CSULB's Film & Electronic Arts Department and Other Leading Film Schools form the Green Film School Alliance to Create Sustainable Production Practices
Kent Hayward, Associate Professor of Narrative Production has long dreamed about incorporating sustainability in the film classroom at CSULB. After re-connecting with former student mentee and Film & Electronic Arts alumna, Claudia Villalta, Sustainability & Medical Services Specialist at Sony Pictures, this passion for green filmmaking quickly became a reality.
The Film & Electronic Arts Department at California State University, Long Beach is one of the founding members of the Green Film School Alliance. The Green Film School Alliance officially launched on August 16th, 2021. Read more about this exciting partnership between the industry and film schools in the official press release below.
"PEACHy, the green checklist that we (the GFSA) put together is a great tool for student filmmakers, and the fact that it can make them eligible for the prestigious, industry recognized EMA Green Seal for Students, and the EMA Awards is a huge opportunity for my students. Not only can my students help save the planet by incorporating these green tools in their filmmaking, but they will gain experience in a new field that is taking hold in the industry. It’s exciting to think that my CSULB filmmakers are getting in on the ground floor of a growing new field, and that they will be leaders in the sustainable filmmaking practices of the future! "
-Kent Hayward, Associate Professor of Narrative Production
Green Film School Alliance Press Release August 16, 2021 10am PDT, Los Angeles, CA:
A cohort of the leading film schools across the country announced today the launch of the Green Film School Alliance (GFSA), an organization united to integrate industry-level sustainable production practices into their programs, committing to bring common language, standards, and tools to their institutions. This alliance is built around specific actions aimed to reduce the impacts of physical production on the environment, a willingness to share best practices and a pledge to further sustainable initiatives at their schools. “PEACHy,” a comprehensive list of relevant sustainable production actions broken out by department and category is available as of today, open-sourced, at GreenProductionGuide.com.
In June of 2020, the Sustainable Production Alliance (SPA) teamed up with the founding member schools dedicated to incorporating sustainability into their production programs and develop resources for all film students, creating GFSA. Modeled after the industry standard Green Production Guide best practices and American Film Institute’s (AFI) internal Green Initiative and Green Seal programs, PEACHy is aligned with Environmental Media Association’s Green Seal program, to which a specific category for students to earn this third-party recognition has been added.
For their soft-launch, GFSA and SPA partnered with the Motion Picture Alliance to produce the online panel, “Film School Friday: Sustainability from Studios to Students,” which aired in October 2020. Shortly thereafter, PEACHy was piloted.
“SPA and PGA Green have been working toward sustainable production solutions for more than a decade. Collaborating with the GFSA founding schools to get these aligned principles and practices into their programs is an exciting and significant next step,” says Heidi Kindberg, Director of Sustainability, HBO & HBOMax. “As these and future film students graduate, they can finally make ‘sustainable production’ a misnomer – it’ll just be ‘production’.”
GFSA includes representatives from eleven film schools:
American Film Institute (AFI)
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts)
California State University – Long Beach (CSULB)
California State University – Northridge (CSUN)
Hussian College at LA Center Studios
New York Film Academy (NYFA)
New York University (NYU)
University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA)
University of Southern California (USC)
