxe. This version of the Lounge will also be streamed live, Gentis says; the broadcast can be found on the Directors Lounge Facebook page here.

Published 17 September, 2011