 Hello everybody and welcome to NYC Film Green's office hours. My name is Shear Gans and I'm the Senior Executive Director of Policy and Programs at the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment. One of the things I get to do in my job is I direct our offices NYC Film Green. For those of you not familiar with the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, we're the city agency that supports all the creative sectors in New York City. That's 500,000 jobs and $150 billion in economic activity. And we support the film and television industry in multiple ways, one of which I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with is that we're the permitting agency in New York. But we also try to promote sustainable film production through our NYC Film Green program. And that program launched in 2017. It has three goals I would say. The main three goals are to create a sustainable blueprint for production. So we have guidelines for that on our website. It's to provide recognition to productions that are engaging in sustainable practices and reducing our impact on the city and the environment and then to provide free resources. And so we do that through webinars like this and other materials that we distribute in the community. So I'm really excited for tonight's discussion on sustainability on screen. I know it's a hot topic. We have a great panel to take us through this topic. And so thank you again for joining us. And I look forward to seeing you at future office hours. All right. Hello and welcome to yet another episode of New York City Film Green office hours. I am Anna Laura and I am the Education and Special Programs Manager at Earth Angel, a sustainable production consultancy helping to reduce the environmental impact of film and television production. Thank you all for joining us today to discuss sustainability on screen. Please feel free to enter all of your questions in the chat and we will get to them during the Q&A portion of the panel. All right. Let's get started. I hope everyone can hear me okay. I think so. Okay. Entertainment has a huge impact on culture with on on culture with the power to influence and change consumer behaviors, knowledge and attitudes. Television shows and films can spark many meaningful conversations with the potential to drive people into action for our environment. Mass media has a great potential to deliver an essential source of educational information to the public, improving the understanding of climate change and contributing to creating awareness and shaping favorable attitudes towards climate change. The Norman Lear Center's Media Impact Project conducted a research project with support from Good Energy, which aimed to understand and measure the frequency of mentions of 36 keywords related to climate change in over 37,000 scripted TV episodes and films from 2016 to 2020. The results of this study were quite stark. Only 2.8% of all scripts included any climate-related keywords and only 0.6% of scripted TV and films mentioned the specific term climate change. As part of the study, a survey of 2,000 people in the United States revealed that more than 75% of respondents learn about social issues from scripted entertainment, but only 25% hear concerns about the climate crisis from these sources, far less than other media sources. The climate change and the climate crisis is accelerating and will affect everyone, either directly or indirectly. So why then is it not featured more prominently in television shows and films? Why does it seem like the characters in our favorite shows are ignorant to the issues affecting our climate? Despite some notable features, mentions of the climate crisis are largely absent from video content currently being produced. So then how then can we address the issues surrounding climate change through the stories and content that we see on screen? To discuss these very important questions, we have a host of incredible panelists here today. We have Carmel Benasky. Carmel is an award-winning novelist and TV writer staffing on Amazon's Undone. Currently, she's creating a climate fiction audio drama for Wondery and adapting a feminist fantasy for TV. She recently co-wrote a film starring Margaret Cho. She had the opportunity to explore the Arctic on a sailing vessel studying and writing about climate change. Now, as head writer for Good Energy, she helps screenwriters integrate climate into any project with joy and humor. She's a film independent fellow and the author of the critically acclaimed novel, The Suicide of Claire Bishop. Other writing has appeared among other places in The Guardian, LA Review of Books, and on NPR. She earned her MFA from Hunter College, where she was also a professor of creative writing. As program director of the Redford Center, Heather Fitz cultivates grants, resources, and community for environmental filmmakers and oversees impact-driven projects and campaigns. She co-founded the Hollywood Climate Summit, an international conference and coalition of cross-sector climate storytellers, supported by Netflix, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Metta, and more. In her work as a creative producer, she's committed to stories that reframe the climate conversation as an opportunity to create a better world for all. She recently led the conversation, audiences want climate stories at Sundown. Sheila Mikhail Muravati is the president and founder of the nonprofit organization Habits of Waste, which focuses on finding solutions to shift habits of waste among mass societies. Known for many innovative campaigns such as the Kettle Cutlery Campaign, Sheila spearheaded the ban of plastic straws and cutlery in the city of Malibu, and then convinced Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash, and Grubhub to globally change the default setting in their applications, so that no one receives plastic cutlery unless requested. Habits of Waste is running numerous campaigns, such as lights, camera, plastic, to drive change by shifting societal norms. Sheila is focused on protecting the planet through a collective societal effort of individuals making slight changes for their lifestyles while pressuring lawmakers and large corporations simultaneously. Sheila believes that environmentalism is not an all or nothing effort, rather she believes that each time a habit of waste is broken, we become imperfect environmentalists. Lydia Dean Pilcher is a two-time Emmy-winning Oscar-nominated producer of over 40 feature films and series and founder of NYC production company Cinemosaic. Focusing on global culture and climate storytelling, her director credits include the World War II spy thriller A Call to Spy and the climate narratives, Radium Girls, and science fiction film Homing Instinct. As co-founder and leader of the producer's Guild of America's PGA Green and Green Production Guide, she has been an ambassador for sustainability and entertainment for over 15 years. She co-leads the WGA and PGA inter-guild climate storytelling initiative and co-chairs the director's Guild of America Sustainable Features Committee. Laurel Tamayo is the impact campaign consultant at Rare's Entertainment Lab, which brings behavioral insights to Hollywood, helping creators tell climate-friendly stories that put high impact everyday behaviors on screen. She's also worked on impact campaigns for Down to Earth with Zach Efron season two and I Am Greta, inspiring the audience to take action on climate change. Prior to Rare, she worked on the Hollywood Climate Summit, which is an annual gathering of the entertainment industry to address climate change, and the Good Energy Playbook, which is the guide for screenwriters on how they can weave climate change into their films and TV shows. She's currently in the Harvard Executive Education Program, working on her public leadership certificate, where