Responsible cinema: best practices are spreading
Nine months after the publication of the AFNOR Spec 2308 standard, at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, professionals from the film, audiovisual, and advertising industries are adopting best practices for more responsible filming. This was the goal of the sponsors, the Ministry of Culture and the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image.
CSR and sustainability
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Filming with less environmental impact and respect for social issues, sure, but how exactly? Fortunately, there is a set of best practices for professionals in the film, audiovisual, and advertising industries that answers this question: AFNOR Spec 2308. Supported by the Ministry of Culture and the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC), it is the result of a collective effort involving 130 professionals, including film, audiovisual and advertising production organizations representing employers and employees, and two long-standing experts in these issues. Ecoprod and Flying Secoya.
AFNOR Responsible Cinema Specification: 7 chapters, 3 levels, 28 indicators
The AFNOR Spec standard provides production companies with concrete actions for implementing a film, audiovisual, or advertising project that takes into account the three main aspects of CSR, namely environmental issues (carbon, pollution, energy, waste, biodiversity, etc.), social issues (inclusion, gender equality, training, etc.), and economic issues (responsible purchasing, circular economy, reuse, etc.). This covers everything from the preparation phase of filming to the post-production phase. The document is divided into seven chapters: governance, energy and mobility, responsible purchasing, food and waste management, digital sobriety, biodiversity and animal welfare, inclusion, gender equality and quality of life at work, training and awareness. A shoot featuring animals, for example, will be particularly interested in chapter 6, while a shoot for a cooking show will be more interested in chapter 4. The guidelines propose three levels of progressive commitment:
- Level 1 : the production company is taking a responsible approach to its project;
- Level 2: it is strengthening its approach to responsibility in its project;
- Level 3: The production company implements a responsibility approach across all of its projects.
The framework comprises 28 criteria, corresponding to an action or a list of actions to be implemented in the project undertaken. Professionals will thus be able to focus their efforts on actions identified as having an impact and suited to the specific characteristics of their project: establishing a mobility plan, raising awareness of inclusive recruitment, calculating the project's carbon footprint, etc. This last point is important in view of the obligation, in force since January 1, 2024, for films and series applying for public funding to carry out two carbon assessments: an initial provisional assessment, upstream, and a final assessment, downstream. This concerns around 300 works financed each year by the CNC, representing 4,600 hours of programming. The use of AFNOR Spec is part of the transformation of practices promoted by the CNC's Action Plan, a framework program for ecological and energy transition in the film, audiovisual, and animated image sectors.
Published in May 2024, this first national standardization document is available to production professionals, who can adopt it on a voluntary basis. "It is not out of the question that this document could eventually become an international standard, similar to the one on responsible events (ISO 20121), used in the context of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games and more broadly by the entire events industry," comments Grégory Berthou, supervisor of this work at AFNOR. The new version of ISO 20121 was released in mid-2024.
