Freelancer pressures & cost worries holding back sustainability measures

Worries over cost and pressures on freelancers are holding back sustainability efforts in production, according to panellists at the PGGB’s Sustainability Behind The Lens event. 

Speaking at the event, which was hosted by Garden Studios on 11 June and featured a conference and small trade show, Karl Leigis, head of production at 60/Forty Films, said: “One barrier is cost. The line producer is the one that’s concerned about something that is unknown has variables attached to it, and is trying to mitigate as much risk as possible. When something new comes in it brings a variable and there’s a concern about what that will create.

“We see that all the time on our productions and we as a company have to pilot it or trial it for a period of time to look at the costs. or if we’ll potentially get some savings back. We have to work with all of the suppliers to say, ‘let’s trial this for a period of time and there’ll be a favourable rate with a view that we report back on it.’”

Amelia Price, director and co-founder of Sustainable Film, added that time pressures also play a part: “A fear of change and doing things differently [is holding back sustainability]. Our industry is based on freelancers and one of the things they’re really good at is coming into a job with less prep time than they’d like and knowing exactly what needs to happen in order to get the show made.

“We can come along as sustainabity people and ask if they fancy doing something a bit different, but they don’t want to be that person who everyone looks to when the power goes down.” 

Louise Smith, founder and managing director of Neptune Sustainability, agreed, and believes more need to be done to reassure freelancers that they can make changes. “If your gaffer takes the chance to switch to batteries instead of a generator and the lights go out, they might not have a job at the end of the day. We need to provide that psychological safety from the production company and the studio so it isn’t all on this one crew member’s back. 

She added: “There’s this assumption that trusty old diesel generators are perfect and reliable, and the reality is that they fall down all the time because we underuse them and they get clogged up. However, people don’t have the same sort of reaction when it’s something that they trust and they’re used to, whereas there’s a huge reaction if there’s an issue when you’ve used replaced a generator with a battery… There’s no wiggle room for people to try things out.”