she was awarded the Bacon Climate Leadership Scholarship. All right. Thank you to all these amazing panelists for being here today. Let's get started. So I think you can all put on your videos. Yeah, perfect. All right. So to start it off, what is climate storytelling and what is the purpose of it? Lydia, why don't you start us off? Okay. I'm getting a message that the host has stopped my video. Oh no. Is anybody? There I am. No, there we go. Hi. Okay. Okay. What is climate storytelling and what is the purpose? That's a question, right? Okay. Well, you laid out a lot of the sort of the how, when, and where, why we're here. I mean, in general, most people in most countries accept that climate change is a reality when we've gotten past that skepticism thing, finally. And so people accept that it's a reality. They accept that it's caused by humans. They're concerned about it to some extent, but far less people think that there's anything that they can do about it. I mean, how many people do you know that say, I really care about this issue, but I don't, I can't do anything. Well, what can I do? And for years, you know, we've talked about the power of our bully pulpit as filmmakers and the impact that we can have on audiences. So now that we've got this data and research that is saying, well, hey, maybe the reason people don't know what they can do is because there's not talking about it and film and television, the worlds that we're kind of like looking to for entertainment and for leaf and modeling and inspiration. And they are talking about climate. So there is a movement that's, you know, it's been sort of building and it's kind of taking off right now because there's money from Europe being poured into this industry to really think about how we can normalize talking about climate on screen. And that means we're, you know, encouraging writers and content creators to sort of can think about not just sort of what your big climate show is that you can come up with, but how can you incorporate it into all of your stories? How can you look at any show that you're writing or anything that you're thinking about writing and sort of think about the whole spectrum from, you know, climate mentions, climate behaviors, you know, to putting it into dialogue, character jobs or subplots. It's not, it doesn't have to be a climate show. And then, you know, you can think about it in terms of any genre storyline feature TV series or tick tock, which is happening quite a bit in the younger demographic. So that's, that's sort of where we are with climate storytelling. There's, you know, we did a roll call in the industry a few weeks ago and, you know, over 60 organizations that are working in different levels of advocacy and research and content creation and content executives, financiers, scientists, I mean, it's really, it was really an extraordinary group that came together. So I think it's really a serious conversation. It's on. And we're excited to bring everybody into this today and talk about it. Thank you, Lydia. That was great. Does anybody else want to add to that? I think that was really well explained. Okay, so then why why do you believe climate concerns are so rarely mentioned or appearing in fictional TV and film worlds? You know, you said how important it is. Why is it not showing up? And I'll direct this question to Carmel. Sure. Yeah, I realized I was on mute. I was all excited before. But yeah, off of what Lydia said, you really, we don't have to think of it as climate stories. We can think of it as climate portrayals, climate representation. Everyone is concerned, is facing climate in some way in their lives. But of course, we're not seeing it on screen, as Lydia pointed out. So how can we approach that? And what, you know, what are those roadblocks? So a lot of conversations we've had with writers through our qualitative research and through that USC study you mentioned, one of the biggest writing blocks is that people are afraid that they're going to be boring or preachy, and that they're going to that people are not interested, you know, in depressing stories. But climate does not have to be depressing. I mean, I know that might sound weird, climate is so, so depressing. But, you know, it doesn't have to be a lecture, you don't have to shoehorn information, right? And we're seeing such wonderful examples coming out, there's still far too few examples. But the ones that we are seeing are exciting, you know, it can be integrated into any genre into comedy. Insecure is a great example, I'll have an elementary is a great example, weaving in jokes, you know, it's just part of our lives. So how can we represent that on screen as just part of our character's lives? Yeah, I can go on. But maybe I'll let others jump in. Sorry, go on. Heather, you were going to say something. No. I was just going to say, Carmel, you've led such incredible work through the playbook and the workshops that you're doing, one of the things that you say, and I want to highlight it is just this idea of like, if you're writing characters and stories that aren't grappling with climate change, then you're sort of divorcing from our reality. And we're creating this portrayal of humanity and our stories that is not really reconciling with what we're experiencing emotionally. And I just think I really love that point that's raised. And to me, that's a highlight of climate storytelling is like, how are we seeing this in our own stories? Because it's a part of our story now, whether we like it or not, whether we control it or not, we're all coming at different entry points. And how are we seeing that in the various ways that we're reconciling with stories in our culture? And Dorothy says, so brilliantly, if climate isn't in your story, it's science fiction. The climate change is inherently intersectional. It intersects with all of our identities. It intersects with every issue that already exists that you're probably already working on a story about from migration to food, to living in a city, to any topic you could think of, climate can intersect. So there's so many interesting and also entertaining ways that it could be woven in. Yeah, many people don't absorb information through facts. So storytelling is the way that they absorb information. So yeah. What are some challenges? I know that we've spoken kind of a bit, but what are some other challenges or resistance to including climate narratives into scripts? Are there more challenges across certain genres, certain formats? Heather, why don't you take this? Or start us off. Sure, yeah. I mean, you know, I think for my listening of the field from people who are trying to advance climate storytellers, I mean, some of the pushback that we're hearing and experiencing is I really think it's intimidating. Climate change is very intimidating to talk about. It's a huge problem. It feels like how do we see ourselves or our characters in this gigantic problem that we keep hearing more and more and more headlines about how is my story going to make a difference in this conversation? So I think there's a big intimidation factor that is really playing a role here. And so the more that we continue to have discourse about it and build up our kind of way of speaking about it in our own world and contextualization is really helpful to break down those barriers. And I also think that there's a real barrier to embracing the idea that there's a common set of values around how we care about our planet and how we care about our future. Oftentimes it can be misinterpreted that by putting climate in your narrative, you're attempting to be preachy or you're attempting to have a political message or you're trying to jam some sort of action plan down people's throats. And storytellers don't necessarily want to do that with just the stories that they're telling. And so I think really understanding