…in watching film – or television – it is easy to overlook the sprawling industry that lies behind the scenes, bringing entertainment to life. Even less obvious are the environmental impacts of filmmaking, which involve energy consumption, waste generation, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and physical disruptions on location.

This ignorance may have given the industry a get out of jail free card for most of its life, but we hope the UCLA study shed some light on the need for environmental friendliness in the motion picture and television industry. To see what happened as a reaction to the study, to give an idea of the state of green in entertainment, and to provide context for the rest of the writing on this blog, we’ve constructed the following Green Film Industry Timeline. Enjoy!

November, 2006: UCLA IoE releases their annual Environmental Report Card, which breaks out the environmental effects of the Film and Television Industry in Los Angeles.

December, 2006: The state of New Mexico announces a voluntary green filmmaking initiative, which gives filmmakers filming in New Mexico guidelines and resources for environmentally conscious filming.

April, 2007: The Canadian greencode project launches, aiming to “make media with no impact.”

October, 2007: The California Film Commission publishes a Green Resource Guide, designed to “help productions minimize their environmental impact.”

February, 2008: In response to growing interest in filming in the UK, the Mayor of London and Film London spearhead an effort to make the capital city the “greenest place to film.”

September, 2008: American University’s Center for Social Media and Center for Environmental Filmmaking begin writing The Code of Best Practices in Sustainable Filmmaking, a component of which is a survey that can be taken here.

October, 2008: A team including a former Paramount Pictures president announces plans to build “the first all-union built, green, SMART studio facility in the world” in Massachusetts.