By Joseph Archer
“I just want to make films that have big sets, big lights, the largest crew I can get and a Craft table that is ten metres long,” one producer told me when I asked what type of films they want to make.
This decadent ambition for cinematic opulence seemed to take precedence over any ambition to make a film of substance. Or even of a particular genre. Instead, what seems like the dying echoes of 20th-century indulgence that has long consumed the industry seemed to underpin their priorities. Sadly, this producer is not alone.
Even though the industry talks a big game with certifications and measures that gesture toward sustainability, it’s apparent that it still lusts for wasteful to achieve its art. The fetish for lavish misuse and overspending is strong in the industry subconscious.
I co-run a new manifesto-led company, Silicon Gothic, that incorporates sustainability into every facet of our production process. This also includes bringing elements into the storyline of our genre films. Our first feature to follow the manifesto and process in full is Black Samphire, a folk horror set in the context of the UK’s water pollution crisis.
We’ve met a lot of industry professionals who love the “sustainability angle”. We see it as a 2024 necessity and not an angle. We make sure that everyone who comes onboard the process knows there will be sustainability scrutiny in every department at every point. We want to use this film to show the industry that quality films don’t have to be wasteful. This is welcomed by 99% of the people we talk to – clearly, there’s a conscious will to bring about more substantial change.
However, some prospective collaborators still fall for the fetish. We get agents asking for trailers and taxis just for their clients; we’ve had cinematographers ask to build entire sets just for one shot; we even had one company suggest we build a whole river (with heated water) to film our water scenes.
These behaviours are comically remarked on in new film-industry satire, The Franchise. Produced by HBO and executive produced by Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes, it hit the small screen in October 2024. Its promotional material states that it showcases how “the cinematic sausage gets made”. Turns out that the sausage likes to be careless to the environment.
In the first episode, we see a film crew deal with the day-to-day of set antics. Daniel (Himesh Patel), the 1st Assistant Director, is trying to cover up a massively needless expense from the executive producer. He remarks: “About 60 live Yoshimo cherry trees that we imported from Kyoto, then cut from the script…. the waste! You could build a children’s hospital. It’s absolutely hilarious”. Dag, the 3rd Assistant Director (Lolly Adefope), retorts: “Yeah. But what price dreams?”
Later in the episode, when the director tries to make an excuse for another damaging mistake, this resorts to Peter (Richard E Grant) to hit back: “Do not dress this up as some noble sacrifice at the altar of cinema.”
The show highlights industry waste from the needless culling of imported trees to the mundane throwaway culture that underpins catering. An executive assistant, who is continuingly bossed around, finally gets the chance to eat lunch – from a polystyrene takeaway container. Just as he’s about to start eating, he is given another order, and so he instantly throws the full food container in a bin and walks off.
This new satire perfectly depicts that unnecessary waste is part of filmmaking culture. It is funny, it is day-to-day, it shows the “sacrifice” and seemingly necessary evil of making art. It reveals the dark side of the romance of filmmaking. A lot of filmmakers romanticise it; it’s more than time that industry heavyweights are satirising it.
The film industry loves that it can be raucously wasteful, and has long acted as if being sustainable will cause audiences to turn off, to disconnect. But as our work on Black Samphire shows, sustainability can bring people together. The industry has got to end its fetish for being creatively unsustainable… and instead begin being sustainability creative.
Joseph Archer is a filmmaker, activist and co-founder of Silicon Gothic, which produces genre films featuring man-made monsters, such as global warming, plastic pollution and misinformation. You can find out more at silicongothic.co.uk and josepharcher.co.uk.