and leaning into the humanity of what it's like to grapple with this, the complexity awareness of people being at different entry points, really expanding the idea of, as Carmel said, avoiding the doom and gloom conclusionary fatalistic conclusion of there's nothing we can do. There's no way I can help. There's nothing that my story will move the needle on. And just really kind of recontextualizing that by talking about this issue is like talking about every other issue that we care about. It intersects with it. We are humans in the story of it. Let's break it down to the micro. Let's talk about the ways that it is really affecting our emotions as people are interpersonal dynamics. Let's not look at solutions just as science based solutions, but as people, communities, discussion, and rising to meet challenges. And let's talk about that as a climate story instead of feeling like we have to offer like a textbook explanation or an action plan that makes you feel like you are stepping into a zone that you don't yet feel comfortable doing. I also think building on everything that you just said, Heather, that engaging on climate change is challenging because it's filled with so many uncertainties. And it's almost existential. Sometimes it just feels bigger than us, right? So in that sense, I think we're living in a time when people are managing anxiety by with a certain amount of denial because it's just necessary to kind of keep it all together. We're just dealing with so much disruption in our lives. And there was this article in the Washington Post this week about hope. And it was so interesting the way they talked about hope because they were saying it's more like a muscle than an emotion. Like it's a cognitive skill. I thought, oh my God, hope is a cognitive skill. I just thought I had to take my meds. But one that helps people reject the status quo and visualize a better way that you actually have a role to play in making it better. So in that sense, activism joining with other people working on this issue is a way to mitigate that kind of anxiety that we're inevitably going to feel because we are, things are going to get better, but they're also going to get worse. And we're going to be in this kind of messy middle for a while. And it's going to be stressful. So I think all of those things are things that as storytellers, we can help people navigate. And we can, by creating complex characters that we can identify with on screen. And when you're writing stories, you want to think about the world building of your story and how many people you represent on your screen that you can enter the story through, because that means you're going to increase your audience by that many people. So I think, you know, insights to what people are feeling and, you know, helping people guide people toward the ways that they can find solutions is something that we could do, you know, to sort of bring resilience, you know, to our culture. And it's something that we're just going to increasingly need, as, you know, as we enter this next wave. I love this discussion of emotions and hope. And especially like in the activist community, it's really not a question of hope versus hopelessness, right? Climate change covers the entire human emotional spectrum, just like our stories can, you know, so again, like the stories do not have to be depressing, you know, it's climate change. As it gets worse, even we're still going to fall in love and there's going to be babies, there's just like life events will happen in conjunction as climate touches every part of our lives. So I think that there's still, you know, joy to be had even when shit hits the fan, you know, and there's still joy that can be part of our stories. And yeah, I think I think that as storytellers, we don't need to be afraid of the doom and gloom, like Heather was saying, that we can look to these real life activists and some of whom are on this panel to see just how wide ranging these stories could be. So that kind of leads me into how we want more storytellers or people to write stories, but how can we ensure writers and creators have the best resources upon which to relay accurate information on climate? And that actually lends into a question that we just had from one of our guests, Pam, who is kind of asking the same thing, how we're ensuring that the way that we're representing climate change is factual, but also not doom and gloom. Laurel. Yeah, well, so I work at Rare and it's a behavior change organization and we spent years of research doing, trying to find the behaviors at the intersection of high potential for adoption and carbon emission reduction. And so those things were eating a plant-based diet, reducing food waste, driving an electric vehicle. And also what best predicts whether people will actually take action isn't climate concern, it isn't political orientation, it's actually whether they think the people around them are already taking action on climate change. And so we really focus on trying to normalize these behaviors and there are so many different ways to do that. Going off of what Lydia and Carmel already said, it can be like really small things like maybe it's people having a conversation while they're plugging in their electric vehicle like in Netflix's partner track or in next in fashion season two, which is a competition show, there are moments where they upcycle clothes, but you can also have bigger plot lines like in HBO's Sex Lives of College Girls, they had a strip show fundraiser for climate change and they bring in like a climate refugee to convince the president to let them do it. And in those shows sustainability was brought in very smoothly and it wasn't jarring to viewers and so there are so many different ways to integrate climate. Sheila you're muted. I was just going to say one more thing to add to that. By the way, hi everyone I'm Sheila with Habits of Waste. We had a conversation once with the director and trying to get them to adopt our campaign which is lights camera plastic to remove plastic on screen and they're like well we have a scene that's a fair and it's really difficult to not have those classic one single use items that are in a fair. However, what we can do is have one of the characters who's supposed to be an immigrant from another country come in and comment on the overflowing trash bins that are in the normal fair scene. So just like we were talking about before where it would kind of do us a disservice to not mention anything about you know climate and issues like this because it is a reality. So they modified that the script to reflect this person's shock for how much trash there is in this country and do you guys throw everything away kind of thing. So I would love to note that we're not looking for writers to be experts in this arena. However, it's very doable I think to reflect what we see in the world as it is currently and show the concern about it and perhaps show better ways. Yeah so I wanted to share that little tidbit that I thought was really interesting. Yeah and just a second to that point that you do not have to be a climate expert to write about climate. Like climate is already part of your life so you're already an expert in some way and starting where you're interested is the best way and there are many many experts out there who want to help and so there's many organizations including Good Energy that consult on projects and put projects and studios and writers in touch with super appropriate experts you know anywhere from like researching arsenic dust as a bright product of the drought in Salt Lake City to you know to climate migration. So whatever the topic is there are experts who want to help because they want to see more stories like this and then of course the playbook I'd love to drop in the chat and Lydia just dropped other resources as well. So there's many