The Environmental Impact of Filmmaking: Using Star Wars to Improve Sector Sustainability Practices

Responding to the urgency of activist movements and governmental talks to prevent climate change, screen sector practitioners are, at present, seeking solutions to the environmental harms caused by film production. For example, events run by the British Film Institute and Creative Scotland have discussed how the sector can become greener. However, as attested by Albert, BAFTA's industry-leading sustainability consultancy, industry initiatives to date have focused on carbon-offsetting on film shoots. While many filmmakers hope to achieve carbon neutrality, researchers and activists argue that 'net-zero' masks the effects of prolonged carbon use and fails to prevent climate change.

This project, then, will turn attention to the hidden environmental impacts of prop and costume making, and provide practitioners with tools to help them reduce carbon emissions. In doing so, the project will collaborate with Albert to provide four sustainability calculators, each of which will estimate the carbon emissions produced by an object made for the Star Wars franchise. The calculators will also enable practitioners to input data to determine the sustainability of their past or future productions. The four case studies underpinning the calculators are: 1. Analogue (1980) and digital (2005) iterations of the droid Artoo Detoo 2. Queen Amidala's 'throne room' costume in The Phantom Menace (1999) 3. Stormtrooper helmets appearing across multiple films 4. An animatronic porg from The Last Jedi (2017).

Star Wars is a useful point of departure in discussions about sustainability. For, from its inception to the present day, it has told stories about environmental change. In A New Hope (1977), a human-made weapon obliterates the planet Alderaan. The Phantom Menace addresses the effects of colonisation. And in Solo (2018), characters recognise the effects of war on different eco-systems. Emerging in the 1970s alongside the first mainstream public debates about climate change and other environmental issues, the Star Wars franchise has provided fascinating commentary on how humans change the natural world.

Of course, planetary exploitation is not limited to its onscreen narratives. It can also be evidenced in the production and commoditising of Star Wars properties, which are all made from raw materials: stormtrooper helmets rely on thermoplastics derived from oil; silicon computer chips store digital characters. Through its extractive, manufacturing, and waste processes, the franchise harms ecosystems and contributes to global climate change by emitting carbon, among other pollutants. Yet many of the franchise's innovations in prop and costume making, which have emerged from English studios, have set standards across the sector for over four decades. Visually iconic Star Wars properties appear in fashion magazines (Vogue, 1977, 2002), are referenced by other media such as television shows (Ru Paul's Drag Race UK, 2021), and are crucial to Star Wars merchandising. Thus, the franchise will offer valuable insights into the environmental impact of prop and costume making that are relevant to the film industry and other design-oriented sectors.

The project's findings and resources will be shared on a website, which will include written histories, short videos, and visual material. Furthermore, through a research network, industry focus group, and events (such as a lecture at the National Science and Media Museum's 'Widescreen Weekend' Film Festival), the project will prompt discussions about sustainability among academics, practitioners, and the public. The Environmental Impact of Filmmaking project, then, will demonstrate how props and costume making are vital to industry efforts to make filmmaking more sustainable. By equipping practitioners with tools to adopt greener processes and inspiring public conversations about industry practices, the project will have a lasting and positive impact on film production.