How to make a sustainable film – behind the scenes

The Bunch, a group of amazing freeskiers, just released their seventh film “Is there time for matching socks“. During the entire production a main focus was to keep the greenhouse gas emissions down. We talked to The Bunch members Magnus and Alric to get some insights and key learnings on how to make a sustainable film.

Is there time for matching socks – a carbon offsetted film production. Photo and graphic design: Alric Ljughager 

The film was shot in Sweden, Norway, France, Russia, Switzerland, Japan and Canada during 171 days and resulted in 41 tonnes of CO2 emissions. That is 459 tonnes below the average film production and probably way below a big screen play’ emissions. So, what did they do differently?

The film production resulted in 41 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Photo and graphic design: Alric Ljughager

Climate-friendly options for producing films

Hello The Bunch, how did you keep the carbon footprint at a minimum?
We mainly ate vegetarian and vegan food resulting in a high intake of potatoes and beetroot salad in Russia :). There’s definitely room for improvement in some countries when it comes to trying to cut down on meat. But overall it was an interesting experience. 

We also decided to take the train whenever possible. We travelled to the Alps and back from Stockholm, Sweden twice. And we spent 70-80 hours on Russian trains going to both Kirov and Sochi. 

How was your experience spending such a big amount of time on the train?
It was a great experience with lots of fun memories. It does of course come with a bit of hustling and it’s more time consuming than travelling by plane, but the benefits outweigh it. Most of our time was spent in the dining car playing cards, talking to Russians and challenging them in arm wrestling. That would not have happened on a plane. It was really memorable and gave us great laughs. 

For a 2-3 week long trip, spending a few more days on traveling isn’t a big deal. We really like to fully experience the local culture and not only check in to a hotel, spend days on the mountains without seeing any locals at all and then take the next flight to another mountain. On the opposite, we love to shoot in the middle of the streets in a city, it creates really interesting encounters which wouldn’t have taken place on another set.

In what other ways do you take climate action?
Even if this is the first movie production we have calculated the carbon footprint for, we have always been conscious about the way we travel and what we eat. We have turned down offers to go to the US and Japan just to avoid the emissions it would cause. We sell thrifted The Bunch merchandise on our website, we have an Insta account we’re we sell pre-loved stuff as helmets and skiis and we are promoting veggie food and a healthier lifestyle via #healthgangofficial.

The Bunch. Photo: Alric Ljughager

We at GoClimate are really impressed by The Bunch showing true leadership within the film industry. Our findings are that emissions caused by a production rarely are taken into consideration and when they are, numbers are not public. They are also great role models within the wintersport world, where transports with planes, helicopters and big cars are causing big amounts of greenhouse gases.

Transportation is the highest emission factor

In this film production the majority of the travels were made by train. The return trip from Sochi, Russia, was done by plane. A few seconds of the movie was shot in Japan by one of the Bunch members, who was there on another assignment. The emissions from that trip were also included in the calculations. The Canada trip was not planned but since there was no snow in Scandinavia and The Bunch’s Hackel was competing in Xgames realski with a tight deadline they made the decision to go there to finish up the X Games video. They filmed some shots for “Is There Time for Matching Socks” in between shooting for Xgames realski. That trip included three round trips from Stockholm to Quebec, which generated a big part of the overall emissions for the film.

The diet consisted of around 30% vegan food, 60% vegetarian food and 10% meat.

The carbon footprint by category

The full climate report can be found here.
Read more about the carbon footprint of the film industry here.

The Bunch. Photo: Alric Ljughager
The Bunch. Photo: Alric Ljughager
The Bunch. Photo: Alric Ljughager
The Bunch. Photo: Alric Ljughager
The Bunch. Photo: Alric Ljughager

The carbon footprint from film making

What’s the carbon footprint from film production and the movie industry? Intrigued by finding out the answer, we at GoClimate partnered up with some of the best freeskiers in the world, The Bunch, to calculate the carbon footprint of their seventh movie Is there time for matching socks. And started to dig into the emissions of the world of film making.

What is the carbon footprint of the film industry? Photo: Donald Edgar

Findings – carbon emissions from creating films

What we found out is that film productions in general do unfortunately not map their carbon footprint. Or, in the cases where the carbon footprint has been calculated, the data has not been made public.

According to a Swedish study all big studios in the US track their carbon footprint, with a couple of them making it public. But, when we dug deeper into this, looking at the carbon footprint of Disney Studios in particular, only the emissions from The Walt Disney Company as a whole is presented. Numbers related to the film production are not separated and publicly available.

According to the Guardian (2020) the average film is estimated to produce 500 tonnes of CO2eq. The detailed data from the Swedish series Bäckström shows a carbon footprint of 240 tonnes CO2 for the full production, 40 tonnes per episode of 45 minutes.

We found data from a few recent wintersport films. Burton’s production, One World, had for example a carbon footprint of 1060 tonnes. 

Our calculations of The Bunch film production Is there time for matching socks ended up at 41 tonnes. To find out how they manage to keep the emissions so low compared to other films, click here. The full climate report for the film can be found here.

The carbon footprint of producing the film Is there time for matching socks was 41 tonnes.