many resources and many people who want to help and who have lived experience too from the front lines who are also experts for those stories. Yeah and I'll add I mean Carmel's group with Anna Jane Joyner the Good Energy project and playbook is is one of the big climate training groups and there's another one Natural Resources Defense Council and RDC has a program called Rewrite the Future and both these two groups are very active in the entertainment industry doing trainings with different you know writers rooms and corporations and creative execs and it's it's really helpful. I know Carmel's going to keep talking about Good Energy today because there's so much work they're doing but I also want to mention that NRDC has 700 experts that they're working with. It's an organization that is and you know they do quite a bit of litigation actually but the Rewrite the Future program is a part of it which is about effect impacting change through storytelling and they're really you know they're really terrific because you know and we've worked with them on some of our PGA WGA climate storytelling with writers and creative producers and showrunners who by the way you know we were introducing this idea of the spectrum of climate storytelling that seemed like for the first time it's it's a new way of thinking about climate storytelling and it's important given this data but also I sometimes I'm struck by the fact that you know how lawyers have to go sort of do education around upping their their credentials and their credibility to keep their license and so they're going to this convention or this seminar just to get updated on the latest. I mean we are so in that place with climate because the science which we've mentioned is intimidating doesn't have to be we can all you know we can all learn it and as storytellers we can also translate it and we can work with consultants you know we know that two studios have sustainability departments where executives have content and their title and that's Netflix and NBC Universal and they're working with people to they'll bring in these consultants to work with writers and storytellers to help to help suss out you know somebody asked the question about how do you know it's factual well you bring in resources who specialize you know in whatever the particular area that you're working in and they will they will help you do that work and then you as the artist and the storyteller have to decide how to make that understandable but I think people are hungry for this because in that vein of I care about this but I don't know what to do we need to be educated I'm you know we do a lot of work around clean energy on this on the sustainable production side and I'm always shocked how overwhelmed people are about the concept of clean energy and frankly just don't quite understand sort of the full spectrum that's happening right now and it's happening very rapidly so these are important things that we all need to know to sort of talk about how we decarbonize our world but I think that's exciting you know I think it's exciting to get into that you don't have to pick a story that would take you in that direction but I think that as we you know as we move deeper and deeper into seeing more content on screen people will become more hungry for knowledge that helps them understand the things that are just happening right around you right now and the choices that you can make and if I could add one more thing you know when you're thinking about being factually accurate I would invite you to also think about what's your role as an anthropologist as a storyteller and not just look at like what are the facts behind what I need to present as data but what are the cultural norms that have gotten us here what are the systems at play that people feel stuck in and don't see a way out of and how are different people experiencing this and coming to the conclusions that they're coming to and really looking at maybe less as a factual presentation as a representation as an authentic representation of how are we here and what has led us to get here and how do we you know dissect some of those cultural norms and systems that perpetuate that because that is where the character work can get really deep and that is where the story backdrops can be really interesting and you can feel that can guide you to where you need to be factually accurate but you know I think authentic portrayal of people and complexity awareness of where we're at is another deep important thing to think about when we're thinking about accurately portraying things such great answers thank you you've all just shared amazing resources so thank you for that and that kind of led me into another question of mine is so the resources available to writers you've already shared many there but to your knowledge is climate storytelling addressed in any screenwriting courses by aspiring filmmakers are there any resources for them for aspiring filming or aspiring writers Carmel so well I guess I'll plug our workshop I mean we love uh we call it the climate lens workshop so we really do come at this from an angle of climate representation or portrayal that can be integrated into like raising the climate lens as a generative tool for any story in any genre you know something that can make characters more complex and and or or make add conflict or deepen a setting and as Lydia mentioned NRDC also has workshops and trainings and I'm sure others on this panel know of other workshops and trainings as well hmm amazing thank you at the end of the panel I do have a list of resources available to everyone so they'll you'll all be able to see a list of grants fellowships and resources available to you all as well just plug there's green film schools initiative so if there are any students out there get in touch with them I think that they're building resources for schools and educators specifically so we just want to make sure that you know about that group and encourage your school to join the green film schools initiative if that is something that's of interest to bringing if it isn't at your school right now yeah I call them actually in our from our prep meeting to see how many and how many schools had the had any kind of climate content in their um screenwriting courses and they um they they knew of a few sort of anecdotally but then they were going to sort of I think reach out and sort of take a survey of the group I also think we might have actually created a little impact by sparking the question because because whenever you ask you know do you have this then somebody's the next question is well why not you know how great or why not um so um it'll be interesting to see um if there's an uptick in that next year and I think yeah Tish and um Columbia are starting to integrate them to their screenwriting classes for sure and AFI like we heard yeah oh that's so exciting a new generation of writers yeah um great uh Sheila before you mentioned many um ways of adding products onto the actual screen or or items to the actual screen in in that way what are some resources um what are some resources these decision makers um can use to find vetted green products um like for example green product placement um and what are some of those barriers um thank you yeah I think that any scene that we talk about here with our lights camera classic campaign can most of the time be told with a reusable product instead so sometimes it's as simple as swapping a plastic water bottle in like a conference room scene for a picture of water and glasses so it doesn't necessarily need to have like a big um kind of search for these products however there are films um like marry me film that did a huge partnership with swell where they had um Jennifer Lopez's character have a reusable water bottle that had Swarovski crystals all around it and it really was in line