Pixels Under a Dome: Rethinking Ecology in the Film Industry

With over twenty years in the world of cinema and video, we have witnessed the rise and dominance of the digital era. We started at a time when non-linear editing (NLE) systems were taking over, hard drives were filling up at lightning speed, and Moore’s Law seemed to promise an infinite amount of storage. With the « hot swap » technology, the fantasy of the limitless recording was finally there. It was exhilarating, intoxicating even. But quickly, that excitement turned into indigestion, a disgust accentuated by all that hypocrite bullshit that so many businesses in our sector dare to speak. Greenwashing is only the flip side of excess.

We’ve reached a point of saturation, an overdose of images. “Pixel waste” has become a clear metaphor for both mental and material waste. There is probably a lot of power at play (scopic capitalism), cinema and image media are often considered as princes, the world is put at their disposal, and moreover, they claim the right to waste all the energy they wish. And I include myself in that, of course. The constant increase in production speed allows us to burn pixels immoderately.

Our society of image consumption is starting to enslave us to the images, to our image. Maybe it’s time to return to creative constraint, to essential focus. And to new forms. If like us, you enjoy challenges, let’s talk about real green stuff, let’s adapt, transform the tools and the face of our videos.

In this context, a few years ago, we developed a radical project for a residency at MAD, the Brussels design center. The idea was to place a production company “under a dome”, literally, in a controlled environment to observe their production both quantitatively and qualitatively. We can now share our ideas with you. This project is still waiting to be hosted somewhere. It’s open, please just steal it altogether. It is a fertile ground for reflection on the ecology of our industry, on the energy awareness we should all have, and on how production companies can reduce their impact without compromising creativity.

Anatomy of a company

• Study the case of IN2IT video agency (www.in2it.video) because they are small, flexible, and work in very varied sectors

• Host this company to analyse it up close (under a dome, controlled lab conditions)

• Quantitative: monitor the consumption of each device, exact movements (trackers)

• Qualitative: what is their degree of preparation? Do they have time to think about what they are doing? Isn’t writing the green key to precision and depth of the final result? Then confessional/debrief on each produced shot: why so many takes? The haste? The need for everything to be perfect? And that shot, didn’t we already know it would never be edited? Compare the final video to the brief

• Was there not too much editing time compared to discussion time? Too many trials and errors, too many corrections, poor communication, too many validation layers? Question of trust and listening.

Anatomy of a video

• Stats on the energy balance of their different types and formats of video

• Access to stats and metadata of the company in full transparency: shooting, production, movement, computers for post-production…

• Behind the scenes, timelapse of all activities (illustrative, eye of Moscow), analyze the results, keep the extracts and then erase the rest

• Behind the timeline: show graphically (find data artists) the energy balance of each edited sequence, the iceberg of pixels behind it

Reinventing Formats for More Sobriety

This project would open a deep reflection on video production, our habits, and possible improvements to reconcile artistic excellence with ecological awareness.

In light of these findings, a production company could be encouraged to rethink its methods. We would propose a radically eco-friendly catalog:

• The podcast is much more ecological than video (lightweight, fluid, storage): quantify the energy benefit of an audio-only product

• Propose to the production company to try doubling one of its projects in podcast form only for the exercise

• Separate image and sound: is it really necessary to see a filmed interview? What are the elements in a video that could have been treated differently?

• Method: do the scouting and preliminary interviews in audio, build the structure of the narration in audio, and add images where necessary

• Create a range of ecological products according to the proportion of video in the video (more or less podcast, more or less experimental)

• Find catchy names for these new forms, develop a label

• Distribution: Bring the vintage webdoc back into fashion, each product is a prototype and mixes text, photo, multimedia, video, VR…

• Relativize the images themselves:

• Analogy to analog, work according to guidelines: with such a proportion of video, such a duration, such a type of video, and therefore start with a memory card limited to a certain size.

• Reflection on recording and archival codec compression.

• Reflection on the energy, time, and financial cost of a log/flat methodology, do we really need grading?

• How will videographers adapt to this? New methods? New preparations, new tools (drawing, staging, field viewfinder…)? End of the limitless. Limits, awareness.

• Use photos to the max

• Follow training in drawing on paper

• Same for graphic illustration: the power of diagrams

• Need a human face to express something? No problem, just redo in video interview only the necessary extracts

• AI-generated images (illustration, characters): energy cost of production, how to measure it?

• Recycling/upcycling, use stock shots until they are worn out, wild recovery and appropriation of one-time-use footage

• Development of an ecological camera: a crank providing energy and dosing the frame rate, the sensor is square, depending on the need for a horizontal or vertical format, the rotating mount places an anamorphic lens in the desired position, and we stretch the pixels in post-production.

Towards a New Awareness

These propositions are just the beginning of a reflection, a starting point for a conversation. We are far from being ecological models ourselves. But we believe it’s essential to start becoming aware of the energy impact of our professional practices. And you, where do you stand in this reflection? Perhaps the time has come to rethink our methods, to embrace limits in order to unleash creativity.

We welcome your ideas, your comments, or perhaps even partners to help bring this exciting experiment to life.