with who her character was and she was this big star in the film and everything and so every single time she had a water bottle it was all crystal so I think that there are ways to get creative and of course swell became um you know a huge element of the film and and product placement was a part of it so just like um a lot of times people tell us oh well is is you know lights camera plastic what about is it really going to work does it really matter we talk a lot about product placement and how if it didn't work um what you put on screen if it didn't really matter there would be no products out there spending millions of dollars to be in front of us so I think um it's really crucial to to look at it like that and understand that a there are sustainable companies out there who would really do whatever it takes to get in front of viewers and b many times instead of a plastic cutlery you just use a stainless steel one and that usually doesn't impact the production's budget or anything like that because it's it's what's around and it's reusable so um yeah I hope that that that answers the question really clearly because I think when we say to swap out the plastic items for reusables we're really not looking for a massive lift we're looking for what's the simplest easiest most realistic alternative that's you know good for the planet so that we can inspire people just like we did with smoking many years back by removing smoking from screens we were able to see a huge dip in actual smokers so what we're trying to do is denormalize single use plastic as the default and start to give people some other options to look at while they're while they're watching their films and subconsciously we believe that they will start to notice that they're going to reach for reusable first hopefully rather than the single use great um who are the decision makers when it comes to including more sustainable products on screen um and like what are the some of the first steps when analyzing how to include more sustainable actions and products or or storylines in this space well with our with our research we automatically assumed it was a set decorator or the prop master and we interviewed a few of them and started to realize that they didn't want to make the decision to put the reusables on screen because they were afraid for their job they were afraid the director would come in and say well why i never set to make a green set and so they were filled with worry and so what we did was we went in and created a toolkit so that any production can basically create a new culture within the walls of their production by getting the executive producer or the director to first start with an email just explaining what the issues are with single use plastic and how this production is going to try and be plastic free as often as possible on screen that then translates into providing you know watermarks on the scripts posters again to neutralize that this is not going to get you into trouble so everyone knows everyone is seeing clearly that there is a request made by the higher ups to go reusable wherever possible and that's exactly what the signage says we spoke to many groups and they suggested that at the very beginning of the production there's usually a HR meeting and during that HR meeting some directors have been using the opportunity to set the tone for this issue of not using plastic on screen that's interesting very interesting thank you for that okay we often think about climate storytelling as documentaries about the natural world how the forests and animals are disappearing sometimes very doom and gloom how can we make climate more relatable to our everyday lives and be part of all genres and now i know that we spoke about just making it simple decisions but does anybody have anything else to add to that uh laurel honestly i feel like i've said everything earlier lydia do you have something that you wanted to add well yeah um well actually i wanted to because miranda had a good question um in the chat and i wanted to and it's kind of spinning into this a little bit um but she said um she was she was talking about let me go back to it um how can those who are knowledgeable about climate change and want to get involved in climate storytelling process um do it despite not being traditional writers and i i think one of the things that's interesting is that um you know we're learning a lot more about the younger audience like you know in 16 to 25 that the people are not watching that that group is not watching television um in the way that older generations have and that they're more apt to get their climate content through social influencers and on you know youtube and tiktok and i find that really important information um because i think that you know we have in in this sort of um you know my kids are digital i call them digital natives because they've only known digital um content and and attention spans are different and we take in content in different ways and i think that you know it's important to broaden that conversation about points of entries the other thing i'll say is you know you may be a writer and you can pursue that and that's a there's a lot of ways to to do that but you know content also gets produced it gets directed it gets acted it could you know it happens on so many levels and it's a big collaborative process so if you're interested in storytelling as a career i would really that's it's a whole another spectrum to look at in terms of points of entry and ways that you can be a creative and a creative collaborator and something that you're passionate about um now i forgot what your the other question was that you i honestly i think it was it was very well answered okay um and i think it's just yeah i'd love to add uh analora because you mentioned documentaries as sort of being in the front of our minds the nature animal ecosystem forward stories and would love to share that um actually where i find some of the most incredible climate storytelling that does humanize the climate crisis is in documentary filmmaking and i really encourage you to check out films like the territory youth v gov uh impossible town um sea of shadow like there's a whole list of um real stories of real people and uh how they are grappling with climate change in their community in their personal life and have taken it upon themselves to become the hero of their own story and that's told through a story and it's very powerful um and so i think you know uh one of our roles at the redford center has really expanded definition of what we think of as an environmental story because we do have an image that comes to mind when we say environmental story and actively i think that's what's harming some of the fiction work that's happening is because we have this idea of what environmental storytelling means um and i think we need to see more people in those stories i think we need to see more cultures in those stories and i think um leaning into even short form stories look on new york op docs look on um many environmental filmmaking uh film festivals we're seeing short films come through that you can really tap in really quickly to some very humanized experiences and it's really really incredibly inspiring firsthand accounts of lived experience of climate change yeah just to jump in on that i mean heather wrote a great piece for the playbook also about um documentaries as as inspiration too for uh fiction writers um which is you know where my brain goes like oh that's that's perfect inspiration um and ip and um and as far as other genres go um any climate change is ripe for detective genres you know uh it's it's a big problem that needs solving so why not enter it into these problem solving kind of genres or imagine um you know procedurals and cop shows where bodies surface after mudslides or you know there's all sorts of fun ways um in any genre that it could show up um how to blow up a pipeline is a new film that's about to be released it's a heist genre about climate activists it's it's incredible um so yeah any genre i think climate fits i was um i had heather you should talk about the hollywood climate summit too but um i'll just say that last year the hollywood climate summit i was part of the pitch fest and i was taking pitches and it was really interesting to see what people were right what people were writing about and in climate content and i was really struck by um the number of stories that were about people who had been impacted by climate you know and with the wildfires with health issues with hurricanes with you know and we're talking about you know loss of home we're talking about you know all of a sudden having to find a new way it's um this is you know i i was struck last you know when when biden sort of made the comment that he that we never anticipated the amount of climate refugees that we're going to have in america because of rising sea level and wildfires and droughts and everything that's happening and that kind of you know i think those stories they really touched me and you know i think if we can start touching people now before it gets worse then we you know then we could get more people leaning in into into being proactive but i think that um we all know that you know when we go to pitch stories you know to financiers they want to know the human story you know they want to know who who's who the main characters are what are they feeling what is what are you know what are they confronting what decisions do they need to make as characters and and then the climate is there as part of the cultural background or the physical background and and and yet we're following you know characters that we identify with and that's where we always have the most impact as as storytellers going back to what heather said about um you know people having an idea of what an environmental film is i was recently speaking to a screenwriter and i mentioned the good energy statistic about how only 2.8 percent of scripts had any climate keywords and they were like well only a certain percent of um scripts are sci-fi to begin with and i was like well it doesn't have to just be in sci-fi it can be in so many other things it could be in rom-coms it could be in cooking shows and so i think that's definitely a challenge that i see um is just kind of like breaking that idea that it's only documentaries would love to see a climate rom-com um i wanted to just add that i think sometimes when we talk to people out there about climate storytelling they automatically assume that we're saying to create a film like don't look up which was like the you know ultimate climate storytelling film right but we we can just like take about 20 steps back i think because so many people out there really have no idea that you know this is not normal to for example like i said earlier have an overflowing trash every 10 feet um just just showing that there is a concern there i think offers just a smidge of an opening in someone's mindset that says oh is this not normal already like i live in an area that this is normal but if it's not normal for someone else maybe i can do better so that that for for me here at Habits of Waste is my mission it's like but we we try so hard to to take it down a couple notches because the first thing someone says is either it's a documentary or a film like don't look up and it just doesn't have to be so that is one thing that i think we have to clarify a little bit more for the industry so that people aren't so intimidated by the idea yeah it can be as simple as um a climate action you know in one scene uh even just showing solar panels to actually showing the adoption based off of rare's work you know showing a character actually adopting that behavior is incredibly impactful so but any of that is helpful at this point yeah and also including like lived realities from around the globe like not just certain certain areas of the world engaging storytellers from all nations to get those different perspectives i love it thank you so much for all the answers um are there some genres that are more difficult to interweave climate into than others like for example period pieces and what are some creative waves to weave sustainable storytelling into these uh into them uh anybody can take it for me do you want to start oh um i mean again just uh in from anything can be in the back well period pieces i would i mean that's difficult yeah so uh starting from uh you know when we actually started talking about climate change um is is where we look at it into the near future um but um but yeah i think it's possible in any genre as long as you're starting from character especially so what would your character do um how would your character authentically encounter the climate crisis um how would they avoid it or deny it how would they how does their response differ from you know another character's response in the same scene so starting from character no matter what genre i think um is often key i've also given thought thought because you sent that question to think about uh and allora and i was thinking about period pieces because i thought that was a really interesting point and i was thinking can you show the change that has happened to our natural world through traveling through time can you show what extractive practices have put people society and environments through um can you grapple with people making decisions and why they made decisions to perpetuate those systems at the time that they were living and how did we get here um there's a lot of root cause symptoms of climate change to examine in period pieces that i think are really interesting so you know i think it's it's like lydia said i think it's exciting to be presented with these challenges because i think there is a way in through nearly every application that i've heard about it's just about digging into um what do you want to say and where did how did we get here and what is what is the human journey to be where we are now and what decisions can we make differently that are different than those that we made in the past those are really i love that like bringing it in um how we got here i think i think content that shows political will is important too and i i you know we i made a film um of radium girls about the radium girls and that was in the 1920s and it was the dawn of industrialization but we found that you know and this was really tough because these girls were you know painting glow in the dark watch dial watch dials it for the soldiers and they were um radium had just been invented by Marie Curie and everybody thought it was the miracle elixir of all times and and it was doing some good things like x-rays and but it was also these girls were imbibing it and dying and the corporate doctors were diagnosing them with syphilis and nobody was really you know understanding what was happening and then and they were a lot of them were teenagers in new jersey and so they wrote they decided when they realized that that this is what was happening they made a decision to stand up to the corporation and um that became sort of the hope of the story because i was like how oh my god we're making this story about these girls they're just gonna die which they did they all died but they actually impacted history in a way that they'll never know but we know and you know when we screened the movie at Tribecai invited Betsy Sutherland from the EPA to stand on the stage because i didn't want to talk about how much it cost and this and that i wanted Betsy to talk about she had told me that the EPA still uses the radium girls case because it turned out to be the playbook for big tobacco and and so this you know corporate you know it's it's it's something that we really have to deal with because you know we're dealing with other things in our industry around climate right now where we know that fossil fuel companies have created the personal calculator to deflect responsibility onto the individual away from their responsibility which is you know massive so you know there's there's a lot of things about you know that kind of bobbing and weaving but i think anything that can kind of help build um you know confidence of people to know that their voice matters that you know that you can make a difference and that it's really up to us and we need to find like-minded allies and join together and figure out what we can do together because that's really how things will change thank you for all that that was that was great uh jen you have a question yes hi thanks everyone this is really amazing to Jennifer Sandoval from Ruth Angel and i just had a comment about something that heather mentioned because i think about that period piece and how you know how can stories be woven in but that's how you know that's how i've thought about it is you know showing how we got here and i just like i watched the fablemen's i don't know if you guys have seen it it's brilliant the other day and the character the mother um they every time they had dinner like every dinner they would use throw away like plates and cups and and and even you know the tablecloth was plastic and she would just wrap it up and throw it in the garbage after every meal and it was like that feeling of kind of like shocked to see something like that i think you know because it was from the i guess in the fifties you know we can you know i think there was a lot more you know that was a lot more normal to just like use plastic for everything um so but just having that reaction was something that i thought about like wow that that actually is you know meaningful because i'm having a reaction to this because it's really bothering me yeah that reminds me of that mad men scene where they just throw the car window which is just was a reminder okay we've come this far maybe change is possible yeah they all go for a picnic and they just leave everything and the garbage in the park yeah um amazing um i know you all brought up different shows to watch um and different things but what are you currently watching what are you currently watching that has climate storytelling um what do you recommend that is on top of mind uh anybody can answer i'm watching ted lasso season three with my kids right now and um actually last night they had a scene where they were having lunch with a plastic bowl and a plastic fork and i thought they were doing so good but oh my don't know why that happened there so i was moved a little bit but it's a good show well season one they drank out of red plastic cups on the field and then season two they were drinking out of reusable bottles i noticed that changed so distinctly because i was angry at the yeah that's some of your work in there i'm sure that's great i i would really just to drive home you know go see how to blow up a pipeline uh and um uh i i really love how abba elementary is weaving it into several episodes through jokes through um you know it used the environmentalist used to be the butt of the joke now you know we're on the side of the environmentalist and the butt of the joke is the mean principal who's making fun of him you know so uh so we're flipping that script a bit um uh yeah any comedy that that integrates a succession has you know kind of several beats of climate change as we follow the bad guys um how news um how their their organization perpetuates lies and so um it's part of their their story world really pretty subtly but uh but beautifully so um i'm having a very interesting relationship with extrapolations um on apple which is um dropping and i think maybe just has another episode or so to go but um it's um you know it's it's a series about um climate that sort of skips decades into the future and so it's very um you know but but what's interesting to me and i think it's interesting for all of us who are interested in climate storytelling because it's an anthology even though there there are some threads that carry through but it's an anthology and they're different you know different scripts different directing styles different um arcs different topics and subject matter and and you know i i can imagine it's you know everything's not going to resonate for everybody but somebody's going to find something in there and it really does sort of lay out this kind of foundation for like what we can sort of think about in terms of the kind of climate stories we want to tell and what what you know it's a it's a large body of work where you can kind of go in and um this this worked why did that work whatever and um i was particularly taken by the episode about the fifth question as we um enter the Passover season here and um there were this relationship between um this young girl in Miami that's going underwater the temple is you know everybody's wearing their rubber boots to temple and uh David Diggs plays the rabbi and she's having her botanist and she really um just sort of lets every she you know her question at the beginning is why is god doing this to us you know if he cares us about us if he loves us why is he doing this doing this to us and that kind of question kind of goes over and your it makes you think about you know how we find um spiritual strength and how people relate to religion in terms of these questions and seeking answers and um toward the end of it um uh and i know this stuck with me because my husband said are you talking about that episode again you know like i kept saying do you marry me um but um toward the end of it i was very interested um and i was kind of writing down notes sometimes i write notes because i want to like to study the dialogue or go back and look at it and there were some very very sort of interesting things and i thought i heard something i thought i heard them say what does it mean to be human and i wanted to go back and find that place i'm watching the scene over and over i cannot find that line and i realized that i wrote it myself like i must have just written it while i was watching it what does it mean to be human and it was and that's what i took away from the scene and their dialogue and and sort of the world that we're in and it was very it was very powerful for me so um yeah so i i haven't made it through the whole series yet but i'm kind of excited to see what else might kind of um set my mind on fire many people in the chat have also um added shows that they're watching unstable we have dark waters um someone else brought up the elephant whispers so that's really great plug in all your your shows into the chat um and unless somebody else wants to add another show i do have a question from uh from one of our guests i'll second the chat um and say unstable is a great show um it's about this biotech company that's working on creating carbon sequestering concrete but the show is a comedy about like this father-son relationship and so they just do a really great job of like integrating a lot of jokes and keeping it lighthearted yeah i think i'll add fiction i've really enjoyed succession and how they sort of skim around climate change and um the politician on netflix has a really interesting intergenerational dialogue that occurs and if you're looking for documentaries to watch can't recommend highly enough the territory which grapples with indigenous land protectors and king coal which talks about uh communities in appalachia adjusting to the end of the coal era so some really really cool narratives to check out there if you want some documentary inspiration perfect thank you so much uh okay so we have a question from one of our guests uh simron monga do you think that audiences are mature enough to welcome characters following sustainable practices on screen while the actors of those characters may not be doing so in reality would that create a sort of dissonance and lack of authenticity i i get that question a lot actually but go ahead carmel i'll go after you uh just that we're all climate hypocrites to some extent or another in hollywood maybe more so uh but um but i love that we're all talking about showing sustainability on screen and want to add that it isn't to solve this crisis isn't about changing our personal behaviors only it is about solving these systemic issues and going after the few people who are truly causing this the fossil fuel industry so um so as long as we're i wouldn't let people off the hook that easily carmel i just when you say we're all climate hypocrites i think i think that means like there's no way we can all be net zero all the time where there's something that we're not going to get there on but it doesn't mean that we can't do our best at everything that is possible and i i i say you know i say if that's happening little shame goes a long way so i i try not to shame or blame personally within my you know network of people but what i do get a lot of is well if we're using plastic behind the scenes at a onset and then we're not putting it on screen are we being hypocrites is this right you know i feel bad and my theory is that when you start to create these new norms by setting up a scene you know where there's six billion people in the world watching film and television i think eventually if we start with what's on screen it will circle back to what's behind the scenes so we have to start somewhere and i do believe very very wholeheartedly that it is it is the the best possible platform to use film and television to create those new mindsets and those new you know just creating new new new normals throughout society of people who may not have ever even looked at it so whether they're being a hypocrite or not i think it's kind of moot so instead let's do our best what's with what's on screen because it is a reality that we can create and then use that with momentum to build a new social um understanding throughout society and then you'll see very soon that it will be completely um different behind the scene because then that's when the shame comes and that's when it's like ooh i feel bad using this plastic thing or i feel bad you know whatever driving this car because my favorite celebrities all the time on tv now are driving electric vehicles and then that's when it's the hidden hand theory that we're all kind of like who's watching me behave this way i don't want to be that person and i'll also add one more weird thing that's kind of interesting it's if you go into a starbucks or one of these coffee shops and they they did a study where they said okay uh you'll get 25 cents if you bring your own cup that did less of an impact on behavior change than if the person who was standing in line watching three other people holding their reusable cup so um as human beings that is what what makes us change is watching and learning from others that you know maybe we look up to maybe there are peers maybe there are social our friends in our society same thing with um solar panels like when they see the neighborhood is getting them then everyone starts to realize okay i gotta get them too and that's why i think film and tv is such a great opportunity so i think the hypocrisy of it all is kind of um let's i believe we should just kind of put that to the side for a minute do our best on screen and let uh societal shifts take their course i'd also like to add that i really love this question because it highlights the importance of culture and the culture that i want to talk about is the culture of hollywood and i think what we're seeing right now is still a resistance it's so sad some of the stories that have been shared today people feeling that they were going to get in trouble for recommending a reusable prop on set and things like that that's you know i think it's worth us recognizing and this is why i'm a co-founder of the hollywood climate summit we have some community organizing to do in our own industry we are not there yet the fact that we still feel these barriers as industry professionals uh in our own industry to do this advocacy work and to not have it be taboo and to not have it feel like we're going to be in trouble um that's a deep reflection of where we are in our culture in hollywood and we need to make it accessible and cool and fun and these actors need to come along with us on that journey our directors and show runners need to come along with us on that journey we need to drive that cultural shift and that is greatly in part due to us convening gathering putting some support behind this and not staying in siloed spaces where we're only individually advocating in our own little worlds and so join the hollywood climate summit come out see the movement happening um there's community organizing that needs to happen in this industry for any of these things to ever ever really not be facing these barriers that we've talked about today such passion i love it yeah thousand percent yeah we need this passion we need people standing up for for this change um yeah demetri you go heather um it's perfect um i i don't see any other questions in the chat uh i think everybody's just been sharing resources and um shows that they're watching which is great um so i really want to thank you i want to thank you all everyone for joining us today um uh taking time out of your day to join us um and to listen to all the insights that came out today um but a special thank you to all of our wonderful panelists today um and a huge shout out goes to mom um and the nyc film green program for helping to facilitate this amazing panel and the various office hour panels that we do um on that note please join us for the next office hours panel on sustainable food on set um and this one will be on may 23rd um but i really do want to thank everybody for coming in um and yeah thank you to the panelists here are some resources on the screen that you can access for um resources on on climate storytelling on how to integrate it into your scripts various tool kits um various other tools that you can use along with some fellowships and grants um if you're looking for funding for your project um there's currently a contest going on for climate scripts i don't remember who it was posted by um but uh definitely there's the Hollywood climate summit pitch fest which is open right now with people so please apply for that and the climate storytelling fellowship in collaboration with the blacklist the redford center cAA foundation and the nrdc is also coming up soon in april so a couple of opportunities if you are writers sorry just wanted to make sure that people know help please please um i forgot that that was that was who was hosting the contest but yeah it's perfect um and also as a reminder this this panel has been recorded um and it will be posted to the nyc film green uh web page uh as a as a little video um so you can definitely rewatch it re listen again to all of the insights that have been shared here today um and uh i'll try to share all of these amazing resources that just keep getting shared with the chat um to all of the panel or to all the guests that that came here today uh let me check the channel see if there's any other question uh a reminder to apply to pitch fest before april 27 uh we want climate scripts bring them in um but yes thank you all thank you so much for joining and that concludes our panel thank you panelists thank you so much thank you so much yeah oh and yes if you do want more resources look to the what um nyc film green website um but also uh to the earth angel website um to find out on new panels or upcoming more resources for the like thank you everyone thank you